Lynching - Etymology

Etymology

• James Lynch Fitzstephen from Galway, Ireland, who was the Mayor of Galway when he hanged his own son from the balcony of his house after convicting him of the murder of a Spanish visitor in 1493.

In the United States, the origin of the terms lynching and lynch law is traditionally attributed to a Virginia Quaker named Charles Lynch.

• Charles Lynch (1736–1796), a Virginia planter and American Revolutionary who headed a county court in Virginia which incarcerated Loyalist supporters of the British for up to one year during the war, although lacking proper jurisdiction, on the plea of wartime necessity. Subsequently, he prevailed upon his friends in the Congress of the Confederation to pass a law which specifically exonerated him and his associates from wrongdoing. He was concerned that he might face legal action from one or more of those so incarcerated, notwithstanding that the American Colonies had won the war. This move by the Congress provoked controversy, and it was in connection with this that the term "Lynch law", meaning the assumption of extrajudicial authority, came into common parlance in the United States. Judge Lynch was never accused of racist bias, and indeed acquitted blacks accused of murder on three separate occasions, as dictated by the facts brought before him.

The following are several improbable suggested sources of the word's origin:

• William Lynch (1742–1820) from Virginia claimed that the phrase was first used for a 1780 compact signed by him and his neighbors in Pittsylvania County.

• Archaic verb linch; to beat severely with a pliable instrument, to chastise or to maltreat.