The prehearing hype almost matched the publicity engendered by the fight itself. From Arizona to Idaho and on to San Francisco, Wyatt Earp had been involved in dealings that earned him strong supporters and equally bitter enemies, where right and wrong would be matters of judgment rather than certainty. The hearing in a San Francisco courtroom ostensibly concerned whether Sharkey or Fitzsimmons should receive the $10,000 check, but the real issue on trial was the honesty and character of Wyatt Earp.
For the next week, the upcoming hearing became the local circus as the Call and the Examiner engaged in a war of invectives. The Call took the attack, lambasting Earp and the Examiner with stories and cartoons. Earp appeared as a slouchy old man with a sombrero, pistol, and drooping mustache. Examiner editor Andy Lawrence became simply "Long Green," alluding to his alleged involvement in journalistic blackmail, and the paper unrelentingly blasted Hearst at every turn. The real victim became Wyatt Earp. The Call dug for every ugly old story it could find about Earp, and there were many.
The Examiner ran a concise excerpt from the August series, telling of Earp's adventures in Arizona, and the Call responded with an interview of Charles H. Hopkins, described by the paper as a veteran newspaper man from St. Louis who claimed to know the Earps in Arizona while he was a mining reporter:
There were five of the Earps-Virgil, Wyatt, Warren, Julian, and Jessie, their sister.
All the boys were excellent types of frontier bad men. All this talk about Wyatt Earp being a brave man on the square makes me tired. He was brave enough in a certain way, but there is good reason to doubt if he ever possessed that kind of bravery that will make a man dash into a burning building and save a woman's life. As to being on the square-well, he was as square as a circle. The Earps were the leaders of a gang of gentlemen that operated in Cochise County, and an opposition gang was led by John Behan. Wyatt Earp was City Marshal of Tombstone and Behan was Sheriff of Cochise County. Both men hated each other.
Doc Holliday, who has grown famous as the Wells-Fargo shotgun messenger, was a member of the Earp crowd. Everybody has read about how Holliday stopped stage-robbing in Arizona. Well, he did stop it to a certain extent-that is to say, nobody could rob a stage who was Holliday's enemy. The Earps stood in with Holliday and his crowd of Wells-Fargo messengers, and every time we would hear of a stage that carried a lot of money or bullion being held up Wyatt Earp would collect a posse of his gang and start out to run the robbers down. If they could manage to catch any of the "rustlers" of the opposition crowd they would hang them without ceremony, come back to the town and explain how they tracked the road agents down.
Many incidents led a good many people to think that Earp was not so game as he might be; so one night a job was put up to test him. Just about dusk a crowd of men got on the flat roof of an adobe building, commenced firing at a great rate and threw a dummy figure of a man over into the street. Earp was at the town pump, about 100 feet away, and saw it all. It looked like a case of real trouble, requiring the interference of the Marshal, but Earp disappeared and was not seen around his usual haunts until things had quieted down. After this, Earp's nerve shrank in the es timation of the inhabitants of Cochise County, and the suspicion that the gang was implicated in most of the stage robberies led to a decision that the town could get along without them.
Early in 1883 Jake Schieffelin, the man who founded and named Tombstone, determined to run the Earps out of the country. He secured the co-operation of the best citizens in the town and county, including Charles Reppy, editor of the Epitaph; Jim Sorin, a big mine-owner, and Jim Gum, the Postmaster.
A posse was organized under the leadership of Sheriff Behan. I went along to write up the funeral. At the time the Earps and their crowd were camped about three-quarters of a mile from Tombstone. The intention of the Sheriff's posse was to surround the camp and fill the Earps and their followers with lead. Somehow the Earps got wind of the design about an hour before the posse started for their camp. When the posse arrived the birds had flown. They started for Benson, the nearest railroad point, and made the distance of twenty-six miles in an hour and a half. At Benson they were concealed by Big Ed Burns, who had been formerly City Marshal of Leadville and who was afterward hanged in California, until a train came along. They made their escape and never showed up in that part of the country again. Warren Earp had been killed by a rustler before this enforced emigration. Afterward Julian Earp was killed in Colorado by Ike Clanton, chief of the rustlers. Clanton had married Jessie Earp, but this only added fire to the bitter feud. Clanton was killed two years later by Wyatt Earp. This was the last appearance of the Earps in the Middle West. The two survivors, Wyatt and Virgil, emigrated to the coast, where they have been ever since."24
"Distinguished journalist" Hopkins sure could spin a story when accuracy didn't get in the way. Charles H. Hopkins shows up in Tombstone records for the first time in June of '81 when he was arrested by an Earp deputy on a drunk-and-disorderly charge. He listed his occupation as a teamster in October of '82 when he registered to vote. Hopkins was mostly hot air, but his story would often re-emerge to confuse the actual events that had occurred in Arizona.
