Springtime came to Nevada City and in April of 1851 three men celebrated the new season by robbing J. Chambers' butcher shop on Broad Street. Their haul was $2,600 in gold dust.

The men were named Alan, Miller, and Ridgely. The latter had been employed at the butcher shop. A-hah! An inside job.

Judge Lynch's court hastily convened on what is now the site of the National Hotel. Mob Jury was present - a considerable company of bearded, rough looking men in felt hats, boots, and flannel shirts. The entire company knew that to send the criminals to Marysville for trial would be to let them go free. Nobody there would care about their Nevada City crime and they probably wouldn't even be prosecuted.

The "court" decreed 39 lashes each for the undoubtedly guilty men. The butcher got to help deliver the blows, aided by a burly local teamster. Ridgely reportedly died of his punishment. It is said the example made of these thieves discouraged larceny for months.

A woman known in Nevada City as "Old Harriet" ran a saloon on Broad Street overlooking Deer Creek in 1852. The stream was high and raged along the boulders and logs, to be crossed only by walking a felled log that spanned the waters. On the far side a man named Pat Berry had a gold claim. One Saturday Berry walked the log into town and bought himself a new outfit of shirt, pants, and boots. Then he spent the night at Harriet's saloon.

That was the last place he was seen alive.

Two days later, six miles below Nevada City, Berry's naked body was found in an eddy of the creek he had to cross to get home. His forehead bore a large wound.

Harriet employed a man to keep bar and do any necessary fighting. They were both arrested and charged with Berry's murder. They had the good fortune to be brought to a real court, not to a convenient tree.

The prosecution told the court of the man's wound, which was said to be caused by a weight from a set of gold scales kept on the bar. The new clothes were missing, pointing to robbery. It was impossible that the new duds could have been stripped off by the running water of Deer Creek, said the prosecutor. He had been murdered at Harriet's, stripped, and thrown into the water outside.

In their defense it was said that Berry was drunk and had to cross a narrow log in the dark to get home. Could he have fallen off, hit his head on a rock, and been washed downstream?

The justice hearing the trial took several days to consider the matter. While that was happening another man fell off the log and disappeared downstream. He was found in the same eddy where Berry's body came to rest. His head bore the same wound Berry had suffered, and all his clothes were gone save his shirt.

Old Harriet and her bartender were set free.

Trial by jury, according to Mark Twain, was "...the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human wisdom could contrive." Miners and other residents of Grass Valley and Nevada City in the 1850s tended to agree with Twain and preferred prompt hanging to a lengthy trial.

Murderers and robbers usually got the death sentence - a rope necktie party - in Judge Lynch's court. Sometimes the criminal was branded on the cheek so he might be known and watched wherever he went. Tough times for the guilty and the suspected.

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Copyright Don Baumgart, 2009