vigilanten.

1856 C. Nordhoff Man-of-war Life xv. 255 The second day after the expiration of their liberty, notice was given the vigilantes, ashore, that five dollars reward would be paid for every man of the crew rendered on board.

1865 A. D. Richardson Beyond Mississippi (1867) 487 The power [in Montana] is vested in the ‘Vigilantes’, a secret tribunal of citizens, organized before civil laws were framed.

1883 Cent. Mag. 29 194/2 An old-time Virginia City vigilante.

1888 Pall Mall Gaz. 4 Sept. 7/2 Forty well-armed vigilantes surrounded the camp and sent in a committee..to demand the surrender of the thieves.

1890 N. P. Langford Vigilante Days i. xiv. 181 In the name of Vigilante justice [some men] committed crimes which..were wholly indefensible.

1918 G. Frankau One of Them xxiv. 185 Shall Muses condescend to gutter-trilling; Or Pegasus, whose tail the strap~hitched star tickles, Feed like a cow-hocked yellow Rosinante In Grecian mangers of a Vigilante?

1939 J. Joyce Finnegans Wake 78 What vigilantes and ridings then.

1948 Daily Tel. 22 May 3/6 The Advertising Association is asking 24 advertising clubs..to form a ‘vigilantes’ committee to report cases of advertising..of a doubtful..nature.

1959 Times 22 Oct. 8/2 An appeal by Nottingham ‘vigilantes’—a group of businessmen—for an inquiry into the city's Labour-controlled administration has been rejected.

1980 Sunday Times 24 Aug. 2/3 But the critical officers say that if normal police cover is continually reduced..there is a danger..that could lead to highly undesirable vigilante activity.

1984 S. Townsend Growing Pains Adrian Mole 42 I offered to set up a vigilante group but my father said that anyone who has carried an old mattress 300 yards in the dark is not going to be put off dumping it by a gaggle of spotty schoolboys.

1899 F. T. Bullen Log of Sea-waif 78 We..found a big jug of water, which Zeke carefully poured upon the head of the muttering vigilante.

1937 Sun (Baltimore) 27 Sept. 2/7 A public investigation of ‘vigilantism’ in strike areas was announced today through the American League Against War and Fascism.

1942 W. Stegner Mormon Country 96 Perhaps even those incidents were purely unofficial and spontaneous acts of devout Mormons, the Mormon equivalent of lynch law and vigilantism.

1953 Economist 19 Sept. 775/3 In the United States, neither private vigilantism nor the government seems prepared to treat a favourable verdict as final.

1979 Times 6 Dec. 3/1 Africa was confronted, he said, with a choice between a system of collective security and a system of international vigilantism.

1985 Listener 10 Jan. 9/1 The one genuine, spontaneous popular institution in the West was vigilantism.