Relentlessly, the Call continued its Earp bashing. A correspondent dug up Bill Buzzard, Earp's old enemy from the Coeur d'Alene country, who told a very odd story of the events in Eagle City. Buzzard said Earp was the head of a gang of lot-jumpers who plotted the assault on his cabin. According to the report, Buzzard said: "Of course, I don't know if Earp shot at me, or, if he did, how many times, but I do know that he engineered the scheme and was in the gang. Earp was considered a bad and unscrupulous man. He was not particularly brave in gun plays, but he was always considered 'out for the dough."' The reporter said he interviewed several early miners from the Coeur d'Alenes, and none had anything good to say about Earp. "He was generally regarded as a bad man at that time, and in that camp," the story said.25
Buzzard's purported view of the events in Idaho certainly differed from the newspaper accounts of twelve years earlier hailing Earp as a peacemaker. The Call had succeeded in finding Earp's worst enemy in Idaho, who presented a most distorted version of the truth.
Repeatedly the Call referred to Earp as Examiner editor Lawrence's bodyguard, a charge Earp waited more than a decade to refute in a letter to Bat Masterson, then a New York sportswriter. When journalist Bob Edgren repeated the bodyguard story, Earp wrote: "He may have seen me talking with Mr. Lawrence, the managing editor, as I frequently called upon him.... When Edgren says that I ever acted as a bodyguard for a newspaper man in Frisco or elsewhere, he stated a deliberate falsehood."26
Another Call item told of Earp supposedly failing to meet a debt in Stockton. Apparently, he had stood as security to an attorney in the case of three confidence men who received a sentence for swindling a farmer out of $2,000. When the jailed con men did not pay their lawyer fees, the debt fell to Earp, who was slow to reach in his wallet and eventually had two horses impounded. Earp had done a favor for his nefarious cronies, and he had to pay the price. Other Call stories detailed various exploits of "Desperado Wyatt Earp." One said he fixed a horse race, another accused him of serving as referee in a fight in Utah in which George A. Morrison had unknowingly been given a dose of the medication belladonna, which made him ill and caused him to lose the fight. The Call even demeaned Earp in doggerel, running a silly poem under a woodcut cartoon of the open-mouthed ex-marshal yelling "Foul."
Wyatt Earp, the man who looked down a shotgun at Curley Bill and stared into Billy Clanton's pistol, had become a subject of ridicule in the pages of a San Francisco newspaper. The Call impugned Earp's character in a way that would long tarnish his reputation.
BOB FITZSIMMONS SHOWED UP for the first day of the hearing wearing a silklined overcoat and a top hat. Sharkey remained in bed, and Wyatt Earp's absence was noted, since he had been subpoenaed to testify. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and the hearing proceeded. Manager Lynch and Groom and Gibbs of the National Club testified in
a relatively uneventful day. The most interesting events seemed to happen outside the courtroom. The Chronicle reported, "Even jockeys are beginning to shun Wyatt Earp, for fear they will be suspected of connection with an erratic referee. Earp asked Patsy Freeman to ride a horse for him at Ingleside yesterday, but the jockey refused. He afterward said that he made his refusal on account of suspicion cast on Earp because of his decision in the Sharkey-Fitzsimmons contest."27
The relative sedateness of the scene changed before court resumed on Tuesday, December 8. Before the session, Martin Julian promised to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a gigantic conspiracy existed to rob Fitzsimmons of the prize money and his share of the championship. A Bulletin reporter witnessed an exchange between Julian and Groom. Julian said: "I am going to show Needham, Lynch and Earp up in such a light that if they have a spark of manhood in them they will fly the country and seek parts unknown. If ever there were three men caught with goods on them they are the people. I have positive, indisputable proof that they concocted the fraud and the National Club is not clear of it, either." Julian then charged that Gibbs had known of the plot and confessed his guilt to Groom.
