THE OK CORRAL

For anyone who missed my radio appearance today regarding the discovery of documents relating to the OK Corral you can listen to it here.

RADIO COWBOY

Incredible really but only yesterday I posted something about the long lost document relating to the Gunfight at the OK Corral - this morning the telephone rang and I was asked back onto Radio Wales to discuss the find which has made the national papers in the UK.


Jack Martin seems to have become Radio Wales' resident western history expert.

Anyway I'll be on at around 3pm BST - readers outside the UK can listen to the show online at the BBC website HERE

OK CORRAL SHOOT OUT - NEW DETAILS EMERGE

It's enough to make any student of western history shake his hat in the air and go, "Yeehaw!"

A missing transcript from a coroner's inquest carried out after the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral has resurfaced in a dusty box more than 125 years later after the infamous Wild West shoot-out.

The handwritten document had been missing for decades and was last seen when it was photocopied in the 1960s.

It was found when court clerks stumbled on the box while reorganising files in an old jail storage room in Bisbee, south of Tombstone, the Arizona frontier town where the gun battle took place.

Stuffed inside the box was a modern manila envelope marked 'keep' and dated 1881.

The inquest was carried out after lawmen Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holliday confronted a gang of drunken outlaws, sparking a 30-second gunfight in the streets of Tombstone that killed Frank and Tom McLaury and Bill Clanton.

Historical: The handwritten transcript has been missing since the 1960s

It made folk heroes of Earp and Holliday and inspired numerous movies about the untamed Old West.

Officials showed off just one page of the transcript on yesterday - a thick sheet of paper with blue lines and sloppy cursive writing in dark ink. It appeared to contain the beginning of testimony by William Claiborn, identified by a historian as a friend of the three dead outlaws.

'I was present on the afternoon of Oct. 26th '81 when the shooting commenced between outlaw parties,' the testimony reads.

Court officials have turned the document over to state archivists. Experts will immediately begin peeling away tape, restoring the paper and ink, and digitising the pages.

The first pages could show up on the library's website for historians to review as soon as next week.

It's unlikely the transcript will provide any shattering revelations about the gunfight, since historians have already reviewed photocopies and the inquest was covered in detail by newspapers at the time.

Still, historians have long argued over who fired first and whether Tom McLaury was armed when he was shot. Earp and the other lawmen said they were defending themselves, while friends of the outlaws called it murder.

THE MAKING OF A BADMAN - JOHNNY RINGO

Nature of nurture - that's a question asked these days by those trying to understand the motivation of criminals. Can a person be born bad? Or is the seed of their destruction sown in their formative years? Johnny Ringo, famed after his confrontations with the Earps certainly had a rough time of it as a youngster.

John was born on May 3rd 1850 in Wayne County, Indiana. In 1864 the young boy was excited at the first real adventure of his life when his parents Martin and Mary Ringo decided that the family's future lay in California. They packed up their five children John, Martin, Fanny,Mary and Mattie and set off on the trip West.

They set out on the Fort Leavenworth Military Road with 68 other wagons and headed for Fort Kearny.

The trip was to be full of hardships. On June 7th the fourteen year old John was involved in an accident when a wagon rolled over his foot, severely injuring it. And then that same day he witnessed another young boy fall under a wagon which killed him. They say troubles come in threes and they certainly did that day, for later a wagon master accidentally shot one of his teamsters through the head, killing him outright.

John witnessed both accidents and his mother Mary (pictured) recorded it in her journal. The following day John, still hobbling due to his broken foot, went along with several men on a buffalo hunt and participated in killing several of the creatures.

On June 13th, the Ringos picked up the Great Platte River Road. The next day Mary wrote that John had a chill and was severely ill throughout the night and for the next few days. But he recovered by the time they reached The Cottonwood Springs military post. Here soldiers stopped the wagon train and searched for horses containing the US brand but none were found and so the wagons continued on their journey.

June 25th saw the wagons halt on The South Platte Crossing where they were forced to stay for two weeks while hard rains and strong winds struck them. Mary wrote that during the stay several Indians came into camp and that one carried a sabre that he said he's taken from a soldier he'd killed. Independence Day passed without celebration and it was July 9th before it was deemed safe to cross the river which led them onwards to the North Platte.

On July 16th several of the cattle in the wagon train became sick from the alkali in the water they had been drinking and died. And later two of the oxen also died from the sickness. By now there was a very real threat of hostile Indians and soon the wagon train came across the scalped corpse of a white man who had been half eaten by vultures.

On July 30th John's father, Martin was standing on one of the wagons, looking for Indians when he accidentally set off his shotgun, sending the load into his own head. John and fellow traveller William Davenport witnessed the grisly event.

"At the report of the gun, I saw his hat blown up 20 feet in the air and his brains were scattered every which way." Davenport wrote.

John helped dig a grave and his father was buried and left at the wayside. Mary's journal contain details of this fateful day and she recorded that her own heart was bleeding as the wagon train rolled on, leaving the grave behind them.

On August 1st the wagon train arrived in Platte Bridge Station but further misfortune was to strike the Ringo clan when the eldest girl Fanny suffered an attack of what Mary called, "cholremorbus." The term cholera morbus was used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to describe both non-epidemic cholera and other gastrointestinal diseases.

On October 7th the Ringo clan were in Austin, Nevada and Mary gave birth to a stillborn son with a deformed face. It was said that the shock of her husband's death had traumatised her and caused both the deformity and the still birth. John looked onto the dead baby's hideous face and turned away in disgust.

