LYNCH LAW IN ENGLAND.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 752, 30 July 1886, Page 4

LYNCH LAW IN ENGLAND.

The sacking of a seducer’s house in Midlands, after the suicide of his victim, however mnch it is to be regretted, is a salutary indication of the growth of a healthy spirit of indignation against the basest of all crimes. Without in any way approving of the introduction of lynch law into this country, there can be no doubt that if one or two or three scoundrels were well hanged it would do a great deal to deter others from following in their footsteps. Only the other day, at a London police court, a poor girl of nineteen, who had been ruined and deserted by her sweetheart, was charged with attempting to commit suicide by cutting her throat. The author of her ruin told her that if she wished to make away with herself she could do so. She cut her throat in his presence, and he made no effort to prevent her. In Ashantee there is a custom by which any one who has been injured by a neighbor and fails .to.obtain other redress, has only to commit suicide at his door in order to secure his summary execution. Unless our law makes some provision for punishing sedution when it is followed by desertion, the custom of * killing one’s self upon another’s head,’ as it is called in Coomassie, may yet be acclimatized in this country.—Pall Mall Gazette.