LYNCHED FOR FLIRTING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14145, 21 August 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

LYNCHED FOR FLIRTING.

RUSSIAN VILLAGE TRAGEDY.

The St. Petersburg correspondent of the Patrie gives details of a savage and revolting case of lynching which occurred recently in the.village of Voleckhi, in the government of Volhynia. A young and beautiful woman living in the village had succeeded in incurring the hatred of the other women of the village by her flirtations with the men of the neighbourhood, both married and single, the women's hatred for the girl reaching a climax one Sunday when it became known that on her account one.of the young men of the village had broken his promise to marry another girl.

On coming our, of church on the Sunday the women, both old and young, threw themselves upon the flirt, and, in spite- of her cries for mercy, tore all her clothes off. They then dragged her through the village by the hair of her head, beating and stoning her mercilessly. At first the men laughed, but when they saw how savagely the girl was being maltreated they attempted to rescue her. The infuriated women, however, drove them off, and then dragged their unhappy victim, who was by now a mass of wounds, to a largo tree just outside the village, where they hanged her to one of the branches," and then lighted a fire of brushwood under her. When, the police arrived on the scene they found the victim of the women's fury lying dead under the tree, blackened. to a cinder.