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Roy Bean stages a prize fight
On this day in 1896, colorful lawman Roy Bean staged a heavyweight
championship fight on a sandbar just below Langtry, on the Mexican side
of the Rio Grande. Bean, known as the "Law West of the Pecos," was
appointed justice of the peace for Pecos County in 1882. He settled at
Eagle's Nest Springs, which acquired a post office and a new name,
Langtry, in honor of the English actress Lillie Langtry, whom Bean
greatly admired. Bean soon became known as an eccentric and original
interpreter of the law. When a man killed a Chinese laborer, for
example, Bean ruled that his law book did not make it illegal to kill a
Chinese. And when a man carrying forty dollars and a pistol fell off a
bridge, Bean fined the corpse forty dollars for carrying a concealed
weapon, thereby providing funeral expenses. He intimidated and cheated
people, but he never hanged anybody. He reached his peak of notoriety
with his staging of the match between Peter Maher of Ireland and Bob
Fitzsimmons of Australia. The fight was opposed by civic and religious
leaders such as Baptist missionary Leander Millican, and both the
Mexican and the U.S. governments had prohibited it. Bean arranged to
hold it on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, knowing the Mexican
authorities could not conveniently reach the site, and that Woodford H.
Mabry's Texas Rangers would have no jurisdiction. The spectators arrived
aboard a chartered train; after a profitable delay contrived by Bean,
the crowd witnessed Fitzsimmons's defeat of Maher in less than two
minutes. Among the spectators was another somewhat disreputable lawman
and boxing promoter, Bartholomew "Bat" Masterson.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- BEAN, ROY
- LANGTRY, TX
- MILLICAN, LEANDER RANDON
- MABRY, WOODFORD HAYWOOD
- MASTERSON, BARTHOLOMEW
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- New county seat given new portmanteau name (1902)
- WASPs arrive at Sweetwater Army Air Field (1943)
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