Violence doesn't solve conflict. It makes more violence. But people resort to violence in the absence of reason, the absence of everything but self-obsession inflicted on fellow man. Violent contempt for others was in the news for the first week of December.

100 years ago

The first headline in the Dec. 9, 1908, Natrona County Tribune didn't say anything, giving readers a verb but not a subject with, "SHOT AND KILLED."

The subhead delivered with, "Lawrence Mulvaney Meets Death at the Hand of James Fenley."

Exception: Violence did solve one conflict, but the violent man, Mulvaney, used the peaceful man, Fenley, to inflict violence upon himself.

Fenley was tending a flock of sheep four miles northwest of Alcova and drove his sheep wagon up a long gulch, passing another sheep camp before going farther up the gulch.

When Fenley went around the sheep camp, the camp was not occupied by the shepherd, and Fenley then set up his sheep wagon at what he thought was a respectful distance from the other camp.

Mulvaney didn't think so. He rode up to Fenley's camp enraged at being crowded. Mulvaney was determined to exact some punishment on Fenley.

After he dismounted his horse and threw off his coat and gloves, Mulvaney told Fenley to prepare for a beating. Fenley said he wasn't going to fight and backed up to his sheep wagon to retrieve a revolver.

Fenley brandished the pistol and warned Mulvaney not to come any closer. Mulvaney hesitated then lunged toward Fenley. Fenley fired the gun, striking Mulvaney in the chest.

Mulvaney reportedly said, "You've got me, Jim," and fell forward onto his face. Fenley raced to Alcova and alerted Dr. H.R. Lathrop to the injured man. Fenley then surrendered himself to the authorities.

A coroner's jury was assembled and exonerated Fenley of wrongdoing.

Gender training: In the inside, preprinted pages of the Dec. 9, 1908, Tribune, an article extols the amount of subservience expected of females under the headline, "China Trains Women Best."

Wu Ting Fang, wife of a Chinese diplomat, wrote about how girls are trained to be submissive, modest, docile, and to work faithfully on the tasks they are assigned.

75 years ago

The single photo on the front page of the Dec. 8, 1933, Casper Tribune-Herald was a view inside the Utah Legislature where their constitutional convention voted to ratify the repeal Prohibition.

Utah was the 36th state to ratify repeal of the 18th Amendment by the 21st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, making alcoholic beverages once again legal.

Uncontrolled: Donald K. Smith of Littleton, Colo., confessed to killing his 3-year-old son, Donald Arlen Smith. One story went that the child was injured in an accident involving a door.

Smith's wife, Mable Jeffers Smith, said that her husband beat and kicked his son in a fit of rage after the boy asked for some candy.

Angry citizens were collecting into groups around the jailhouse in Littleton so the authorities moved Smith to Denver.

Old South: Newspapers the 1930s reported lynching incidents with horrifying regularity and the violence usually started with a black man supposedly assaulting a white woman.

Dateline Koutnze, Texas, Dec. 8, 1933, Mellie Williams Brockman, 30, was found slain and the suspect became David Gregory, who was shot while resisting arrest.

Retribution took a grisly turn when the body was chained to a vehicle and dragged through a residential area for colored people in Koutnze, where the body was further mutilated and burned on a pyre.

Acceptable color: Playing at the Rex for a Friday-Saturday engagement in Casper was "Change Your Luck," a live show billed as "America's greatest all colored review!"

50 years ago

The photo on the front page of the Dec. 9, 1958, Casper Morning Star show the civil rights hearing being held in Montgomery, Ala., investigating possible voting rights violations.

Wild shots: Louis Billings of Newcastle waived his preliminary hearing and entered a plea of innocent to assault with intent to kill. Weston County Sheriff Harland Holwell was called to a disturbance at a bar involving Billings.

Billings and his wife went home, but she soon left. Her departure set Billings off on a rampage in which he fired a rifle at his wife's vehicle, a police car and the window of a house, injuring a boy with bullet fragments and broken glass.

25 years ago

The Dec. 8, 1983, Casper Star-Tribune published a front-page article about a poll that found as the year 1984 approached, most Americans, 84 percent, thought that technology was close to fulfilling George Orwell's nightmare of a totalitarian state perpetuated by constant war and electronic surveillance.

Tough collar: Casper Police Officer Mark Edwards was bitten on the head by a subject attempting avoid arrest. Citizens near the tussle heard a commotion and helped the officer subdue the subject.

"A Look Back in Time" is made possible with the help of Western History Archivist Kevin S. Anderson at the Casper College Western History Center, which is open to the public.