In our blog entry dedicated to Isaac Parker, the hanging judge, We commented that as the United States expanded its domain into the western territories of the country, the maintenance of law and order were complicated issues. The great extension of these territories and the delay in establishing the necessary police and judicial institutions often meant that there was no judge for many leagues around the population centers where criminal acts had been committed.
This meant that lynchings and hangings abounded after a summary trial in which the members of the groups of citizens who persecuted the alleged criminal became judges, juries and executioners. On other occasions, the groups of citizens who set themselves up in justice were organized into groups known as Vigilantes, essentially dedicated to hunting down the cattle and horse thieves that swarmed through the wilds of the west. The beginning of Billy the Kid's career was getting involved in a local war carried out by one of these groups of Vigilantes in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
However, little by little, law and order were introduced, with the appointment of judges who were in charge of dispensing justice. However, it was not always about people with the necessary legal training who presided over sessions in buildings in accordance with the solemnity required for the processes in which the lives of the men on trial were often at stake. The aforementioned Isaac Parker was the exception that confirms the rule due to his solid legal knowledge and his solemn, although rigorous, application of the law.
At the opposite extreme is undoubtedly the flamboyant judge Roy Bean. Born around 1825 in Kentucky, Bean settled in the remote Texas town of Langtry, in the Chihuahuan desert. There he began to run a bar and, over time, he called himself a justice of the peace and hung a sign at the entrance of the bar stating that The Law West of Pecos was taught there.
Bean had a dark past in which a couple of drunken brawls that ended with some dead in New Mexico and California stood out. In this episode, according to his own account, the friends of the deceased came to hang Bean, who narrowly escaped dying through the intercession of the girl over whom he had fought with the man he murdered, but since then he could not turn your head.
After continuing to stumble through the West and ending up with his bones in prison, from which he escaped, he ended up following the line of the railway works between San Antonio and El Paso, where he ran a bar for the railway workers. . In his canteen, his appearance as a biblical prophet and above all the fact that there was no law in 400 km. around, gradually made the locals come to him in search of justice until he was appointed justice of the peace by the Pecos County authorities, who thought that a bad representative of the law was better than the total absence of this.
Roy Bean set up his saloon in the town of Langtry, next to the Rio Grande. In memory of British actress Lillie Langtry, whom he admired, Bean named his new s aloon Lily Sweater (which was the stage name of the actress). He installed a picture of him on her bar and even corresponded with her, inviting her to visit the town and her canteen.
Outside the premises he hung two posters that read Ice cold beer and La Ley west of the Pecos. As of 1882 he exercised his double function as tavern keeper and justice of the peace in that place. He had no legal notion whatsoever, so he administered justice however he pleased. Between copious drinks from the judge, the parties and the assistants, Bean celebrated the court sessions sitting on a barrel of beer on the terrace of the canteen and armed with a revolver and a book in which he wrote down his sentences.
There is no record that he ever sentenced anyone to hang, although he always threatened to do so. In fact, more often than not, Bean's trials ended with the imposition of a fine on the defendant, which the judge kept to himself. A train traveler who paid for a 30-cent beer with a $20 bill and was upset that he didn't get his drink back was fined $19.70 for contempt. And when colleagues of an Irish worker accused of killing a Chinese national threatened to destroy the canteen if their partner were convicted, Bean, after thoroughly reviewing his book, declared that the law said nothing about killing a Chinese and acquitted to the defendant, thus saving his premises from the wrath of drunken Irish blue-collar workers.
For all his eccentricities, Bean ran repeatedly from 1884 to the biennial Justice of the Peace election and was elected in almost every one (except two). On March 16, 1903, Roy Bean died in his bed after a drunken stupor without being able to make his greatest wish come true, which was to meet Lillie Langtry. On one occasion he went to see her perform in San Antonio, but she did not dare to make herself known. And when the actress finally accepted her invitation and she visited the city it was ten months after the death of La Ley west of the Pecos.