The Memphis Appeal

MAD MCLEMORE SECURE.

FIRST FRUITS OF THE POPULAR MOVEMENT AGAINST CRANKS.

The Man Skips to Collierville to Evade Arrest. Gets Into a Bad Row and is Committed for Examination as a Lunatic—Come Up with the Others.

Lewis Lane, the murderer of John McKendrel Brown, has played the mischief. He has drawn a great mass of trouble upon his small and select tribe, which, if not removed, will erelong swamp, perhaps exterminate them.

The tragic episode in the Peabody hotel rotunda, Tuesday night, set the public tongue and mind to work. Everybody was discussing it, everybody had very positive convictions. Nine-tenths of everybody was very tired of the "crank" business, and would not shed one tear if the same law that interposed to dislocate the neck of Charles J. Guiteau should be applied to young Lane with all its vitality.

As an outgrowth of this popular discussion, officers of the law have been prodded into ferreting out and bringing in the "five cranks" alluded to by a well known physician when interviewed by an APPEAL reporter on Lane's crime and mental condition. One of the most noted of these is S. B. McLemore (white) a bricklayer by trade, and a first class one, about fifty-five years of age.

McLemore has resided in Memphis ever since it was a very small kid, and was thoroughly conversant with its long history. In a Shelby street car two weeks ago, in which an APPEAL reporter was a passenger, he talked incessantly to any one and every one who would listen to him on the subject, until finally he and the driver had the whole concern to themselves. The latter individual, to escape a horrible death, closed the door, but to no purpose. His antagonist, at a favorable opportunity, walked out the rear door and around to the front platform, where hostilities were resumed with newly gathered vigor. McLemore could not only discourse upon Memphis from its early to the present day, but was equally at home on nearly every topic.

For example, he got down upon the street car floor and drew a correct diagram, showing the architecture of the Chicago sewer system. He also announced that he built the first Universalist church in this country, giving a detailed history of the structure. He could point out and relate an incident connected with nearly every house in the city. His fund of information is seemingly inexhaustible.

McLemore, of late years, has been a frequent compulsory attendant upon the police court. His offense in nearly every instance was of a small grade, but he was invariably proven to be in the wrong. Some time ago he remained on the chain gang for four months or more, and would doubtless have been there until now had not some of his sympathetic friends appealed to President Hadden for his release, and secured it on the promise that they would take care of him.

Complaints continued to reach the authorities of McLemore's suspicious actions and minor misdeeds. A few days since, after listening to one of these recitals, remarked to his colleague on the bench, 'Squire Powell: "McLemore is getting into altogether too many scrapes, and he always seems to be in the wrong. If he don't mind his ways, I'll have him before me and take him severely in hand."

This remark, in the course of its rambles, reached the subject, who stopped President Hadden on the street one day, and in a threatening manner informed him that he was as responsible and law-abiding as any person in Memphis.

The last illegal act charged against McLemore in this city occurred one day last week. He took charge of a neighbor's chickens, locked them up and smashed a few fences. The outraged neighbor swore out a warrant for his arrest before Mr. Hadden, and put that official in a frame of mind to incarcerate the suspicious individual as a genuine member of the crank tribe.

McLemore doubtless heard of the document out for him, and yesterday morning turned up in Collierville. He had already succeeded in attracting attention from the citizens of that flourishing town, when he became violent and threatened to slice up a fancied offender with a dangerous looking knife. He was arrested, tried before 'Squire Harrell and committed to jail as a lunatic. Quarantine Inspector Perry brought him in last evening and placed him behind the station-house bars.

McLemore's greatest mental weakness is on the subject of bricks. When arrested he had a pistol and dagger. The Collierville warrant charged him with malicious mischief, for destroying H. B. Randall's fence.