The Sporting House Killing: A Gilded Age Legal Thriller

by G. Reading Powell

Baylor University still proudly graduates thousands of young men and women. The campus building known in 1894 as the main building, where President Rufus Burleson met Catfish, Jasper, and Henry Sweet, is now known as Old Main, and Burleson’s statue still stands out front. Baylor’s law school, the first in Texas, counts among its graduates Cicero Jenkins (Class of 1860) as well as such notables as Charles E. Travis (Class of 1860), son of William Barret Travis; Temple Houston (Class of 1878), son of Sam Houston; and Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworksi (Class of 1925). It counts among its professors John Sayles, who taught Cicero Jenkins. Though this student’s name is somehow missing from Baylor records, Sayles also taught Catfish how to try cases. About one-hundred sixty years later at this writing, Catfish’s chronicler still teaches law students there to try cases as Baylor lawyers.

  Oakwood Cemetery guards the memory of scores of the people mentioned in this book. Some tombstones, especially Brann’s, bear witness to their stories. One may still find the Confederate memorial and Cicero Jenkins’ grave, where Catfish gathered the inspiration for his closing argument. The markers for the Calloway family, all seven who died in Waco, have sadly vanished.

  In the new courthouse, erected in 1901 on Washington Avenue to replace the old, noisy one, Catfish, Harley, and Miss Peach represented clients. There, in the Justice of the Peace Court, Catfish’s chronicler tried his first jury case. Today one may still hear lawyers beseech judges or juries to hear the other side. Audi alteram partem. As long as it is so, the rule of law is safe.