Joseph Charless was president of the Mechanics Bank and a trustee of Wesminster College in St. Louis. Joseph W. Thornton, unemployed, blamed Charless for the fact that no bank would employ him. He walked up to Charless on the street and fired two shots. A crowd tried to lynch Thornton but the fatally wounded Charless himself helped stop the attempt. Thornton was tried in September, found guilty, and hanged at the St. Louis Jail on November 11, 1859. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Michael Montgomery Fisher, John Jay Rice, History of Westminster College, 1851-1903 (Columbia, MO: E. W. Stephens, 1903), 41.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Crime/Disasters
Relevance
Personal
