Texian Macabre
Subtitle: A Melancholy Tale of a Hanging in Early Houston
Publisher: State House Press
Published: November 30, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9781933337203
Subjects: American history: c 1800 to c 1900; True crime; History; History - U.S.; History: American; Murder - General; United States - 19th Century/Old West; United States - State & Local - West; Criminal Law - General; United States - State & Local - Southwest; 19th century; Case studies; Hanging; Houston; Houston (Tex.); Social conditions; Texas
Description: "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.