Title: Texian macabre : the melancholy tale of a hanging in early Houston /
Authors: Hardin, Stephen L., 1953-
Publisher: State House Press,
Year: 2007
Subjects: Hanging Texas Houston Case studies.; Houston (Tex.) Social conditions; Houston (Tex.) History
Abstract: "Mandred Wood may have caught a glint off the Bowie knife that sank into his belly - but probably not. On the afternoon of November 11, 1837, he had exchanged "harsh epithets" with David James Jones, a hero of the Texas Revolution. When words failed, Jones closed the argument with his blade. Such affrays were common in Houston, the fledgling capital of the Republic of Texas. This one, however, was singular. Wood was a gentleman and Jones a member of a disruptive gang of vagrants that the upper crust denounced as the "rowdy loafers." Jones went to jail; Wood went to his grave." "In the weeks that followed, the killing resounded throughout the squalid, verminous city that one resident described as the "most miserable place in the world." Stephen L. Hardin's suspenseful and witty narrative reads like a contemporary page turner, yet all is carefully documented history. He entwines the murder into the story of the sordid city like the strands of a hangman's rope."--book jacket.
Contents: The ordeal of David James Jones -- Flight and fight -- The town of Houston -- The rowdy loafers -- Houston's gentry -- The reckoning.