Legends of the Old West - WOMEN OF THE WEST Ep. 5 | Pearl Hart: “The Stagecoach Robber, part 1”

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

Peart Hart faced extreme trauma as a young girl and eventually ran away from home with her sister. They crisscrossed the East Coast and Midwest of America and committed petty crimes and minor burglaries. They landed in jail and spent time in reformatories. By the time Pearl was in her 20s, she made a decision: she needed to make a new life in The West. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join To advertise on this podcast, please email: [e-mail] For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pearl Hart was 28 years old when she robbed a stagecoach in May of 1899, about 30 miles southeast of Globe in Arizona Territory. During her trial and incarceration at notorious Yuma prison, journalists made her into the stuff of an Old West legend. These journalists spawned many stories we hear about Hart today. A lot of them said she was born to a respectable family that provided her with a good education. Others said she was born in Kansas and she was the daughter of a wealthy Canadian family. Still others claimed she went to boarding school and later performed with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. In reality, only one of the stories had some truth to it. Pearl Hart

was born Lily Naomi Davey on April 19, 1871, in Lindsay, Ontario, Canada. Her father, Albert Davey, was a violent alcoholic. When Pearl was just a child, her father served time for attempting to rape a 14-year-old girl at knife point. In all likelihood, he abused his own daughters, too. What's also true is that when Hart pointed her.38 revolver at the driver of the stagecoach, she catapulted herself to national fame. She was, after all, a female stagecoach robber, even if she cut her hair short and wore men's clothes. And although a single holdup wouldn't be enough to earn her a place in the history books, her life until then was pretty sensational. As her biographer John Bosenecker wrote, she was self-reliant, adventurous,

unconstrained by convention, and sexually liberated. These attributes were extremely rare for a woman in the 19th century. She's sometimes confused with another female outlaw who shared the same attributes, Belle Starr, and they've shared the nickname the Bandit Queen. Like Belle, Pearl Hart was only formally charged with a couple major crimes. And like Belle, Pearl's life is a story of survival and loyalty when all the odds were stacked against her. From Canada to Ohio to New York to New Mexico to Arizona, the beautiful troublemaker constantly outwitted the law and left behind a trail of broken hearts in the process. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the

stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform and in-person POS system, so wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With the internet's best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify has allowed us to share Thank you. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen,

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In this season, we're telling four stories of some of the legendary women of the West. This is Episode 5, Pearl Hart, The Stagecoach Robber, Part 1. Part 1. The early years of Pearl Hart's life were extraordinarily traumatic. They played a large part in the bold and reckless behavior she embraced from the time she was a preteen until her old age. Her father, Albert Davey, was the cause of most of her family's misery, if not all of it. In the mid-1860s, Davy drifted in and around lake and river towns in what is south-central Ontario, Canada. He was illiterate and lazy, and he was a mean, ambitious drunk.

He went from town to town, working as a fisherman or laborer. More often than not, he would drink or gamble away any payment he earned. At some point, he arrived in the town of Lindsay, Ontario, where he met a sweet and caring young woman named Anna. Albert and Anna married in 1864, and then on April 19, 1871, their third child, Lily Naomi, arrived. A month after Anna gave birth to her sixth child, Albert Davey attacked and attempted to rape a 14-year-old girl near railroad tracks west of town. The girl and her father reported the assault, and the police promptly put Albert in jail. A judge sentenced him to a year in prison and 12 whippings with catanine tails. The catanine tails was a truly miserable invention

in human history. As if a basic whipping wasn't bad enough, we took it a step further. It was a whip where leather was cut into strips and sometimes braided with knots for extra effect. At the end of each strip was a metal spike or hook that tore the victim's skin when it struck. In Albert's case, the collective punishments didn't reform him. They made him an even meaner person when he got out of prison. He didn't care that his kids were impoverished and often hungry. Because they were, his children learned how to be sneak thieves. For example, when the oldest child Willie was 11, he spotted a turkey hanging in the front door of a tannery. He quickly snatched

it and then walked around to the back door of the business and sold it to the unsuspecting owner. Younger sister Pearl and the other siblings quickly learned that this was the fastest way to make a buck. By 1882, Anna Davey had eight mouths to feed and a drunken, lazy, mean, semi-employed husband. She sent several of the eldest children, including Pearl and Willie, to another town to live with her family. Unfortunately, their grandparents could do nothing to keep them in line. That year, Pearl, who was 11, and Willie, who was 13, had their first serious brush with the law. The Davies siblings came up with a simple scheme, but it was incredibly bold for such young children. Pearl and Willie stole a cow from a farmer

and then drove it into town and sold it to a hotel keeper for $9. Repeating the turkey incident, they snuck into the hotel's barn, stole the cow again, and sold it to another unsuspecting buyer for $30. But their crime spree only lasted a few days. Willie got caught for stealing a watch, and he and Pearl were quickly identified as the cow thieves. Pearl was released to her parents, but Willie went to a boys' reformatory.

