Friday, December 5, 2014

December 5, 1910: Calvin Exele and Sylvester Peyton

The Los Angeles Herald (Los Angeles, California) dated December 7, 1910:

TWO NEGROES LYNCHED FOR ROBBING WHITE MAN'S BARN

MONROEVILLE, Ala., Dec. 6.—Calvin Exeter and Sylvester Peyton, negroes, were found hanging to a tree at Double Branches yesterday. They had confessed to robbing the barn and outhouse of Edgar Bass.

A deputy sheriff was bringing them here for safe-keeping when he was overpowered by unidentified men, his prisoners taken from him and strung up to a tree.


Our article of interest comes from The Times (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) dated July 6, 1899:

NEW HAVEN JUDGE FAVORS THE WHIPPING POST AND MUTILATION

Special Telegram to THE TIMES.

New Haven, July 5.

Justice Baldwin announces that his experience compels him to favor the whipping post, and even physical mutilation when necessary. He declares they are the only practical punishment for crimes that could not otherwise be corrected.

"I don't hesitate to avow my conviction," he said, "that whipping would often furnish an appropriate punishment for young offenders, and for minor offenses by full-grown men.

"There is a certain crime which is the cause of most of the lynching cases which disgrace our civilization. The crime does a wrong to a woman which many deem worse than death. In the early New Haven colony, in the laws of the Visigoths, mutilation was inflicted. The Women's Christian Temperance Union have published a vigorous article favoring the addition of this penalty. Such a punishment is appropriate in this:  It puts on the criminal the shame of the same nature that he has put on another."


Thank you for joining me and as always, I hope I leave you with something to ponder. 

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