Today -100: November 11, 1910: Of unknown Mexicans and unknown mobs

The NYT follows up on the Texas lynching that caused all the insulting of flags and whatnot in Mexico City. On November 3rd a 20-year-old Mexican national, Antonio Rodriguez, was begging for food in Rock Springs. A rancher’s wife “talked mean” to him, so he shot her; he was taken from his jail cell and burned at the stake. No arrests were made. The coroner’s jury’s verdict was that “an unknown Mexican met death at the hands of an unknown mob.” NYT: “No effort was made to discover the identity of the members of the mob and little was thought of the occurrence until the trouble was reported in Mexico City.” Secretary of State Philander Knox: “It is most unfortunate that the brutal crime in our country of which a Mexican was victim should be made the excuse for a demonstration of hostility toward Americans in Mexico.”

NY Supreme Court Justice Crane denies a decree of separation to a Mrs. Edith Robinson, whose husband hit and yelled at her, because she nagged him. Crane rules: “When the wife tantalizes the husband into a temper the resulting hasty words and violent deeds may not amount to cruel and inhuman conduct, as the law uses these words, although men agree that insults and violence to a wife are inhuman. Otherwise she would be permitted when seeking relief in court to profit by her own acts.”

The Prussian and Bavarian governments are refusing to let the Vatican make Catholic professors and clergy take an oath against modernism.

A black man, Thomas Jennings, is convicted for murder in Chicago on the basis of fingerprints he left in fresh paint – the first ever conviction in the US based on fingerprint evidence.