Reign of the Rough-Scuff: Law and Lucre in Wichita

Stuart Lake’s sources for the Wichita chapters of Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal — Wyatt himself, James Cairns, former city attorney Charles Hatton and newsman David Leahy — represented the opinions of respectable Wichitans 50 years after the fact. To each of them, Texans were unruly adolescents at best, deep-dyed villains at worst. But the merchants who ruled Wichita needed the cattlemen and their herds to survive in that precarious infancy of the town, 1871-76. City Council proceedings as early as May 3, 1871, recognized their importance in the following resolution: ‘Moved and carried that a seal for the city be purchased bearing inscription City of Wichita Kansas. Sun rising on east side of seal, view of the two rivers [Arkansas and Little Arkansas] and land adjacent on the west side of the seal. Herd of Texas cattle moving east. Driver on horseback lassoing Steer near the center of seal.’ There is no doubt the Texas cattle trade acted as a germinating force for the development of Wichita, and for a span of four years, the city did all in its power to aid and abet it. Petitions regularly went out to the ranches of the Lone Star State touting the advantages of the Arkansas Valley grazing land and the pleasant accommodations and easeful entertainment waiting at the end of the trail. Distinguished Texans such as James Bryden, Abel Pierce and Matt Shores were hired by the season to canter down to the Red River and below and lure the herds away from competing shipping points. Yet one should not lose sight of the purpose behind all this feverish activity; as one of Wichita’s founding fathers stated bluntly, ‘Texas cattlemen were the legitimate prey of all classes, from the highest to the lowest.’

The Panic of 1873 began in September, when major Eastern banking houses collapsed, and swept to the frontier. Wichita feared for its survival. One manifestation of this fear was a petition presented to the City Council by saloon owners on December 24, 1873, to reduce fees by one half, ‘on account of the great financial crisis in our midst.’ Since fees collected from saloons, theaters, gambling houses and brothels, along with fines from police court, footed up to the entire city income, it was no small matter for the saloon men to put forward this petition, much more for the council to entertain it.

The business community would not stand for an income or property tax, and so it was largely left to the sporting class to float the city expenses, including the salaries of the police force. Wichitans were well aware that saloons, gambling joints and bawdy houses were necessities equal to superior grazing land and shipping facilities in attracting Texas herds. In addition, a good many merchants — liquor dealers, clothiers, dry goods sellers — as well as bankers and attorneys coined a pretty penny dealing directly with the sports. At least one wide-awake capitalist, Jacob Karatofsky, had moved his store from Abilene to Ellsworth to Wichita, purveying ladies’ fancy-dress goods that catered to the tastes of transient prostitutes.

Police Judge Edward B. Jewett’s report for June 1874 listed fines of $514 paid by prostitutes in 53 cases and $100 by W.W. ‘Whitey’ Rupp to operate the keno hall — 65 percent of the total fines, the prostitutes themselves making up more than half the amount. This was during the cattle season when there were plenty of cowboys in town to fill the civic coffers on such charges as drunk and disorderly, assault and being found in a house of ill fame. In addition, during the month of July 1874, 29 liquor licenses were granted, resulting in a boon to the city of $673. A fair estimate is that prostitutes, saloon men and gamblers furnished about 80 percent of the municipal operating budget during the cattle-trade era. Unless the sporting men and women were piling up scads of money, they would not have been able to finance a city of 2,000 permanent residents and as many transients. During a period of several years, Wichita was a bonanza for the sports, not the least because they received official blessing to ply their trades.

It was up to the police to monitor the sports and make sure that they did not disrupt the social order established by the businessmen and their wives. But the officers labored under a serious handicap. The assistant marshal drew a monthly salary of $75, a patrolman $60, paid in city scrip. Though merchants were supposed to take scrip at par when the city first issued it in 1872, financial affairs had undergone a radical change by 1875. Greenbacks were pegged at $.85 against the gold dollar, and scrip would have fared no better, so that $75 would have figured out to $63.50 in purchasing power, at best, and $60 to $51 — barely a living wage. And while officers may have shared in the judge’s fee of $2 per arrest, on the whole the increase in their take would have been marginal. This situation led to a certain give-and-take between the law and those operating on its fringes, the latter described by a contemporary traveler as ‘the rough-scuff that hang on the borders of civilization and infest all our frontier towns.’

Wichita’s last year of significant cattle trade was 1875, when only 22,500 head were shipped, compared to a high of 80,000 in 1872. Mayor Hope was defeated in a bid for reelection, and his successor, George Harris, came to office with a new city marshal, veteran lawman Mike Meagher (see related story, P. 12). Voter sentiment had shifted, and incumbent William Smith suffered a humiliating defeat, garnering only 65 out of 716 votes cast and finishing last in a three-man field, despite his long record of public service. Once confirmed, Meagher appointed John Behrens as his first assistant and Wyatt Earp as a patrolman. The new force took office in April 1875.

Earp and Behrens, who moonlighted as a roofer, had become bosom buddies. In October 1874, as private detectives hired out to a local carriage-maker, they tracked down an outfit that had skipped out on a bill for a wagon and forced the defaulters to pay up at the point of a gun. That winter, the two stood guard together over a disputed herd of cattle sequestered in Indian Territory. It was probably due to the influence of Behrens that Earp was placed on the force. Though each enjoyed his moments of glory during 1875 — almost at once Earp caught a wanted horse thief and later saved a drunk from losing his roll of $500 — their relations with the sports, in particular the prostitutes, were dubious.

Prostitutes were fined monthly. This was not an attempt to put them out of circulation but their contribution to the city treasury, the cost of doing business. Imposing the Vagrancy Act sufficed to banish them on the few occasions it was brought to bear, but ridding the town entirely or even widely of these’sisters of the white hood,’ so-called from the style of sunbonnet they favored, would have discouraged the cattle trade — the very last thing merchants meant to do.

One of the prerogatives of the police force, along with duties such as repairing sidewalks and poisoning stray dogs, was to collect the monthly fines. This became a problem for John Behrens when the city treasurer disclosed that the officer had snaffled up $150 from a madam named Georgia Williams, yet had turned in only $60. According to existing records, from June 1874 to May 1875, when Behrens did not serve as her conduit to the treasury, Williams was fined for all but two months and paid $140. From May 1875 to April 1876, Behrens’ term as assistant marshal, Williams was charged for only four months and paid only two of those fines, a total of $25. Police reports for June and July 1875 are missing, but presumably she paid, and Behrens turned in an additional $35 during that time.