The Grand Jury of Alton, Illinois, found bills of indictment against a number of individuals concerned in the affair of November 7, 1837, when Lovejoy was killed, but the suits were evidently not pushed against them. In the trial of Rock, one of the assailants, which came up before the municipal court, the jury returned a special verdict that the defendant, in their opinion, was guilty of the various charges in the indictment, but that they return him not guilty on a question of jurisdiction.[176] Previous to 1840 the verb lynch was occasionally used to include capital punishment, but the common and general use was to indicate a personal castigation of some sort. “To lynch” had not then undergone a change in meaning and acquired the sense of “to put to death.”[177] Webster’s Dictionary, edition of 1848, gives: “Lynch, v. t. To inflict pain, or punish, without the forms of law, as by a mob, or by unauthorized persons,” and “Lynched, pp. Punished or abused without the forms of law.” These same definitions still stand in the edition of 1876. It was not until a time subsequent to the Civil War that the verb lynch came to carry the idea of putting to death. Men were punished with death “by Lynch-law” and “by order of Judge Lynch,” but it is so stated in every such case that death was inflicted. A few typical instances of the use of the word will illustrate the point. The St. Louis Bulletin, November 21, 1835, contained the following item: “Fuller and Bridges, the men suspected of having kidnapped Major Dougherty’s slaves ... were soundly flogged, or in other words—_Lynched_, and set on the opposite side of the river, with the positive assurance that, if they were again found within the limits of the State of Missouri, their fate should be death by hanging.”[178] Niles’ Register for December 5, 1835 (49: 228) heads a paragraph taken from the Louisiana Advertiser “More Lynching.” The paragraph tells of the murder of John W. Brock by John Joseph Short, who was “tried in a summary manner, and executed, by hanging.” Under the title “Lynchers Lynched” the following language was used in the Liberator for September 24, 1836 (6: 155): “A party of from 6 to 12 persons proceeded to the house of Judge Bermudez last night ... their object being, as it is supposed, to assault or Lynch the Judge.” The following passage is from the Liberator, August 17, 1838 (8: 131): “Lynching. A man named John Miles, who hails from Cincinnati, received 100 lashes in Adams county, Mississippi, for endeavoring to entice negroes away.”