And things got worse for the Davey family. Most historians agree that Albert probably sexually abused Pearl and her older sister. Both girls became sexualized at a very young age. In spite of the abuse she endured, Anna's main concern was the safety of her children. In September, against Albert's constant threats of beating and even killing her, In September, against Albert's constant threats of beating and even killing her, Anna moved her children to another village, about 70 miles east of their home. The new town turned out to be as bad or worse than living with Albert.

After a series of horrors that can be read about online or in books about Pearl Hart, Anna felt she had no choice but to return to Albert. But Pearl, just 13, and younger sister Katie, 11, had no intention of living with their violent father again. They cut their hair short, put on their brother's clothing, and ran away. The Davey girls, passing as boys, made their way south to Lake Ontario. Even though they were young, they knew from experience that traveling as unaccompanied females was asking for the worst kind of trouble. They wanted to attract as little attention as possible. The sisters stole aboard a lake steamer and ended up in the busy city of Buffalo,

New York. They had no cash, but they did have pluck. Since there were no child labor laws at the time, the Davy sisters found work in a factory. Two months later, though, their mother managed to track them down and return them to Canada. That was Pearl's first attempt to break free and live life on her own terms. In January of 1885, Anna gave birth to her ninth child, a boy they called Ace. Later that year, the Davies moved their large brood across Lake Ontario to Rochester, New York. Anna hoped the family could get a fresh start. They moved into a small tenement house, and Albert immediately began doing two things he loved the most,

drinking and fishing. In Rochester, Pearl turned 15. She looked far older than her age and attracted a lot of attention from men. She soon met and became involved with a man named William Byers, a 36-year-old carpenter from Canada. Young Pearl was very impressionable. She thought Byers was her way out of poverty and could probably offer some excitement too. The problem was, Byers neglected to mention that he was already married to someone else. Byers was also an alcoholic, and spent virtually all of his money on drink. The age of consent at that time was 16, but he had no problem seducing Pearl.

Furious and sad, Anna managed to extract a confession out of her daughter and took her to the police station to make a statement against Byers. The legal process for defending young women was perhaps more progressive than it was in most areas at the time, but it didn't work for Pearl. It seems Byers never promised her marriage, which would have made him guilty of a false promise. He wasn't indicted. Instead, he took off for Calgary and opened a restaurant. A month later, in June 1886,

Pearl and her sister Katie ran away again. They hopped trains like vagrants and made their way to Hamilton, about 140 miles from Rochester. They got jobs at a grocery store, but soon had a falling out with the owners, who withheld some of their belongings in order to keep them there. To be sure, the Davy girls would beg, borrow, and steal from a lot of people in their lifetimes, but this may have been one of the incidents in which they were actually in the right, and simply refused to be taken advantage of. Pearl broke into the owners' private rooms and took their belongings back. Naturally, the owners hauled them into the police station.

The police chief of Hamilton felt sorry for them and gave them money and put them on a train back to Rochester. Within a few days of her return, Pearl met 21-year-old Charles Dean. During the day, Dean worked as a streetcar brakeman. At night, he burglarized homes. Despite the fact that he had been married twice already, Pearl fell hard for him. He proposed that they elope and get married in Tonawanda, New York, a popular place to get married just down the river from Niagara Falls. Pearl agreed, but only if her sister Katie could come with them. The three boarded a train, but Dean took them back to Hamilton instead of Tonawanda. The police chief of Hamilton was

irritated. He'd given the girls money to go home, and now they were back on his streets with a strange man. When a daring burglary happened a few days later, he immediately went to question the Davey girls and Charles Dean. But Dean fled and left the girls to face the consequences. Even though Charles Dean left Pearl and Katie holding the proverbial bag, Pearl reconnected with him a little later. The police in Rochester strongly suspected that the sisters helped him commit a number of burglaries while dressed like men. Meanwhile, Pearl's older sister, Saffronia, became involved with Andrew Wall, who worked with Charles Dean as a brakeman.

