Latest / Ridiculous History / Wyoming Tales, Part 1: Walking in the Shoes of Big Nose George

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Wyoming Tales, Part 1: Walking in the Shoes of Big Nose George · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. We have a well, we
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: don't need to make a huge, huge thing about it,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: but we are back on the horse theme wise, We're
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: we're doing it. No, we're finally, uh, we're finally getting
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: to the point where we're gonna make an episode for
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: every state in the US. We're back on our Stuffian
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Stephen's bullish, right, that's right, that's right. We made, Promises
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: were made, ben, Promises were made and uh overpromised and underdelivered.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I'll our our buddies, Soufian. And now we're picking back up.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We're picking back up the last two that's the thing
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: they use in Wyoming. And we're even gonna do this
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: as a as an intentional two parter that couldn't become
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: an intentional four part an intentional four part or Earth
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: or a three part or we don't know, um, but
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: for the moment, we're gonna start talking about tales of Wyoming,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: the ignoble death of Big Nose George, which is a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: great name for a what do you call that? A
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: cow polke? Uh, Bronco Buster Outlaw, Yeah you go, uh yeah,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: or a Coen Brothers film, or maybe an extra if
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: they ever do a sequel to that. What was that
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: last thing they did on the ballot of buster scrugs,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Buster scrugs? Wonderful? Was wonderful? Little? What do you call those?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: An anthology with all the different ones. Tom Waits played
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: an old prospector better than Will Ferrell ever could have
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: hoped to do. But yeah, George, big Nose George k
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: A George Perrot a k A George Warden a ka
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  Speaker 1: George Magnus sorry man use a k A Big break George,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And finally, our favorite and the title character of this episode,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Big nos George. That is super producer Casey Pegram approved. Look, folks, Uh,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: this guy's life is interesting. He is an outlaw from
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. Uh, but you know you live by
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the gun, you die by the gun. Maybe the most
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: interesting part of this story is, sadly enough, his demise
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: because you see spoiler alert, George right now is uh
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: spending his postlife existence in multiple ways as a flower
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: pot and ashtray pair of shoes science experiment. This is
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: actually true? Yeah, this is not what he saw coming
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: though his main focus. His main focus stuff like what
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: you would loosely call frontier crimes. Like Wyoming History on
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: w y o history dot org describes him as a
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: known horse thief even though he got acquitted. He was
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: one of those people living at the not just the
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: edge of the the civilized world as they saw it
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: at the time, but at the edge of the legal world.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Like people would know that this guy was stealing horses
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: even if the charges didn't stick. He strikes me as
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: the kind of person who, like, if big nos George
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: walked into i don't know, the wrong bar or something,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: there would totally be that movie moment where someone goes, well, well, well,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: old big beak George, you've got a lot of nerve
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: coming in here, to showing your face round here, stick
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: in your beak in here. I wonder if he really
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: did have a big nose, and like maybe like you know,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the saloon doors swing both ways, probably like would lead
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: with the big nose and that's what would open those
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: saloon doors. And I'm sure are our boy. George frequented
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: saloons from time to time, but he spent most of
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: his time holding up in a very frontier kind of
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: unsettled area west of what today would be called Casey, Wyoming.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: And he kept company with a gang led by a
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: man named sim Jan and he and his band of
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: merry outlaws were active in the Powder River area of Wyoming.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: They robbed, uh, stage coaches of of cash shipments, you know,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: like they had like the you know, Wells Fargo was
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: was initially a stagecoach company because they would ship money
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: to and from their bank locations or I believe they
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: were a courier service and then became a bank. But
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: that was a very popular target for robberies. It's almost cliche.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: And then of course just if they were just passengers
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: on the stage coaches, they would be like yeah, oh yeah,
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  Speaker 1: put your money in this bag and their jewels and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: all that. Other members of the gang included Frank mc any,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Joe Man use again that was one of his a
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: k a. S. Jack Campbell, John Wells, Tom Reid, Frank Toll,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and Dutch, Charlie Burris. Yeah, Dutch is because of Red Dead.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Dutch is one of my favorite outlaw names right now.
