David Morgan-Mar’s Irregular Webcomic strip is in reruns, but he adds commentary to them. In today’s strip, he muses over the origins of the term “kangaroo court” and cites The Master’s comments on the term.
Nice to see Dope spottings in the wild.
Cecil notes that the term “kangaroo court” came into use in California circa 1849 during the Gold Rush, thus raising some speculation that it originated there.
There’s some historical Australian connection there (although it doesn’t tell us whether the phrase originated in SF or was imported by Australians). Around that time, some members of an Aussie criminal gang came to SF and caused problems. They came to be known as the Sydney Ducks (not to be confused with a gang of hockey players, I assume). This seems plausible, since Australia at the time has lots of residents who were convicts (Oz having been a British penal colony).
Local SF authorities didn’t do much about it (due to incompetence or corruption), so the good people of SF formed vigilance committees to deal with it. They held trials, which we today might well call kangaroo courts, and lynched a few of them. (From what I remember from US History class, the rest of them then fled up the river to Sacramento to cause trouble there. But I don’t know, from my own education, whether those trials were called kangaroo courts at the time.)