1881

 

March 22: “Big Nose” George Parrott, a murderous stagecoach and train robber meets his end. It’s a more savage era, in many respects.

"The Hold Up" by Charles Russell.

Big Nose is holding the rifle.

 

As National Geographic explains,

 

When George was arrested and jailed in Rawlins, Wyoming, a mob gathered, broke into the jail, removed him, and hanged him from a telegraph pole. It took some doing. First, the rope broke. Meanwhile, he had managed to untie his hands. The second time, they jerked the ladder away and he grabbed the pole...until he slowly slipped down…to the end of his rope. A local physician, who later became governor of Wyoming, dissected George, partially skinned him, and made a pair of shoes, which he proudly wore, out of the leather. (November 1976, p. 653)

 

Big Nose and his gang had already killed two lawmen, three years earlier, and when Dutch Charly, a member of the gang was caught, a mob dragged him off a train and hanged him from a telegraph pole.

 

When “Big Nose” finally went to trial for his many crimes he told his lawyer his real name was George Francis Warden. He was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1843. He was found guilty, but while awaiting execution, he managed to free himself from heavy shackles and hit the jailer, Robert Rankin, over the head.

 

Wyoming History.org. tells a different version of his demise:

 

Rankin’s wife, Rosa, discovered the attempted jailbreak and managed to close the outside door, thwarting Big Nose George’s plans. She fired her husband’s revolver in the air, and men came running to help. 

Big Nose George’s hands were tied behind his back, and a noose secured around his neck. The mob made him stand on an empty kerosene barrel, and tossed a rope over the crossbar of a telegraph pole. But the rope broke. The bandit fell, begging to be shot. Instead, the lynch mob replaced the noose and made him climb a 12-foot ladder. This time, with the repaired leg irons weighing him down, climbing was difficult. Finally, he choked to death. One report estimated a crowd of as many as 200 people gathered to watch. 

No one came forward to claim the body. Dr. Osborne, who had been asked to be present during the hanging to ensure the outlaw died, and another Rawlins doctor, Thomas Maghee, a Union Pacific Railroad physician and surgeon, claimed the corpse for medical study. Osborne made a death mask and had the outlaw skinned and [a pair of] shoes made [from the leather].

 

The two doctors dissected his corpse. Eventually, the skull was cut in half and Maghee gave the top half to his protégé, Lillian Heath, who later became Wyoming’s first female physician. The lower half and the rest of the outlaw’s bones were buried in a whiskey barrel. That barrel was discovered in Rawlins in 1950, when workers were “excavating for a new department store.”

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A shipbuilding program leads to an increased U.S. Navy, and in twelve years, “forty-seven vessels were afloat or on the stocks.” (97/411)

 

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June 12: Lieutenant A.W. Greely sets out on an expedition “to plant a station in the Arctic regions. Supplies sent in 1882 and 1883 failed to reach him, and alarm was felt for the safety of his party.” (See: 1884.) 

 

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July 2: President James A. Garfield enters the railway station in Washington D.C., intending to take an eastern trip. Charles J. Guiteau, “a disappointed office-seeker, crept up behind him and fired two bullets at him, one of which lodged in his back. The President died on September 19, after weeks of suffering.” 

Guteau’s trial began in November and lasted more than two months. The defense was insanity. The assassin maintained that he was inspired to commit the deed, and that it was a political necessity. The “stalwart” Republicans, headed by Senator Conkling, had quarreled with the President over certain appointments unacceptable to the New York senator; Guiteau pretended to think the removal of Mr. Garfield necessary to the unity of the party and the salvation of the country. The prosecution showed that Guiteau had long been an unprincipled adventurer, greedy for notoriety; that he first conceived of killing the president after his hopes of office were finally destroyed; and that he had planned the murder several weeks in advance. Guiteau was found guilty, and executed at Washington on June 30, 1882. The autopsy showed no disease of the brain. (Andrews, IV, 218)

  

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November: Following Garfield’s assassination, with Guiteau in prison, Andrews describes developments in his trial: 

Guiteau had been by spells a politician, lawyer, lecturer, theologian and evangelist. He pretended to have been inspired by a Deity with the thought that the removal of Mr. Garfield was necessary to the unity of the Republican party and to the salvation of the country. He is said to have exclaimed, on being arrested: “Alright, I did it and will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be president.” His trial began in November and lasted over two months. The defense was insanity. The prosecution showed that the man had long been an unprincipled adventurer, greedy for notoriety; that he first conceived the project of killing the President after his hopes of office were finally destroyed; and that he had planned the murder several weeks in advance.

 

The public’s rage against Guiteau knew no bounds. Only by the utmost vigilance on the part of his keepers was his life prolonged till the day of his execution. Sergeant Mason, a soldier set to guard him, fired into Guiteau’s with the evident intention of applying to the assassin assassin’s methods. The sergeant was tried by court martial, dismissed from the army, deprived of his back pay, and sentenced to eight years in the Albany Penitentiary. Two months later, as they were taking the wretched Guiteau from jail to court, a horseman, dashing past, fired a pistol at him, the bullet grazing his wrist.

 

The prisoner’s disorderly conduct and scurrilous interruptions of the proceedings during his trial, apparently to aid the plea of insanity, impaired the dignity of the occasion and elicited, both at home and abroad, comment disparaging to the court. Judge Cox threatened to gag the prisoner or send him out of court; but as neither of these courses could be taken without infringing Guiteau’s right to confront his accusers and to speak in his own behalf, the threats were of no avail. (11334-335)