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  Speaker 1: But uh, but yeah, I do have to say sim
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  Speaker 1: John sounds like a Star Wars name. I'm surprised George
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  Speaker 1: Lucas hadn't hadn't got to that when they're talking about
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  Speaker 1: the leader. So his nose reference the themes of referring
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to this guy by his nose. It's true his surname
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: is Perro or parents. Some people probably called him as well.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: His stories believe his nickname was maybe a reference to
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: his large nose, which was by multiple sources described a
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: beak like, or maybe it was a play on his surname.
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  Speaker 1: Either way, he definitely had a rep force stealing from
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: stagecoach travelers, and then eventually he escalated to train raw berries,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: which are you know. I think in the stereotypes of
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: the wild West, train robberies are one of the most
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: iconic tropes. So let's talk about one of these train robberies.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Just for an example. August Big Nose and his gang,
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  Speaker 1: along with Dutch, they planned a theft from the Union
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Pacific Railroad. They had a pay car located near Como, Wyoming,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: east of Medicine Bow. At the time, these things were
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: kind of predictable because the railroad, this company in particular,
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  Speaker 1: would carry cash via this pay car on a monthly
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: run to pay all of its employees across their network.
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  Speaker 1: So here's what the bandits did. They go to the
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  Speaker 1: tracks before the car arrives, and they loosen a spike
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  Speaker 1: in the rails. They wrap it with telegraph wire, and
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: then they hide in the nearby brush. And their plan
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: is like, look, we probably don't have to overthink this.
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  Speaker 1: We're just gonna hide in them bushes like spive versus
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  Speaker 1: spy style if you remember that cartoon. And then as
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  Speaker 1: the train rolls by, we're going to pull that spike
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  Speaker 1: and that's gonna dislodge the rails. That's gonna cause the
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  Speaker 1: train to go off the tracks. Boom. We take the
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  Speaker 1: money and that's you know, insert x gold pieces of
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: piece boys or something like that. We don't know if
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: it was gold pieces. But unfortunately railroad company employees, we're
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: you know, doing their jobs. So they spotted that suspicious
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: spike and they actually fixed the damage and then alerted
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  Speaker 1: the law wave. The train never even got there in
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: time for their their little wildly coyote scheme to work. Exactly.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was thinking about. Uh, So they
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: had to flee. They had to lamb it up to
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Rattlesnake Canyon just the most Western sounding. Is all this
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: stuff is so fantastic. At the base of Elk Mountain,
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  Speaker 1: it was twenty five miles to the southwest of where
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  Speaker 1: the cry was to have been committed. Uh. The sheriff
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of Carbon County, his deputy, Robert widow Field, and a
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  Speaker 1: detective employed by the Union Pacific Railroad Company tracked them there,
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  Speaker 1: a guy named Henry Tip Vincents. So when their two
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: pursuers representing the law, the swift hand of justice came
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: on their little camp, their bandit camp, the gang actually
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: had the drop on them and shot them and then
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  Speaker 1: buried their bodies uh near where they had you know,
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  Speaker 1: pitched their camp. Uh, And then they took off again
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  Speaker 1: to Montana. Perot maintained his freedom for a couple of
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: years after that, but things were to take a turn
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: in the pretty near future. Yeah. So, even though George
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: and some of his compatriots are able to elude the law,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: living as they do on the kind of the edge
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of US civilization at this point, not everybody gets away.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Dutch is caught, historians believe as early as eighteen seventy nine,
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  Speaker 1: and people were pretty upset that these folks and law
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  Speaker 1: enforcement were murdered, so there was a lot of tension
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  Speaker 1: in southern Wyoming. Yeah, it's a big deal. And these days,
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  Speaker 1: you know, those types of folks would be branded as
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  Speaker 1: cop killers and be pursued even more aggressively, which makes
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  Speaker 1: it even more dangerous for the criminals. Maybe not in
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the way you would expect, because now we're looking at
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  Speaker 1: the possibility of mob justice. On January twenty three, Dutch
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: is being transported by train from Laramie to Rawlins. His
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: train stops for refuel, coal and water at a place
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  Speaker 1: called Carbon and while the train has stopped, a mob
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  Speaker 1: cops on board. They physically drag Dutch off and they
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  Speaker 1: hang him from a telegraph pole. They also don't say,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: you know what, when he's dead, you look in the body.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: They say, this guy is not worthy of being buried
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  Speaker 1: in the cemetery because that's where Deputy widow Field has
