Half a dozen men seized the naked body. The crowd cheered. They marched
to the fire, and giving the body a swing, it was landed in the middle of
the fire. There was a cry for more wood, as the fire had begun to die,
owing to the long delay. Willing hands procured the wood, and it was
piled up on the Negro, almost, for a time, obscuring him from view. The
head was in plain view, as also were the limbs, and one arm which stood
out high above the body, the elbow crooked, held in that position by a
stick of wood. In a few moments the hands began to swell, then came great
blisters over all the exposed parts of the body; then in places the flesh
was burned away and the bones began to show through. It was a horrible
sight, one which perhaps none there had ever witnessed before. It proved
too much for a large part of the crowd, and the majority of the mob left
very shortly after the burning began.
But a large number stayed, and were not a bit set back by the sight of a
human body being burned to ashes. Two or three white women, accompanied
by their escorts, pushed to the front to obtain an unobstructed view,
and looked on with astonishing coolness and nonchalance. One man and
woman brought a little girl, not over 12 years old, apparently their
daughter, to view a scene which was calculated to drive sleep from the
child’s eyes for many nights, if not to produce a permanent injury to
her nervous system. The comments of the crowd were varied. Some remarked
on the efficacy of this style of cure for rapists, others rejoiced that
men’s wives and daughters were now safe from this wretch. Some laughed as
the flesh cracked and blistered, and while a large number pronounced the
burning of a dead body as a useless episode, not in all that throng was a
word of sympathy heard for the wretch himself.
The rope that was used to hang the Negro, and also that which was used to
lead him from the jail, were eagerly sought by relic hunters. They almost
fought for a chance to cut off a piece of rope, and in an incredibly
short time both ropes had disappeared and were scattered in the pockets
of the crowd in sections of from an inch to six inches long. Others of
the relic hunters remained until the ashes cooled to obtain such ghastly
relics as the teeth, nails and bits of charred skin of the immolated
victim of his own lust. After burning the body the mob tied a rope
around the charred trunk and dragged it down Main Street to the court
house, where it was hanged to a centre pole. The rope broke and the
corpse dropped with a thud, but it was again hoisted, the charred legs
barely touching the ground. The teeth were knocked out and the finger
nails cut off as souvenirs. The crowd made so much noise that the police
interfered. Undertaker Walsh was telephoned for, who took charge of the
body and carried it to his establishment, where it will be prepared for
burial in the potter’s field to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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