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| Kansas City Fair robbery |
One account of the County Agricultural
Fair robbery at the Kansas City Exposition on September 26, 1872, has it
playing out like a B-Western. Three men wearing wide-brimmed slouch hats rode
up to the ticket office. One rider dismounted and walked up to the cashier.
“What if I was to say I was Jesse James
and told you to hand out that tin box of money? What would you say?
“I’d say I’d see you in hell first.”
“Well, that’s just who I am—Jesse James,
and you’d better hand it out pretty damned quick, or....”
The man punctuated his request by shoving
a Navy revolver in ticket-taker Ben Wallace’s face. And then, there was
some careless shooting where a young girl took a bullet before the robbers rode
away.
That may have been the way it happened,
but most papers provided a tamer view.
The robbery happened at sundown, just as
the exposition grounds were closing. Three men wearing checkered cloth “drawn
over their foreheads and below their eyes” rode up to the ticket seller’s
office. One jumped off his horse and grabbed the cash box while the other two
held the crowd at bay, pointing their guns at anyone who moved, “threatening
instant death to the first man who moved a muscle.”
Ticket-taker Ben Wallace displayed more guts than brains. He ran out from behind the counter, grabbed the box, and started grappling with the robber. One man shot at him. Wallace ducked, and the bullet flew past him, striking a little girl in the leg.
The robber shoved Wallace away, stuffed
the money in his pockets, then tossed the box to the ground.
A moment later, the robber was back on his
horse, heading for Twelfth Street, and soon the bandits were lost in the nearby
woods.
George Shepherd
A few weeks later, a letter, purportedly from one robber, appeared in the Kansas City Times.
A great deal has been said in regard to the robbery which
occurred at the Kansas City Exposition Grounds. I will give a few lines to the
public, as I am one of the party who perpetrated the deed. A great many say
that we the robbers deserve hanging.
What have we done to be hung for? It is true that I shot the
little girl, though it was not intentional, and I am very sorry that the child
was shot; and if the parents will give me their address through the columns of
the Kansas City Weekly Times, I will send them money to pay her doctor’s
bill.
And as to Mr. Wallace, I never tried to kill him. I only shot at
him to make him let go [of] my friend. If I had been so disposed, I could have
shot him dead. Just let a party of men commit a robbery, and the cry is hang
them, but [General Ulysses S.] Grant and his party can steal millions, and it
is all right.
It is true we are robbers, but we always rob in the glare of the
day and in the teeth of the multitude, and we never kill, only in self-defense,
without men refuse to open their vaults and safes to us, and when they refuse
to unlock to us, we kill. But a man who is a damned enough fool to refuse to
open a safe or vault when he is covered with a pistol ought to die. There is no
use for a man to try to do anything when an experienced robber gets the go on
him.
If he gives the alarm, or resists, or refuses to unlock, he gets
killed, and if he obeys, he is not hurt in the flesh, but he is in the purse.
Some editors call us thieves. We are not thieves—we are bold
robbers. It hurts me very much to be called a thief. It makes me feel like they
were trying to put me on a par with Grant and his party. We are bold robbers,
and I am proud of the name, for Alexander The Great was a bold robber, and
Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Sir William Wallace—not old Ben Wallace
and Robert Emmett.
Please rank me with these and not with the Grantites. Grant’s
party has no respect for anyone. They rob the poor and rich, and we rob the
rich and give to the poor.
As to the author of the letter, the public will never know. I
will close by hoping that Horace Greeley will defeat Grant, and then I can make
an honest living, and then I will not have to rob, as taxes will not be so
heavy. Very respectfully.
Jack Shepherd
Dick Turpin
Claude Duval
P.S. We expected the money would go from the gate to the
secretary’s office at the Fair Grounds, and when Mr. Wallace started, we
thought he had all the money. We expected to get about $15,000 when we robbed
the till, or we would not have taken the chances. Our watch that we had set at
the gate let the money go without seeing it pass.
Jack Shepherd
Three days later, two men rode up to the Kansas
City Times office, requesting to see the editor, Major John Newman Edwards.
When he met them, the men gave Edwards a gold watch and thanked him for “the
fair treatment” he’d given them.
That letter, signed by Jesse James,
appeared in the Kansas City Times on October 20, 1872.
Jesse denied all responsibility for the
robbery and said he could prove his innocence by the testimony of several good
men. He was willing to meet with Marshal Page but couldn’t risk being arrested
because “a man charged with robbery these days is most invariably set on by a
mob after he is captured and hung or murdered without judge or jury.”
It’s an accepted fact that John Newman
Edwards wrote or had a heavy hand in all the Jesse James letters. This one was
a turning point for the gang. It shifted the James-Younger Gang from simple
robbers, elevating them to the level of Robin Hood, sharing the spoils of their
robberies with the poor and oppressed.
It also trivialized their thefts when
compared to the corruption and scandals in President Ulysses S. Grant’s
administration. The James-Younger Gang weren’t robbers but heroes, and going
forward, much of the press would portray them as such.
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