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: been laid to rest. So we're putting in an unmarked
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  Speaker 1: grave somewhere in the brush outside the cemetery boundaries. And
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: that is historically a huge, huge insult that was far
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: older than the US. Ironic, they buried him in the
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: very stage brush which she was hiding to get the
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  Speaker 1: drop on that train, not the exact you know, bush,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: but similar uh so yeah, I mean, at this point,
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  Speaker 1: George is still lambing it in Montana. After those murders
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  Speaker 1: and that robbery gone bad, he single handedly robbed a
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  Speaker 1: military convoy with some local merchants were traveling east with
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: a stockpile of cash. Uh. And he was successful, but
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: it was to his ultimate down to fall because he
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: got really cocky and therefore pretty sloppy, and he felt
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: like he was untouchable. So he returned back to the
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: town where the merchant was from and went into a saloon,
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  Speaker 1: presumably leading with that beak like knows of his, and
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: he started just talking trash bragging about the robbery, about
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the murders. Even I mean, good lord man, he is
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  Speaker 1: not following the cardinal rules of being on the lamb.
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  Speaker 1: You keep your mouth shut and keep your head down.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: At least that's that's my understanding from like watching the Sopranos.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: But someone of course recognizes the guy, hey, this is
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: a big news, you know, uh, and wires the Carbon
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department, specifically the sheriff himself, James Rankin, who
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: high tails it for Montana. In July, Yeah, so that's
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. And you know, folks, I'm probably not
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: alone and wondering this, But have you ever seen true
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: crime shows or accounts of how an outlaw gets caught,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and there's always that moment where they're like, and then
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  Speaker 1: the murderer was it the local Applebee's where he talked
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: about how he had murdered that person and spat on
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: their dog as well on the way out. I think
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I'm always mystified how that happens, and I have to assume,
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  Speaker 1: like some of those people want to get caught. Big
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Nose George the dot. But is it unfair to assume
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: that there's alcohol involved? Yeah? I was. I was about
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  Speaker 1: to say, if if it's an old timey western saloon
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: or Applebee's, the old timey western saloon of modern day,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I would say definitely some some drinks were involved. That's
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: what happened. And loose lips do, in fact think ships,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: and they certainly sunk Big Nose George. Because he was
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: taken in and he was rounded up. The sheriff, James
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Rankin found him and two other members of the gang
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: who had escaped, uh and he escorted them back first
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: to Laramie and then rode with them on a train
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: headed to Rollins, with the gut on them the whole
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: time saying you're not going to get away that easy. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And also I would propose that we say loose lips
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: lasso ships. Indeed, the jokes they do not worth it,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: but no pun left behind. Uh, no joke left behind either,
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  Speaker 1: I think so. So after they returned George to Wyoming,
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: there is a mob waiting for him. Rankin was right
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: when he assumed there would be a lynch mob waiting, uh.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: And they were going to lynch the guy right off
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the train, according to some folks quoted in Atlas Obscura.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: And I don't want to give you the name of
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: the article just yet because it spoils one of the weirdest,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: most grizzly parts of the story. So historians conjecture there
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: must have been something at least I think the way
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: they say is fairly charismatic about this guy, because George
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: was able to convince the lynch mob, let me go
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: to trial, don't hang me from the telegraph pole, let
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: me let me have that day in court totally. I mean,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: he definitely was able to out talk his partner Dutch,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: who had no such luck. So on September three, eighteen eighty,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Big Nose George was put to trial or reigned in Rawlins,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and he was represented by a lawyer, a gentleman named
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: George Francis Warden, who was unsuccessful in his defense of
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Big Nose George, who was sentenced to hang by the
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: neck until dad on April two, eighteen anyone, oh man,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a two gallant song that is definitely
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: not about this. It's called LUs Crusades jail, but it
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: has that same vibe the night before the execution kind
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: of thing, or you know, somebody sitting in jail thinking
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: about their impending mortality. Big George isn't having it. Remember,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: this is what they would call the wild West. Ten
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: day 's before his execution takes place, he tries to escape,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: which is a time honored a hobby of many outlaws
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: of this air up. Yeah, he had gotten ahold of