Both Davy girls thought they'd found true love. On January 29, 1887, in a double wedding in Rochester, 16-year-old Pearl married Charles Dean, and 19-year-old Saffronia married Andrew Wall. But Pearl's marital bliss was short-lived. Less than two weeks after the wedding, a huge fight broke out between Andrew Wall and Charles Dean and his brother. Wall managed to get the police to believe his side of the quarrel, and they swore out an arrest warrant for the Deans. The officer soon put both Deans in jail. For Pearl Hart, the complaint and the legal issues weren't the main problem. The scariest part was that Pearl recognized that her new

husband had the same violent traits as her father. She left him and decided to go to Calgary in search of her former lover William Byers. Again, Sister Katie was her traveling companion, and once again, the two decided to cut their hair short and wear boys' clothing to avoid attention. On February 25, 1887, the girls slipped aboard a train in Rochester and made their way west toward Chicago. Sometimes they snuck onto freight cars or a road was called the Blind Baggage, a car coupled behind the coal tender. The pair, especially Pearl, became even more adapted to the fine art of traveling for free and scratching together food and shelter. One of them would distract a train boy so the other could steal

snacks from his cart. Another might borrow a shoe-shining outfit from a boot black, while the other peddled newspapers. When night fell and temperatures were freezing, they might sleep in hay in boxcars or sneak into a livery barn or a loft and slip out before morning. One night in mid-March, the Davy girls found themselves in the tiny village of Wyndham in southwestern Minnesota. A newspaper man found them loitering around the station. They were cold, hungry, exhausted, and being tormented by street toughs. He took pity on what he thought were two young boys and brought them to a hotel. The girls told the nice man that they were on their way to Calgary to visit their brother.

The hotel keeper took pity on them and let them stay at the hotel in return for doing odd jobs. He brought them new boys' clothes to replace their dirty, ragged linens. As amazing as it sounds, the girls looked so hard-bitten that the hotel operator and his wife still didn't notice anything amiss until they took them to church. amiss until they took them to church. The hotel operator's son overheard villagers whisper about how well-behaved the young visitors were. They also whispered about the small, white hands of the supposed boys. The son was furious and spied on the girls while they were getting ready for bed that night. Then, staring at Pearl half-dressed, he yelled the obvious. She was a girl. She finally admitted the truth, and the hotel owner called the sheriff. The sheriff listened to

Pearl tell their story and felt sorry for them. The villagers took pity on the ragamuffin girls and gave them dresses and blouses to wear. The sheriff took the girls to a local photography gallery and had their pictures made, and he threw in a bit of a joke to top off the experience. The girls sat for two pictures. In one, they wore boys' clothing. In the other, they wore girls' clothing, and the sheriff gave them a copy of each. He also gave copies to various newspapers, which immediately published stories about the runaway girls. The cross-dressing was sensational and scandalous at the time, but more scandalous was the fact that the girls were fleeing from home and stealing rides alongside

hobos on trains. In just a few days, a good portion of the Midwest read about the exploits of the crafty girls who dressed as boys. As would so often be the case in Pearl's life, the newspapers began obsessively creating a narrative for her. The resourceful girl of 16 could provide endless entertainment for their readers. In fact, one journalist wrote about her upcoming nuptials with Byers and urged Pearl to invite reporters to the wedding. The head of the town's Poor Society had telegraphed William Byers in Calgary and advised him that if he wished to marry Pearl, he should meet her in St. Paul, even though she was still married to Charles Dean. in St. Paul, even though she was still married to Charles Dean. Buyers didn't respond to private or public pleas for marriage. And shortly after that drama, which the newspapers loved, there was much

more serious drama back in New York with Pearl's husband, Charles Dean, and his burglary partner, Chester Green. Chester Green. While the girls were in Minnesota, Charles and Chester continued to break into homes in upstate New York. In April of 1887, Chester and a number of accomplices broke into a house in Jamestown. Unfortunately for Chester, he finally picked the wrong house. As he tried to crawl out through a window, the owner grabbed his hunting rifle and shot Chester in the neck. Chester made it outside and staggered about a hundred yards and then dropped dead. At a time when forensic investigation and shooting protocols didn't exist, hundreds of townspeople came to the morgue to gawk at Chester Green's corpse. He was quickly identified, and the contents of his bag and pockets were passed

around to lawmen, journalists, and onlookers. Among his burglary tools and items from previous break-ins, police found a tin-type photo of two pretty girls. Police found a tin-type photo of two pretty girls. Thanks in part to the popular photo the sheriff had taken of the girls in southern Minnesota, the police chief in Jamestown recognized them as Katie and Pearl Davey. But he mistakenly reported that Chester Green was the burglar with whom he'd seen the girls a year earlier. In reality, that man had been Charles Dean. It didn't matter that the mistake was later cleared up.