"I have nothing to confess," Groom answered. "I don't know what you mean by your insinuations. My record is absolutely clean."
"No matter; you know very well what I allude to," Julian said, then refused to clarify his statement.28
Earp took the stand after the confrontation and answered a reprimand from Judge Gottlob C. Groezinger for failing to appear at the previous session.
"Well, your honor. I must apologize humbly for my neglect. You see, when the officer served me, I was very busy with some telegrams at the Baldwin. I thoughtlessly put the subpoena in my pocket, thinking that I would attend to it later, and then clean forgot all about it. I am very sorry."
"It is a very peculiar thing that you should forget the service of a subpoena," Groezinger said.
"That is so, your honor, but really, I was so much engaged in talking about the fight, that the whole matter was driven out of my head. I can assure you that I did not mean any disrespect. Why, I have been an officer for twenty years myself, and know what a serious thing it is to disobey the order of the court. I beg your pardon, your honor, I'm sure."
Groezinger ended the problem quickly by accepting the apology and ordering testimony to proceed.29 Earp said he had accompanied Lynch to two banks in an attempt to cash the check for the $10,000 winnings, and they had been informed that payment had been stopped. Earp further claimed poverty, saying the horses that were run in his name were leased from Mrs. Orcher of Santa Rosa. According to the Chronicle, "The announcement of his absolute poverty seemed to affect him greatly, and as he made the statement, his voice sunk to a whisper and he leaned his head in a melancholy manner on the four-carat diamond that adorned his little finger." Court adjourned with Julian's promises and threats still unfulfilled. As for Earp's claim of poverty, he was a gambler, and his fortunes rose and fell like those of any gambler.
When the hearing resumed Wednesday morning, Judge Austin A. Sanderson had taken over the case from Groezinger. When Julian was late arriving, Danny Lynch told reporters he was certain the whole threat had been "a bluff from beginning to end." By 10 A.M. the courtroom crowd, described as "sports, pugs, rounders with a goodly sprinkling from San Francisco Lodge of the Independent Order of Sons of Rest" began stamping their feet and showing impatience. With a grand flourish Julian's attorney, Henry I. Kowalsky, entered the room, followed by Fitzsimmons, Julian, and several others, among them Australian trainer Billy Smith.
Calmly and in a clear voice, Smith told of taking walks with Sharkey three weeks before the fight when Sharkey said he had repeatedly vetoed all possible referees. Smith said the referee question was finally settled by Lynch, who said he planned to object to every name proposed so that the choice would fall on the National Athletic Club. The club would then appoint "the kind of man we want," and pay him $2,500 for awarding the fight to Sharkey on a foul. "He told me they had the referee that they wanted, and he would suit-Referee Earp, the racehorse man-and that he was to [win] on a foul in the first round, and Referee Earp was to give him the decision-give Sharkey the decision.... He said the first time that Fitzsimmons was to hit him in the body Needham was to jump in and claim a foul."
After Julian's ringside objections to Earp, Wyatt ordered Sharkey to humor Fitz by taking off his wrist bandages. Smith said he overheard Earp say, "It will be all right, anyway." Smith said he could not see the blow that dropped Sharkey, but saw Lynch climb into the ring and overheard him say to Sharkey, "Put your hand on your groin and pretend to be in great pain." To which Sharkey replied, "All right." Sharkey was then taken to the dressing room where Lynch kept watch while George Allen did something to him, Smith did not know what. Smith said he stayed with Sharkey until Monday after the fight. When strangers called, Sharkey would be in great pain, but when alone with his trainer Sharkey would prance around the room and smoke cigars.
Smith also told an unusual story of Earp's visit to Sharkey's room the morning after the fight. "I was sitting on a trunk. He ... looked at me and said, 'Sharkey, how do you feel?' I said, 'I am not Sharkey. There is Sharkey in bed over there.' He said, 'You look a little bit like Sharkey; I thought it was he."'30 The lawman turned sport seemed to be having trouble keeping the faces straight during his hazy days in San Francisco.
On Thursday morning, George Allen, who served with Needham and Smith as trainers to Sharkey, took the stand to corroborate Smith's story. Another husky-voiced Australian, Allen said he helped Smith prepare Sharkey and looked after the fighter when Smith had other business. Allen said when he saw Sharkey knocked down, he jumped into the ring to wave a towel over his head. "Then Danny Needham jumped in and they pulled me down. A policeman interfered, too."