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: a pocket knife and he had used that to saw
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: through the rivets on the leg shackles that bound him,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and then he snuck up on Robert Rankin and knocked
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the guy in the head with the leg shackles Rankin's
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: wife came in mid jail break, and she managed to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: slam the outside door closed and then she fired her
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: husband's gun in the air, and people from the town
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: came running for help. Word of this attempted, this aboard
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: of escape spreads really quickly, right, and what happens another
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: mob forms and they're saying, dad, burn it, Dad gumm itt.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: That man had no intention of going forward with his execution.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: He's lying to us the way that he's trying to
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: lie to that judge. So they d ACKed him in
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the street again. Yeah, mob justice, Uh, it's it's a
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: thing I gotta I gotta say, though, I'm sort of
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: proud of George for for showing a little restraint and
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: not just like sliddy the guy's throat with the pocket knife.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: He just gave him a good knock over the head.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And and kudos to to the gentleman's wife for for
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: taking the situation in hand, because otherwise George probably would have,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: you know, been on the lamb again. So that's right.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: The lynch party put him up onto a box and
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: looped the noose around his neck and the other end
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: over a telegraph pole and instructed him to jump Um,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: but you know, in the uh, in the interest of
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: his own self preservation, he refused, so he kicked the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: box off from under him. That's how a proper hanging
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: supposed to work anyway. Um, and the rope actually broke,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. So they tried to rinse and repeat,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: grabbed him, put a ladder against the pole, forced him up,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: and strung him up again, and then yanked the ladder away. Um.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: But this didn't go west planned either, did it? Right?
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: This part is you know, if you can set your
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: humanity and empathy aside, This part is pretty hilarious from
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: a prat fall kind of physical comedy aspect. Slapstick is
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: the word I'm looking for. So they try to hang
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: him again. The rope is too short, so it doesn't
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: break Perrow's neck. It leaves him too. He's left strangling
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: slowly asphyxiating on the line. But he didn't They were
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: in a rush. They didn't do the best job binding
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: his hands, so he's able to free them and he's
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: like shimmying up the pole, lasso still around his neck,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: out of reach of the mob. Picture the Benny Hill
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: music playing, and the witnesses are saying This was not
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: super pleasant, funny British comedy. Instead, he was loudly begging
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: for someone in the mob to shoot him, to take
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: his life. Again. This didn't work. He eventually fell off
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: of the poll and he was strung up a third
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: time in a hurry, and he was violently strangling again.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: They didn't man in to break his neck, which is
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do when you hang people. Is
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the whole science of the placement of the knots and
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: their their calculations. So he strangles and he dies of asphyxiation.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: By the time they had brought him down, And this
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: is so messed up, the rope had actually rubbed his
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: ears off during the during the execution. This is a
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: very nasty way to go. Joe Wolf, Yeah, rubbed his
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: That's like the most gnarly rope ber and one could
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: ever imagine ears rubbed clean off. But that wasn't the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: the end of the story. Death was not the end
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: of the indignities that Big Knows George, aside from his nickname,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: would suffer um. After he died, nobody claimed his body
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: um so as as was the procedure, his body was
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: brought to the coroner's office, but it didn't stick around
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: there for very long because it was taken absconded with
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: under cover of night by a compare of physicians by
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the names of John Osborne and Thomas McGhee who wanted
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: to experiment on paros dead body and find the source
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of his criminality. Uh that this is according to the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Atlas Obscure article as well. Um, and then then many
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: other sources. Yeah, poking around in there. This is the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: early days of science, very rudimentary. They were thinking they
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: were doing God's work. I suppose, right, Well, there's you know,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a lot of speculation at
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the time around what we can predict about a person's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: behavior based on their physical makeup. So this is a
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: time when people would have thought about phrenology, right, Phrenology
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: being the discredited pseudoscience saying that certain bumps or certain
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: perceived abnormalities and skull shape maybe indicative of positive or
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: negative cognitive traits. This is also found up in a
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: lot of racism. So doubtlessly they're looking to see if
