Governor Ritchie's Clipping File on Lynching
msa_s1048_1_and_10-0515

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Governor Ritchie's Clipping File on Lynching
msa_s1048_1_and_10-0515

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murders." "To the sting of foreign interference, and I might say to the sting of false accusation the people not only of Worcester county, but throughout this entire section of the state, became much disturbed," Judge Bailey asserted. His charge follows: Mr. Foreman and Gentlemen of the Grand Jury, the purpose and the work of the Court as far as far as they can to the best of their ability is to adjust differences and aright wrongs. Your particular work in this court of which you have become a constituent and an important part will be to investigate all public wrongs, to present all parties who have committed within the jurisdiction of this county criminal offenses of an indictable nature. That is the work gentlemen of the Grand Jury that has fallen to your lot. Not altogether within this county but within this section of the state numerous events and much excitement has come and gone since the last Grand Jury organized here. In an adjoining county on the 12 of last October members of a family of four were found murdered. Almost immediately following the murder of those four people in the adjoining county the members of an organization with headquarters outside of this state, in another state, but with a branch with members in this state began to charge and declare that the public officials of that county—to use their own language— were seeking to "legally lynch an innocent man charged with the crime of committing these four murders." That same man was later in due course, lawfully presented by Grand Jury for the murder of all four of these people in that county. To the sting of foreign interference and I might say to the sting of false accusation the people not only of that county but throughout this entire section of the state became much disturbed. While unfounded charges were coming to us from hither and thither along the line of the officials of that county seeking to do something that was unlawful to an innocent man, on the 4th of last December in this county an outstanding business man of this town was murdered in his office by Matthew Williams, and at the time an employee. Whatever reason Matthew Williams had for the murder of his employer, if he had any, no one has ever discovered. That night Matthew