He said his job was to watch every blow in the fight, and he never saw Fitz strike a foul blow, and Sharkey showed no sign of injury in the dressing room after the fight. He said the boxer did not complain in the dressing room, but screamed in pain when he was carried out, before the crowd. The Australian told how Sharkey's camp had underpaid him for his services; how he had to argue for $150.
According to the Examiner, Wyatt Earp responded quickly to Smith's story. "Smith's allegations to the effect that I entered into any kind of a conspiracy with Mr. Lynch, Sharkey or anybody else are positively untrue, and absurd on their face. I did not agree to give the decision in favor of Sharkey on a foul in the first or any other round as he says. I have always been honorable in my dealings, and defy anybody to prove otherwise. When I accepted the National Club's offer to referee the recent contest the only promise I made was that I would decide the match on its merits. I was offered no money by Lynch or anybody else to give an unfair decision. I would not have listened to a proposition of that kind to begin with, and everybody who knows me will not doubt my word."
Lynch threatened to prosecute Smith for perjury; Groom defended his honor and said if a fix had indeed happened, it must have come after Earp was selected, not before.
Sharkey's Australian trainers, Allen and Smith, testified that their boxer had appeared uninjured in the groin when he left the ring, and Smith stated that Lynch had instructed Sharkey to grab his groin. The double testimony certainly cast aspersions on Sharkey and upon the fight itself, and seemed to show that Sharkey and Lynch had tried to pull a fast one, claiming foul to see if Earp would agree. But it should be remembered that trainers of the day had unsavory reputations. They were an underpaid lot who survived on the generosity of the fighters. Allen said he was dissatisfied with the payment received from Sharkey's camp, and Smith said he had not yet been paid. It would not be impossible, or even unlikely, that Julian had bribed the two men to testify. And it would be equally possible that they had independently chosen to sell their story to get a cut of the purse when it became obvious no more money would be coming from Sharkey. Prizefighting seemed to attract a disreputable coterie.
Something else tro
ubled Earp during the legal proceedings-no one seemed able to pronounce his name properly. The Chronicle reported his ire.
Wyatt Earp is indignant about the manner in which the various parties to the present case are meddling up the correct pronunciation of his name. The words themselves have a tongue-tying sound about them that may account for the trouble, and it is certain that every attorney and witness who has spoken in public so far has a novel notion of his own about the right way to handle them. The bailiff calls "Wah Yah," Colonel Kowalsky addresses the referee as "Wat Yirrup," while Witness Smith mentions him as "White Hurp." General Barnes with no regard whatsoever for the gentleman's feelings invariably refers to him as "Wart Up." Judge Sanderson, believing discretion to be the better part of valor, says something like this:
Now, witness, where did you first see-er, this-er, this man who officiated at the fight?"
And his pronunciation is by far the best of the lot.31
This had not been a good week for old Wart Up. The former marshal now in the hazy, boozy world of San Francisco sporting circles had missed two court dates, been fined for carrying a gun, admitted to poverty, and was said to have misidentified Sharkey in his hotel room. Wyatt Earp, the man who shunned whiskey for ice cream in Tombstone, now seemed in a continuing state of confusion. As the trial recessed for the weekend, the 48-year-old Earp did not cut a dashing figure.
The Call took advantage of the weekend recess to escalate the barrage against Earp and the Examiner, running a story by Alfred Henry Lewis that first appeared in Hearst's New York Journal. Lewis called Earp, "Grim, game and deadly. He never took water, but he doesn't kill as he used to. Age has cooled his blood. Many wounds have brought caution. Moreover, the communities he honors with his presence won't stand those gayeties which marked Wyatt Earp's earlier career. As a result, he has not taken a scalp in many years. His business just now should be that of a blackleg gambler-crooked as a dog's hind leg. If there are any honest hairs in his head, they have not grown since he left Arizona. He is exactly the sort of man to referee a prize fight, if a steal is meditated, and a job is put up to make the wrong man win. Wyatt Earp has all the nerve and honesty to turn the trick. The mere name of Wyatt Earp shows that Fitzsimmons was against a hard game."32 Ironically, just seven years later Lewis would write a biography of Bat Masterson, and his opinion of Earp would change dramatically.
Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend Page 48