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: he has The surgeon Thomas McGhee is looking to see
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Proos the lobes of his brain to see if there's
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: something that he thinks is bigger that's an indicative of
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: like greed or avaice or covetousness or what that's right,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: that's right. In order to do that, in order to
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: get it said brain, he saws the top of George's
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: head off, pops the brain out. Or actually he doesn't
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: do it. His friend, the physician, John Osborne does it.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Saws the top of the head off, pops the brain out,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and gives it to his friends Thomas McGhee the surgeon,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: and he you know, does his business. So the top
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: portion of big nosed George's skull is given to a
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: fifteen year old girl named Lillian Heath, who served as
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: McGhee's like surgery assistant, uh and went on to become
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Wyoming's first woman physician, which I think it's pretty awesome,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: but what a weird, like disturbing thing to to to
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: give a fifteen year old. But she also to mind,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: she also didn't become physician just because of that. She
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: had a weird medical absolutely a clear medical career and
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: a clear path and then it was was pretty to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of weird frontier medical procedures like this. I
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: imagine because she didn't seem to bat an eyelash at
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Supposedly she kept it for her entire life and used
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: it interchangeably as an ashtray, a flower pot, and even
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: a doorstop. Because you know it's gonna be a little
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: heft to the top portion of a human skull. But
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: what happened to the rest of the body, you're asking, Well,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: this is where Peru encounters a posthumous career that could
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: be comparable to the posthumous career of saints. Different parts
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: of his body go to different places. Once warn everybody,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: if you're a little more delicate of disposition, this may
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: be a bit grizzly. So the bottom portion of Proo's
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: skull is tossed in a whiskey barrel with the rest
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: of his bones and his body. It's there for about
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: a year while these two men continue their experiments. At
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: one point we know that Osborne send some body parts
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to a tannery and then commissioned to get this not
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: just a pair of shoes, but a medical bag and
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: even a coin purse made out of Pero's skin. Osborne
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: is very specific about this, and he said, I instructed
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the shoemaker to keep nipples on the ski and to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: prove that the skin was lad of a human. But
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: he did not follow my instructions. Uh, no word on
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: if there was a refund or discount. And in that
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: regard still historians do not know what Osborne's true motive
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: may have been for making these grizzly kind of keepsakes,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: because at the time the world of medicine didn't look
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: at human remains as you know, incredibly symbolically significant or something.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: They were material you could use in the process of
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: education and learning. Once the doctors were done, they made
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: the shoes, the coin pers the bag, the flower pot,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: the ashtray, etcetera. They buried the barrel with the rest
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of his remains, and that's where his story starts to
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: fade into legend until a political career brings the shoes
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: back to prominence. That's right. Despite this doctor being seemingly
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: a bit of a psychopath or at the very least
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: an odd character, he became a very popular political candidate
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: and in eight two was elected to become the first
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: democratic governor of the great state of Wyoming, me And
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: was said even then two have worn human skin shoes
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: At his inaugural ball in ee. So I guess this
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: wasn't as odd as we might think of it today.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: It was a little bit more of like a frontier
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: justice kind of flex, like I represent the law and
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: order candidate. I mean, look, you just look at my shoes.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: They got nipples on them, They got they got outlaw
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: nipples on my shoes. It didn't have the nipples. Remember
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: he's still bad about that. Yeah, well that's a bummer.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: But they Okay, if if he had had his drouthers,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: they would have had outlaw nipples on the shoes. Um,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: how else are you gonna know? Uh? Later, Osborne would
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: actually become the Assistant Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: so a storied career in politics, despite being a bit
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: of a ed geane kind of figure. You know, yeah,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Mr President, I know we've got a lot of stuff
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: going on in the nation. But have I ever told
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: you about these shoes? And then Wilson, you know, just
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: with a cerbic wit, told him, well, if they're human skin,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: where are the nipples, buddy, nipples on a breastplate? Remember
