![]() One journalist present noted the crowd watched "with unfeigned satisfaction" at contortions of Hose's body. The heat from the fire caused Hose's veins to rupture while his eyes nearly burst from their sockets. Several matches were thrown onto the pyre by members of the mob, lighting it on fire and burning Hose alive. The skin from Hose's face was removed, and he was doused with kerosene. Men and boys gathered kindling from the nearby woods to create a pyre. Newspapers reported that members of the mob used knives to sever Hose's ears, fingers and genitals while others plunged knives repeatedly into his body, to cheers from the mob. Hose was brought to a patch of land known as the old Troutman field. Mistakenly believing that these trains were loaded with troops, the mob stopped just north of Newnan, deciding they could wait no longer. Once news of the capture reached Atlanta, large crowds boarded trains to Newnan. The lynch mob grew, reaching an estimated 500 individuals, though some accounts purport around 2000. Ignoring their pleas, the crowd moved northward toward the Cranford home. Former Governor William Yates Atkinson and Judge Alvan Freeman pleaded with the crowd to release Hose to the custody of the authorities. As the town jailer led Hose to a cell, the mob grew alarmed, held a pistol to the jailer's head, and took Hose away. The captors agreed to surrender Hose to the Sheriff if they were paid their reward money. Hose was marched to the Newnan jail, where a dispute arose between Hose's captors and the Sheriff. Following events Ī mob kidnapped Hose from the train at gunpoint in Newnan, Georgia. On April 23, 1899, Hose was apprehended in Marshallville and returned by train to Coweta County. Cranford forever maintained that she had been raped by Hose, and her youngest son, Clifford Alfred “Tan” Cranford, was left blind in his left eye as a result of the injuries he received that day. Cranford and, for good measure, claimed without evidence that Hose was suffering from advanced syphilis. Cranford and their infant child in front of the dying Mr. Newspapers portrayed Hose as "a monster in human form" who gleefully raped Mrs. Over the next few days, the furor was caused by rumors suggesting that Wilkes sexually assaulted Cranford's wife, Mattie Cranford, and assaulted his infant child. Five cash rewards were offered for his capture, including from then-Governor Allen Candler, The Atlanta Constitution, Coweta County, the town of Palmetto, and Jacob Hass of Atlanta. Hose fled the scene, and the search for him began shortly thereafter. Hose alleged that, due to the threat, he defended himself and threw the ax, killing Cranford. Hose was working at the time with an ax in his hands. According to Hose, Alfred Cranford threatened to kill him and pointed a revolver at him. Hose had requested time off to visit his mother, who was ill. On April 12, 1899, he was accused of murdering his employer, Alfred Cranford, after a heated argument. Wilkes moved to Coweta County, where he assumed the alias Sam Hose. Newspaper accounts in 1899 said that Wilkes left Marshallville and used the alias Sam Hose because he had been accused of assaulting an elderly black woman. As his mother became almost an invalid as she aged, and Hose had an intellectually disabled brother to support, he had to abandon his plans for higher education, instead working as a manual laborer. ![]() Hose was described by those who knew him as friendly and intelligent and, unusually for a black man in the 19th century South, learned how to read and write. ![]() He grew up on a Macon County farm owned by the Jones family the family had owned his mother. Sam Hose was born Tom Wilkes in south Georgia near Marshallville ( Macon County), circa 1875. Sam Hose (born Samuel Thomas Wilkes c. 1875 – April 23, 1899) was an African American man who was tortured and murdered by a white lynch mob in Coweta County, Georgia, after being accused of rape by the mob. Article in the Calhoun Times, April 27, 1899
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