On the last day of October the family reached the Sacramento Valley just ahead of the first snows and stayed with relatives for some time. A year later Mary moved her family into a house on Second Street in San Jose. The youngest Ringo - Martin died in 1873 of tuberculosis, he was only 19. Fanny and Mattie grew up and were married. Mary the younger became a schoolteacher and mother Mary died in 1876.

It was been said that John Ringo was forever affected by seeing his father blow his own brains out and that the sight of his deformed stillborn brother pushed him over the edge. He began drinking heavily when he was 15 and ran off to Texas and eventually ended up in Arizona Territory where he fell in with the Clanton faction and became the infamous Johnny Ringo.

He was murdered, as we all know, in July 1882.

The Gunfight at the OK Corral - what happened?

A week this coming Monday I'll be going to see a reenactment of the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral by the Wyoming Wild Bunch, so I thought I'd do a post looking at what we really know about that day in October 1881.


At the end of the gunfight, which lasted only seconds, three men were left dead and three more wounded. There is still much controversy surrounding the gunfight. Did Ike Clanton spark the gunfight? Was Tom McLaury, the man the Earp's claimed fired first, actually armed? Did the presence of Doc Holliday actually make violence inevitable?

On the morning of October 26th 1881 Ike Clanton was involved in a poker game at the Occidental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona. The game had been going on all night, which wasn't unusual and four of the five participants in the game would be involved in the famous gunfight later that day. The players were Sheriff Johnny Behan, Virgil Earp, Tom McLaury, Ike Clanton and a fifth man whose name has been lost to history.
As the game went on and Clanton started losing heavily he became irritated and started mouthing off about earlier run ins with Doc Holliday and Virgil's brother, Wyatt. When the game ended and Ike found out that Virgil had kept a six shooter in his lap for the entire game, he hit the roof. He claimed that this was proof that Virgil was involved with his brother and Doc in a conspiracy against him. He demanded that Virgil take a message to Holliday, insisting that the time had come for a fight. Virgil refused and Ike said - "You may have to fight before you know it."
Ike left with Tom McLaury - the previous day he had already threatened Wyatt and Doc and now he added Virgil to his list.

Trouble between the Earp's and Clanton had been brewing for more than a year. Virgil Earp had risen to cheif of police and it was no secret that Wyatt was planning to run for Cochise County Sheriff. The Earps had become a threat to the Clanton rustling operation. Ike was also in a panic over a deal he had made with Wyatt in which he informed on friends of his who had robbed the Benson stage near Drew's Station in March 1881. Wyatt was hoping cracking the case would help him secure the position of sheriff and Ike would collect the $1,200 reward money for each of the men involved in the hold up.

After the poker game Ike went to the West End Corral to pick up his guns which he had surrended upon entering town under Ordinance 9 which forbid the carrying of firearms within town limits. At this point Ike should have been leaving town but he had no intention of doing so and he was determined to finish of the Earps before the news of his dealings with Wyatt became public knowledge.
"I had those guns around my person for self-defense.' He would later tell the courts.

Not long after picking up his guns Ike ran into Ned Boyle, a bartender from The Oriental and friend of the Earps and told him he was going to bed.

"As soon as those Earps make a show on the street today,' he told the bartender. "The ball will open. We are here to make a fight. We are looking for the sons-of-bitches."

Ned Boyle was worried enough by Ike's words to rouse Wyatt from bed and deliver the threatening message.
At about 9am, police officer A.G. Bronk of Virgil's force woke Virgil and told him Ike had threatened to kill Doc Holliday on sight.

Around 10am Ike was chatting with miner Joe Stump at the Kelly Wine House and Ike grumbled that when he had been insulted previously by Earp and Doc he had been unarmed but now he was well heeled and that he would fight on sight.
Later that day Virgil and Morgan Earp came across the armed Ike and took him by surprise, arresting him for being in violation of Ordinance 9. Ike was fined $25 and Virgil took Ike's weapons over to the Grand Hotel to be collected later. During the time that Ike was facing the judge an angry Wyatt had a minor confrontaion with Tom McLaury in which Wyatt pistol whipped the man about the head and then cooly walked over to Halford's Corner Saloon.

A short time later Billy Clanton and Frank McLaury came into town and heard of the fight brewing - Frank in particular wanted to know why Wyatt had hit his brother Tom but no one seemed to know the reason. When walking down Allen Street they met up with Billy Claiborne,a friend of the Clantons and they were soon joined by Ike who was still unarmed.
At 2.30 pm Sheriif Johnny Behan noticed the armed cowboys and he tried to disarm them but they refused. Frank McLaury told him that, "As long as the people of Tombstone act in this way towards us we will not give up our arms."

By this time Virgil Earp had learned of the armed cowboys and he decided they must be disarmed. Along with his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and Doc Holliday he went outside to make a date with destiny.

Official records show that at this point there were three armed cowboys - Billy Clanton, Frank and Tom McLaury - though to this day there is still speculation that Tom was actually unarmd. Ike was with them but his guns were still at The Grand Hotel.

The cowboys were at a vacant lot close to the OK Corral and the Earps and Doc Holliday made their way directly there, intending to disarm the cowboys but ready for a fight should one start.

'We have come to disarm you," Virgil told the cowboys."Throw up your arms."

This is where reports differ. Some say it was Tom McLaury that drew first, others claim it was actually Frank but whatever happened a thirty second gunfight started after which three men lay dead and three more were wounded. Ike Clanton, unarmed, had run off during the first round of fire leaving his younger brother and friends to face the full wrath of the Earps.

Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were the only two men not wounded at all in the brief fight which has become a legend of the West - perhaps only third in name reconition next to Custer's Last Stand and The Alamo.