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: that expression? And Game of Thrones, yes, yes I do. Uh.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: And and the debate regarding oh maybe it was the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Schumacher batman. But yes, you're right, the shoes continued to
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: play a role. And this means that in some way,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Big Nosed George's life was where his his legacy was
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: not what he had intended. We can only imagine. However,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: the story of his body doesn't end there. On May eleven,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: construction workers we're doing some extrivation to create a new
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: building on Cedar Street, and then they found a whiskey barrel.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And when they opened that whiskey barrel, they found it
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: was filled with human bones. Later they would learn this
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: location was behind the building that served as Dr McGee's
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: office slash Mad Scientists Lab for years and years before,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: and it was pretty clear based on the cadaverous contents
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: of the barrel who they belonged to in life. There
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: were numerous human bones, including get this, a skull with
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: the top saw it off, and just like the two
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: people who had gathered around to watch Big George be
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: hanged three times, a crowd gathers around to watch as
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: this barrel of bones is retrieved. And that's when our
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: former fifteen year old who later becomes a physician comes
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: back into the story, which I did not expect I know,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: it's a twist indeed. I mean she's well into her
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: eighties at this point, but still alive and well. Uh.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And she gets contacted, her husband brings the skull cap
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to the scene and like Excalibur from the Sword in
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the Stone or the reverse kind of version of that. Uh.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I can think it's some other references in pop culture,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: but Cinderella, there you go, boom glass, slipper baby, the
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: skull cap fits perfectly and they all live happily ever after,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: sort of the yeah exactly. Um. So, at this point
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the locals were convinced that these were in fact the
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: remains of Big Nose George. At the time, they didn't
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: need any other proof. But then then you had the
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: magic of DNA testing coming into the picture and and
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: in fact did verify that that is what these were. Yep.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Today you can see the upper half of his skull
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and the shackles that were used while he was hanging
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: in the collection of a railroad museum in Iowa, the
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Carbon County Museum, because the people who discovered the bones
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: immediately offered them to this museum. In rollins. Right now,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: we don't know what happened to the medical bag, and
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: we know that the coin purse was at one point
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: or another quote unquote misplaced. They know it was the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: coin pers was once upon a time in the museum's
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: collection because there was an gentleman who had worked at
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the museum for decades and knew that they had the
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: coin person at one point. The cataloging system wasn't probably
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: super good. A lot of the people working there were volunteers,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: so maybe a little more likely to take a keepsake. Noel.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: The whole time I was reading this story, you know,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I kept wondering what they used to make the coin person,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: kept hoping it wasn't the obvious answer for which coin
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: person is also a euphemism, But it very much was.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Some of the people volunteering at the museum may have
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: just thrown the coin pers away or purposely lost it
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: because they felt inappropriate handling it. Because was made out
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: of George's scrotum. I gotta say, though, not to be
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: too you know gross about scrotum is a perfect material
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: to make a coin person out of. The shape is there,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: It's really there? You really have, Yeah, it holds up. Indeed,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: you don't really have to retrofit it too much. You know, Sorry,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: I know that's morbid, but so is the story. But
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: delightfully so. This is a fun amalgam of frontier justice
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and uh, corpse desecration and just good old ingenuity, you know,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: making skull caps into ashtrays. Yeah, it's it's very there's
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: more than a tinge of Cormac McCarthy's vision of the
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: West here, totally. Yeah, you can go see it today.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Depending on how COVID works out of vaccination, you may
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: even run into the museum's director, Kelly Bohannan. Bohannan has
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: done a couple of things to modernize the displays. One
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: of those is that they've moved the human shoes too
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: an area behind like a partial wall, so that if
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: you're sensitive to seeing human remains in that way, you
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: can avoid it. You won't just get like, you won't
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: just get surprised or pranked by this grizzly keepsake. And
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: this brings us to another question, and we've talked about
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: on Ridiculous History a little, but even more so on
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: on another show called Stuff they Don't Want You to Know.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: How do you properly deal with the remains of the dead?
