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1898: James Fleming Parker

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This morning in 1898 — allegedly after enjoying the company of an obliging prostitute during the preceding night as a favor from the sheriff, a childhood friend* — James Fleming Parker hanged on Courthouse Square in Prescott, Arizona.

An effective tort lawyer would have saved Parker from his untimely end, for his path to the gallows began when he lost a prized horse struck by an Atlantic and Pacific train and the railroad — spiraling towards bankruptcy in the wake of the Panic of 1893 — came up with only the most niggardly award.

Incensed, Parker went and got his the old-fashioned way: by sticking up an A&P train.

A few things went wrong.

For one, Parker botched the heist and had to flee the iron horse with an underwhelming haul, a dead confederate in his wake.

For another, he’d been recognized and was arrested a week later after a chase through the Arizona wilderness.

And finally, he decided to double his bad bet by leading a jailbreak while awaiting trial — in the course of which he fatally shotgunned a deputy district attorney who had responded to the hue and cry. Parker was lucky to end up in the clutches of that friendly sheriff instead of lynched to the nearest trestle or telegraph pole by an angry posse, but the upshot was the same.

Last sentiment, according to the Tombstone Epitaph** (June 5, 1898):

I have not much to say; I claim I am getting something that ain’t due me; but everyone who is going to be hung says the same thing, so that cuts no figure. Whenever people say I have to go, I am one that can go.

And then he went.

* If so, this last communion followed hours after Parker’s conversion to Catholicism.

** Really.

On this day..