Jackson. Ga/ November 13, 1887

A Bailiffs Adventure

Cordy Barnes, L.C., Whipped by an Irate Woman

One day recently a man living in the northern part of this county, concluded that he would move with his family to another county, and before his creditors knew it he had  “packed his duds’ and was on the road, moving westward.   A gentle man whom the fleeing man owed a nice little sum, hurried to Bailiff Barnes with a possessory warrant with instructions that he should follow the absconding party and take possession of his effects, or collect the claim.  Mr. Barnes asked the gentleman to go with him, and together they started in hot pursuit.  After arriving in Jackson they learned that their man had just passed, going in the direction of Griffin.  At break-neck speed they dashed away, and after going about six miles they overtook the object of their pursuit, and the bailiff, “in the name of the State and the authority vested in him,’ ordered the wagon stopped.   To this the driver paid no attention, but cracked his whip in the bailiff´s face and told his mules to “git!’   Mr. Barnes saw that forcible means would have to be resorted to, and at once stepped in front of the team and shouted:
 “In the name of the United States and Cordy Barnes, I say whoa!’

At this juncture the wife of the fleeing man lit out of the wagon with something less than a hundred feet of lumber in her hand, and before the bailiff could wink his eye she had snatched him ball-headed!

With bleeding hands and minus a large portion of hair and whiskers, the bailiff succeeded in freeing himself from his red headed adversary by persuading her that it was a disgrace for ladies and bailiffs to fight on a public road.   After the woman had given Mr. Barnes a genuine “licking’ she told her husband that he could pay the claim and “let that crocked legged, bald headed, bloody-faced devil go back to where he belonged!’

Mr. Barnes says that he has been bailiffing for twenty years and this is the first time he was ever whipped by a woman.  But, said he in giving us an account of the fracas, be sure and say that “I got the money and that my fee was only 25 cents.’  Mr. Barnes says he knows now that women can fight and pull hair, and that he is not over-anxious to execute any more attachments where he will have a red headed woman to deal with.

Middle Ga Argus – Week of December 6,1887

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