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: How do you deal with these folks who were outlaws.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, this was a big deal. If you
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: ever saw the Bodies exhibit when it came through the US,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: this was a big deal when people started asking about
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the provenance of those bodies that we're used in those displays.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Who were these people, what was their background, and how
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: do they come to be used in this display, which
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: admittedly is really cool, But also there are ethical questions
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: involved in any museum curatorial process, right whether it's like
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: worth these artifacts stolen from indigenous people perhaps, or from
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: some culture that was looted and and they actually belong
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: with that culture, for example, or in that country. This
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: is a different question. This is more a question of
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: human dignity, because I think we would all agree that
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: whatever big nosed George's crimes may have been, however heinous,
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: you probably didn't deserve to have his scrotum removed and
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: turned into a coin purse. Yeah, exactly, And today his
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: skulls not on display, I don't believe, but you can.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: You can see the shoes and Bohannon tries to see
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: both sides of the issues. She's quoted in Atlas Obscura,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: you know, pointing out that yes, he was a criminal.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: He killed two members of law enforcement. And bohan And says,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: maybe there's still some wild West sentiment, the idea that
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: because these folks were criminals, they don't deserve the posthumous
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: dignity that are you know, members of the law abiding
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: public would deserve. But then there are other people who
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: would say, you know, their shoes, they're made to look
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: like shoes, their warren is shoes, therefore their shoes. And
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Bohanan says, well, the other side of that, basically is
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: imagine telling that to someone's like living relative, their mother,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: you know, their kid. That's some cold stuff to say.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: But no, only I think we have to confess no judgment.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: And there is a certain segment of the ridiculous historian
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: population listening today and saying, guys, I got it. You've
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: sold me. Where can I buy a pair of human
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: skin shoes? Have you missed the point where maybe a
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: little you're well, yeah, what what points aside? You are
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: in luck? Because there is a it's it's a really
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: basic website. I'm almost borderline convinced that's not real. But
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: it's a company called the Human Leather Company. Their little
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: subtitle is Ultimate bespoke leather products. Um, and it looks
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: like on the on the front page is a wallet,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: quite crusty looking wallet. And they described themselves and there
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: about me section. We are a specialized leather products company,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: and we only worked to a very specific order book.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: In fact, we only craft a very limited number of
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: pieces per year, depending on our stock of raw materials.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: We closed our order book a few years ago as
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: our waiting list became too large for us to be
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: able to service all our outstanding requests. We will soon, ever,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: be opening our waiting list again to our exclusive clientele.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: So if you're interested in potentially yeah oh this is
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: by the way, please keep your inboxes and your mind's open. Um.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: You can drop them a line and info at human
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: leather dot com. Need we say more human leather? Apparently
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: a pair of leather human leather shoes from this company,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: though I see no price lists here, running about twenty
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: seven grand. Well, this was back when, um so this
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: comes from an article on how stuff works, which I
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: will point out is a fantastic, fantastic article by jess
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Lynn Shields. So it's possible that when Shields was working
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: on this, the website was a little more open. But
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: it's also possible that this website maybe a bit of
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: a prank, similar to the hoofu website from years ago,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: which which said it was selling human flavor tofu. I
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: tried to order some, and then I quickly learned that
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: they got me. It wasn't wasn't a real thing. So
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: who knows? Who knows? One way to find out is
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: to email that address info at human leather dot com
