"The Mormons Will Eat You"?

The above is the actual headline on a story run in the Provo Herald in 1889, which story was picked up from the Ogden "Standard".

Here is the story that went with it:

"Yesterday afternoon at the Union depot in this city a traveling lady, with her little girl,was taking a platform promenade awaiting the time for departure of the west-bound train. The little one, two or three years old, kept running away from her mamma and laughing under the sunlit air. She want too far, and the mother cried: "Come back, quick, or the Mormons will get you and eat you up!"

Baby fled in terror to her mamma's arms. Twenty years hence she will doubtless tell how she narrowly escaped being made into a fricassee. Ah there, Baskin! Don't your efforts bear rich fruit?" ... Ogden Standard.

The reference to Baskin is to R.N. Baskin, a judge in the Utah Territory and an anti-Mormon liberal politician who, among other things, prosecuted John D. Lee for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, was elected mayor of Salt Lake City in 1891, and in 1898 was elected Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court.