Orig. U.S. In early use Lynch’s (Linch’s) law. The practice of inflicting summary punishment upon an offender, by a self-constituted court armed with no legal authority; it is now limited to the summary execution of one charged with some flagrant offence.
Now most commonly written lynch-law or lynch law, though the capital L is still often used.
The origin of the expression has not been determined. It is often asserted to have arisen from the proceedings of Charles Lynch, a justice of the peace in Virginia, who in 1782 was indemnified by an act of the Virginia Assembly for having illegally fined and imprisoned certain Tories in 1780. But Mr. Albert Matthews informs us that no evidence has been adduced to show that Charles Lynch was ever concerned in acts such as those which from 1817 onward were designated as ‘Lynch’s law.’ It is possible that the perpetrators of these acts may have claimed that in the infliction of punishments not sanctioned by the laws of the country they were following the example of Lynch, which had been justified by the act of indemnity; or there may have been some other man of this name who was a ring-leader in such proceedings. Some have conjectured that the term is derived from the name of Lynche’s Creek, in South Carolina, which is known to have been in 1768 a meeting place of the ‘Regulators,’ a band of men whose professed object was to supply the want of regular administration of criminal justice in the Carolinas, and who committed many acts of violence on those suspected of ‘Toryism.’
1817. S. Roane, in W. Wirt, Life P. Henry (1818), 372. In the year 1792, there were many suits on the south side of the James river, for inflicting Lynch’s law.
1819. W. Faux, Diary, 29 Nov., in Memor. Days in Amer. (1823), 304. The people [of Princeton, Indiana] … deputed four persons to inform him, that unless he quitted the town and state immediately, he should receive Lynch’s law, that is, a whipping in the woods.
1828. J. Hall, Lett. fr. West, 291. No commentator has taken any notice of Linch’s Law, which was once the lex loci of the frontiers.
1835. W. Irving, Tour Prairies, 41. ‘Lynch’s law,’ as it is technically termed, in which the plaintiff is apt to be witness, jury, judge, and executioner.
1839. Stonehouse, Axholme, 112. The burning Reading’s house was … a terrible example of what the Americans term lynch law.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul, I. 570. They seized the opportunity of executing a little Lynch law.
1888. Bryce, Amer. Commw., III. 309. Lynch law, however shocking it may seem to Europeans, is far removed from arbitrary violence.
So Lynch-court nonce-wd., a self-constituted tribunal for exercising lynch law. Judge Lynch, the imaginary authority from whom the sentences of lynch law are jocularly said to proceed.
1849. Lyell, 2nd Visit to U.S., II. 32. My companions … said … ‘If you were a settler there [in Florida], and had no other law to defend you, you would be glad of the protection of Judge Lynch.’
1890. Corbett, Drake, v. 73. Few prisoners fared so well at Westminster … as did Thomas Doughty at that first Lynch-court amidst the desolation of Patagonia.
