Bat Masterson

1853 - 1921

Yes, we know this does not look like the Bat Masterson known and loved by Western fans everywhere. That's because Bat Masterson did not look like Gene Barry and he did not look like Tom Sizemore. But when you get down to it, Bat Masterson at twenty-nine did not look like Bat Masterson at sixty-five. This is Bat at sixty-five.

Bat was one of the legendary Western gunfighters. And since one accepted (and the most realistic) definition of a gunfighter was someone who was in at least two verifiable gunfights between 1865 and 1900, then Bat certainly qualifies. He was in three.

Bat was christened Bartholomew Masterson in Quebec, Canada. Sources give his birthdate anywhere from 1853 to 1855, but the date November 24, 1853 is the one usually mentioned. His tombstone, though, says he was born in 1854. But then his tombstone also says his name was William Barclay Masterson. As we said, that wasn't his birth name, although it was the one he used throughout his life.

In 1877, Bat was elected sheriff of Ford County, Kansas (the county with Dodge City as the seat), and he held various law appointments from time to time. His brothers Ed and Jim were also law officers. Ed was a well-respected marshal of Dodge City and was killed in 1878 while disarming a drunken cowboy. But the youngest brother, Jim, was really the career lawman of the family. He finally ended up as marshal of Guthrie, Oklahoma. Jim was also the most active gunman of the Mastersons, although four of his six gunfights were in the line of duty.

As long as the West was wild, though, Bat preferred to make his living mostly as a sportsman, the Nineteenth Century term courteously applied to gamblers. Like most successful gamesmen, he preferred the banker's role rather than sitting across the table and throwing his money down (and away). But as civilization moved in, one by one the states and territories outlawed the most profitable businesses (both of them). By 1911, the West was mild, and every state and territory had made it illegal to lay down a bet. Nevada didn't reverse itself until 1931.

So Bat's interests turned to sports - real sports - although sports where betting was at least as important as the events themselves. In that day and age that meant horse racing and boxing. Bat particularly liked the latter, and there was hardly a major boxing match he wasn't involved in at least to some capacity. He moved to Denver where he also began writing columns for the local newspapers. In fact, his fame during the fin de siècle was mostly as a sports promoter and writer. So that's what a retired gunfighter does. He becomes a sportswriter.

Bat was a major player in setting up the Jake Kilrain / John L. Sullivan fight 1889. This was the last bareknuckled fight before the Queensbury rules kicked in. This was also the bout that lasted 75 rounds and brings up horrifying pictures of men pounding each other into gelatinous, misshapen, and strawberry colored masses.

But in reality, bare knuckle fighting under the London Prize rules had many aspects of wrestling, and a round was over if one of the fighters was simply thrown. And being thrown itself was interpreted fairly liberally. As long as one of the fighters simply touched his opponent, the man who was - quote - "struck" - unquote - could fall onto the ground, and the round would be over. Sort of the Nineteenth Century version of a quarterback running out the clock. Some rounds lasted only seconds and according to Bat, in the last forty rounds of the Kilrain-Sullivan fight no one threw a single punch. Sullivan left Bat unimpressed and on the old boxer's death in 1918, Bat wrote a decidedly unfavorable article on the legacy of John L.

As a boxing promoter, Bat naturally became acquainted with the more important of the country's newspapermen, and he continued to write articles and commentary for various papers. By today's standards his formal education was limited, but Bat's articles remain quite readable and were penned with a clarity that was unusual in the era of flamboyant Victorian and Edwardian journalism. He didn't limit his writing to sports, either. In 1907, the editor of the national magazine Human Life asked Bat to pen an article about the gunfighters he had known. Bat praised men like Wyatt Earp, Luke Short, Ben Thompson, and Bill Tilghman and trashed Doc Holliday, who he said had a "mean and ungovernable temper and under the influence of liquor was a most dangerous man". The articles introduced these men to a new generation of readers, and in that sense, Bat was responsible for many of the Twentieth Century's heroes of the silver screen.

Bat's dual career of boxing and journalism gradually pushed him further East, and by 1901 he was living in New York City. He entered into a long-lived marriage to a former dance hall girl, and they quite literally lived happily ever after.

Bat was always both amused and irritated by his reputation as a gunslinger. Once a pesky admirer asked for one of Bat's guns for a keepsake. Bat went to a pawn shop, bought a pistol, and carved twenty-two notches in the handle. The kid asked bug eyed if Bat really had killed twenty-two men. "I didn't tell him yes, and I didn't tell him no, and I didn't exactly lie to him," Bat later said. "I simply said I hadn't counted either Mexicans or Indians, and he went away tickled to death." Anyway, that's how Bat told it.

In 1905 Teddy Roosevelt appointed Bat deputy federal marshal for New York City. By then deputy marshals were actually paid a salary rather than like in the old days of the fee system when all they got was two dollars and ten cents a mile for each man they brought in (alive).

In New York, the duties for Bat were very light - mostly providing security for grand juries - and his $2000 a year was good money, particularly since this was pay on top of his newspaper and sports earnings. He kept the job until Teddy left office, in 1909.

In the first two decades of the Twentieth Century, Bat was probably the nation's top authority on boxing. But he wasn't perfect. He didn't think much of a new upstart that showed up around 1914 named Jack Dempsey. The fact that Bat didn't like Dempsey's promoters seems to have clouded his judgement.

Bat wrote most of his last columns for the New York Morning Telegraph. Later he became the vice president of the paper but continued to serve as sportswriter and columnist. There sitting at his desk on November 21, 1921, he died of a heart attack. So in the end Bat Masterson, like many Western gunfighters, died with his boots on.

References

Bat Masterson: The Man And The Legend , Robert K. DeArment, University of Oklahoma Press (1979). The definitive biography. Paperback editions are available at reasonable prices. First edition hardcovers seem rare and expensive.

Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters, Bill O'Neal, University of Oklahoma Press (1979). The definitive work for finding out who shot who and how often. Bat is credited with three gunfights, one in which his opponent was killed.

Bill, by the way, set the definition of a gunfighter as someone who was in two verifiable gunfights. Any more stringent definition, and the encyclopedia would have been a very small book.

The Gunfighter: Man or Myth? Joseph G. Rosa, University of Oklahoma Press (1969). A fair amount of information about Bat and extensive quotes from his articles in Human Life. Reprints of Bat's articles are available but seem a bit pricey.

Joseph's book was a groundbreaking volume and he was one the foremost early western historians who specifically strived for accuracy - an Englishman to boot! It was also written in the days when westerns were still a big sell on both the small and large screens, and Joseph's book predicts ongoing and enthusiastic audiences. Alas, within a few years the near simultaneous death of John Wayne and the release of the first Star Wars movie soon relegated the celluloid gunfighter to the breed of the vanishing man. Despite some periodic mini-revivals the popularity of the western seems to have finally waned.

"Bat Masterson", Robert K. DeArment, Wild West Magazine, June 2001. A nice article about Bat in New York by the #1 authority on Bat. Online at http://www.historynet.com/bat-masterson.htm

"W. B. 'Bat' Masterson: Dodge City Lawman Ford County Sheriff", Bat Masterson", http://skyways.lib.ks.us/orgs/fordco/batmasterson.html. A nice webpage about Bat from the Ford County Historical Society. But there are some errors (or at least amiguities) like giving his real name was William Barclay Masterson. Yes, that's the name he used, and so maybe we should say that was Bat's real name. But he was born Bartholomew.