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: and let us know. Let us know what you find
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: should you feel so inclined, you know. No, I don't
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: know what else they sell. I I hope it's not
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: coin purses. It looks like that. It's definitely a wallet. Uh,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: It's definitely looks like a leather wallet of some sort
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: in the one picture they have on the website. They
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: have also set up a Bitcoin donation payments. So juries
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: out on whether or not these folks are continuing the
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: legacy of Osbourne. There but here ends the tale. Our
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: first tale from Wyoming, the story of Big Nose George
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: all goes to show Man. The end of his life
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: was kind of the beginning of his story in American culture,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: which is rough. It's weird how that works out sometimes. Um,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: but huge Thanks to Gave Luzier, researcher extraordinaire for the
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: hot tip on the Human Leather Company and big nose. George, Um,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: that's that's that's a really interesting one. I would love
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: to see this dramatized. At the very least. This feels
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: like a very grizzly entry into some sort of maccabre
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Wild West anthologies here you know what I mean. And brothers,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you, go Cohen and McCarthy get the band
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: back together. I love it, and just have McCarthy right.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Some vignettes in a new anthology will call it the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Dark Ballad of Buster Scruggs or the Ballad of Buster
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Scrugs after Dark. Also just call it wild West Skin
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: of Max. That's two on the nose because of the shoes.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Look more Workshop on the nose, on the big nose.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: That's two on the big nose. Thanks also, of course,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: to our super producer Casey Pegram, our guest producer Andrew Howard,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Christopher Hasciotis, and thanks to Eve's Jeff co
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: who uh noll. I think we should have back on
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the show pretty soon. What do you say? Yes? I
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: completely agree. Eves is a delight. Please check out her
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: show This Day in History Class, which says the name
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: implies it as a daily history podcast where each episode
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: coincides with that calendar date and some cool historical thing
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: that happened on that day in history. Also ja Ill
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: the podcast The Sturing the wonderful and talented Mrs Jill Scott.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: That Eve's also produces huge thanks to Alex Williams, who
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: composed our theme. Jonathan Strickland the Quister. I think we're
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: we're safe from him for a little while, but you
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: never know. The clock, the giant Grandfather clock is always
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: taking on that one. Yeah, we better screwed through the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: outro too before he finds out we're recording. So, folks,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: one serious question. How do you think museums should handle
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: pieces artifacts that have a controversial providence, whether that relates
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: to human rights and dignity, or whether that relates to
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: things taken from another culture. Let us know. You can
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: find us on the internet. We like to recommend ridiculous
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: historians on Facebook, but you can find us as individuals
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: as well. We certainly can. You can find me at
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: how Now Noel Brown on Instagram, where I pretty much
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: hang out exclusively I've got a Twitter somewhere out there.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: I think I switched it to at how now Noel
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Brown on Twitter, but I don't really been. On the
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: other hand, is a prolific Twitter and instagrammer? Oh thanks, No, importantly,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: prolific is not the same thing as good. You can
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: find me at Ben Bullen H. S W on Twitter,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: where you'll see me mid research on a lot of
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: strange things. You can also find me at Ben Bullan
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: bo w l I n on Instagram. No new goal
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: in life, I propose I want to speak for all
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: of us on the show here. Yeah, let's try not
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: to be human. Shoot not to be human. She's okay.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: I don't think I don't need that in my life.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: The Human Leather Company can can go with God, but
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: uh count me out. Yeah, Human skin Books is about
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: as far as I would go and have to be
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: a really good book or some kind of necronomicon. Yeah,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: we'll see you next time books. For more podcasts from
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.