THE HISTORICAL ROY BEAN

Of the many colorful characters who have become legends of the Old West. "Hanging Judge Roy Bean," remains one of the more fascinating. According to the myth, Roy Bean named his saloon and town after the love of his life, Lillie Langtry, a British actress he had never met. Calling himself the "Law West of the Pecos," he is said to have kept a pet bear in his courtroom and sentenced dozens to the gallows, following his motto "Hang 'em first, try 'em later." Like most such legends, separating fact from fiction is not always so easy.

Roy Bean was born in Mason County, Kentucky about 1825. At age 15 he left home to follow two older brothers west seeking adventure. With Brother Sam, he joined a wagon train into New Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande and went up a trading post in Chihuahua, Mexico. After killing a local, Roy fled to California, to stay with his brother Joshua, who would soon become the mayor of San Diego. Mayor Josh Bean appointed Roy a lieutenant in the state militia and bartender of the Headquarters, his own saloon.

In 1852, Roy was arrested after wounding a man in a duel. He escaped, and after Josh was killed a few months later by a rival in a romantic triangle, Roy headed back to New Mexico where his brother Sam Bean had become a sheriff.

Roy tended bar in Sam's saloon for several years while smuggling guns from Mexico through the Union blockade during the Civil War. Afterward, he married a Mexican teenager and settled in San Antonio, where he supported his family by peddling stolen firewood and selling watered-down milk. His notorious business practices eventually earned his San Antonio neighborhood the nickname Beanville.

As he did not get on well, neither with his wife nor with his neighbors, Roy Bean welcomed a chance to follow the Southern Pacific Railroad westward in the early eighties. He took along a tent in which he sold whiskey to the Irishmen of the construction crews. By midsummer 1882 Bean had established himself in the tent village of Eagle's Nest, on the bank of the Rio Grande, where about 8000 workmen of different nationalities were employed. Quarrels and shooting were inevitable. "Everything is perfectly peaceful here," Bean is said to have told a visitor, "There hasn't a man been killed in four hours." Since there was no court nearer than Fort Stockton, nearly 200 miles away, the Texas Rangers stationed at Eagle's Nest brought their prisoners to Bean for judgement. At the Rangers' request (they were tired of marching their prisoners across the plains) the commissioners courts appointed Bean as justice of the peace in 1882.

In September the Rangers and Bean moved to another tent town, Vinagaroon (plagued by rattlesnakes and scorpions, locally called vinegaroons), but left to a small tent city on a bluff above the Rio Grande named Langtry in honor of a railroad boss who had run the Pacific's tracks through it.

Okay fellows, let's try it again!

various tall tales, including that he himself had named the town for actress Lillie Langtry.

Roy Bean's justice was characterized by greed, prejudice, a little common sense and lots of colorful language. "It is the judgment of this court that you are hereby tried and convicted of illegally and unlawfully committing certain grave offenses against the peace and dignity of the State of Texas, particularly in my bailiwick," was a typical Bean ruling. "I fine you two dollars; then get the hell out of here and never show yourself in this court again. That's my rulin'."

One of Bean's most notorious rulings occurred when an Irishman was accused of having killed a Chinese. Since friends of the accused threatened to destroy the Jersey Lilly if he was found guilty, Bean browsed through his law book, turning page after page, searching for another legal precedent. Finally, rapping his pistol on the bar, he proclaimed, "Gentlemen, I find the law very explicit on murdering your fellow man, but there's nothing here about killing a Chinaman. Case dismissed." In another case, the story goes, he sentenced a horse thief to be hanged. But a few minutes later, having discovered that the prisoner had $ 400 in his pocket, he reopened the case. He fined the defendant $ 300 and advised him to leave town as fast as he could.

In 1892 the body of an Irishman, who had fallen from a high railroad bridge, was brought before Bean. When he found forty dollars and a six-shooter  in the dead man's pocket, he confiscated the gun and fined the culprit forty dollars for having carried a concealed weapon.

At one time the Attorney General of Texas wrote Bean to inquire why he didn't send the state's share of the fines he collected to the capital. The judge replied that he had never received any money from the state and that he had to make his court self-sustaining. With that the matter was dropped.

In legend, Judge Roy Bean is a merciless dispenser of justice, often called "The Hangin' Judge." However, that title goes to Isaac Parker of Fort Smith, Arkansas, who sentenced 172 men to hang and actually strung up 88 of them. Although Bean might have threatened to hang hundreds, there is no evidence to suggest that he actually ever hung anybody. One or two were sentenced and taken to the gallows, but allowed to escape.

Despite of all this, Roy was elected to the office in 1884 and often reelected, so that between 1882 and 1902, most of Roy's bizarre rulings were the law. Roy spent most of his days sitting on the porch of the courthouse, with rifle handy. In his spare time, he served customers. His favorites were railroad passengers, desperate for something to drink while the train took on water. Bean served them quickly, then lingered before giving them their change. When the train's whistle blew, customers swore and demanded their change. Roy then fined them the exact amount and sent them cursing back to their railroad cars. For years, Roy boasted of his "acquaintance with Miss Langtry," and promised locals she would one day arrive and sing in Langtry. In 1896, after his first saloon was destroyed by fire, Roy rebuilt the saloon and constructed a home for himself across the street, which he called the Opera House, anticipating that one day Lillie would perform there. Roy never met Miss Lillie, but he often wrote her, telling her in one of his letter that he had named the place in her honor. Pleased at this she offered to send an ornamental drinking fountain to the town, but Bean refused the gift, explaining that the only drink Langtry people did not relish was water.

In March 1903, Roy went to San Antonio, where he drank himself almost into a coma. He was carried back to Langtry and placed into his courthouse, where he died peacefully in his bed the following morning.

Ten months later, the Southern Pacific stopped at Langtry and Lillie, who was on her way from New Orleans to San Francisco stepped into the desert. She had decided to accept the judge's invitation, visited the saloon, listened as locals told her how Roy Bean had fined a corpse, freed a murderer and lined his pockets by short changing train passengers and was given the judge's revolver. "It was a short visit," Lillie later wrote in her autobiography, "but an unforgettable one."