KILLING “JUDGE LYNCH.”

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 6440, 3 December 1881, Page 3

KILLING “JUDGE LYNCH.”

The majesty of lynch law in Kansas has lately received a severe shook, the “ Judge Lynch ” of the occasion being himself killed while engaged in carrying out the sentence he had passed on a pair of malefactors. The affair took place at Fredonia, Kansas, when the jail at that place was attacked by 40 armed and masked men, for the purpose of lynching two brothers, named Hardin, who were confined there on a charge of murder. The outer door of the prison was soon battered down by the lynchers, and the two guards who had charge of the prisoners were overpowered. One of them, however, preserving his presence of mind, passed his pistol to one of the prisoners in the cell, telling him to “ fight for himself.” In the meantime John Hoffman, the leader of the attacking party, rushed at the cell with a crowbar to break open the door. Hardly had he reached it when he fell to the ground mortally wounded by a shot fired by the prisoner to whom the guard had handed the pistol. The lynchers were seized with panic, and fled in confusion, hotly pursued by the Sheriff, who, on the alarm being given, raised a posse and hastened to the spot. The rest of the lynching party escaped; but Hoffman, a well-known and much respected farmer, was “ stone dead.”