The press went nuts over the story that the dead burglar was the husband of their new reality star, Pearl Davey. A reporter for the St. Paul Daily Globe visited the sisters in an attempt to find out the truth. Pearl took the lead in the interview. She was often coy in an attempt to draw out the attention she was being paid by the journalist. The result was a story syndicated so widely that even the elite New York City papers picked it up. Of course, it wasn't entirely true, but the damage was done. The Davey girls were linked to burglaries in New York, despite the fact that they were in Minnesota during the time of Chester Green's independent career and didn't actually commit any of the crimes. But it didn't matter. The story sold thousands of papers. The notoriety made it impossible for foster families to keep the girls in the small town of Wyndham, Minnesota,

so the authorities put them in a Catholic home for unwed mothers, prostitutes, and incorrigible girls in the big city of St. Paul. But then that move brought too much attention to the home, so at the end of April, they were placed on a train and sent to Chicago. Journalists swarmed the girls at the station. An officer in Chicago took the girls to his local precinct, and they gave even more contradictory interviews, mostly to keep enjoying the attention. Officials in Chicago telegraphed the police chief in Rochester and asked for money to buy the girls' train fare back home.

The chief telegrammed back and said Chicago could keep them. Chicago authorities felt they had no choice but to charge the young women with disorderly conduct so they could find a place to send them. A judge ordered that they be placed at a home for prostitutes and wayward girls on Chicago's South Side. instead a home for prostitutes and wayward girls on Chicago's South Side. There, Pearl and Katie spent their days attending school, washing, cooking, cleaning, and learning how to make dresses. For Pearl, it felt like a living hell.

Before long, she and Katie made a daring escape, but the Chicago experience began a cycle of the next couple years. The Davies sisters were in and out of jail and women's reformatories and were forced to rely on prostitution as a way to get by. Back home, their siblings weren't faring any better. Older brother Willie was on the run after breaking out of prison. An older sister was unhappily married to a saloon keeper. The rest of them, who were over the age of 10, were either institutionalized or running prostitution houses or both. The younger siblings struggled in the Davey home in Rochester. One of them managed to get herself adopted into another family, and she was the lucky one. For Pearl, her time in the East and the Midwest was almost up.

She was about to head west, specifically to the desert southwest of Arizona Territory. In 1891, Pearl was working for her sister Katie as a prostitute in Toledo, Ohio, when she met Dan Bandman at a local theater production. He was 28 years old and a talented musician. He could speak several languages and had traveled extensively to other countries. And unfortunately, like so many others in America at the time, he was addicted to opium. Hart and Bandman lived together off and on for the next two years. Like Pearl's father, Bandman was abusive. Finally, in the fall of 1893, Pearl used what little money she had to buy a train ticket to Colorado. In all likelihood, she worked as a

prostitute in Trinidad's Red Light District, which served the hordes of minors in the area. Soon she got restless and hopped from one city to the next on the Santa Fe Railroad. In late 1893, Pearl Hart arrived in Phoenix. Here in the West, no one knew of her past, and even if they had, no one would have cared, at least not yet. and even if they had, no one would have cared, at least not yet. This is where she formally adopted the name Pearl Hart. No one knew her real identity. She kept it a close secret,

even though she was in regular correspondence with her family back east. It was probably from her sisters that Dan Bandman learned she was in Arizona and surprised her one afternoon in 1894. Pearl knew Bandman was bad for her, but she decided it was safer to get back together with him than to try to survive in Phoenix on her own. In hindsight, that was debatable. Bandman ended up introducing her to opium and chain-smoking cigarettes. She lost a lot of weight, and her big blue eyes began to sink into her shrunken face.

Opium use was still legal in the United States at the time, but everyone knew its devastating effects. Pearl's temper, already hair-triggered at times, became more and more aggressive. temper—already hair-triggered at times—became more and more aggressive. She later said that she gave birth to two children fathered by Bandman, a boy and a girl, but their identities have never been proven. There are no testimonials from anyone who remembers seeing her visibly pregnant, but there's a little evidence to suggest she sent them to live with one of her sisters, who raised them as her own. Pearl's addictions, and the likelihood that she had children with him, kept her closely attached to Bandman until late 1894. Then, he beat her so badly that she begged a judge to send him to Yuma Prison and subject him to all the horrors it could provide.

After Pearl separated from Dan Bandman, she went to work for Minnie Powers, the best-known madam in Phoenix. She still liked to dress in men's clothing and used morphine on a daily basis. She later recalled that she was tired of life and possibly reaching her lowest point. In the spring of 1898, the Phoenix City Council outlawed prostitution within its city limits. The new law forced the bordellos to close, but it certainly didn't stop the trade. Pearl continued to work as a prostitute so she could pay for room, board, and drugs. All the same, the crackdown in Phoenix forced her to look for new horizons, and the ventures would make her the most notorious woman in America.

Next time on Legends of the Old West, there's a stagecoach robbery, a jailbreak, a prison sentence in the most notorious hellhole in the Southwest, and the somewhat unlikely end of the Pearl Heart story. That's next week on the season finale here on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials and exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This episode was researched and written by Julia Bricklin. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating

and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcasts on Facebook, Instagram, Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada Si vous faites vos achats tout en travaillant, en mangeant ou même en écoutant ce balado, alors vous connaissez et aimez l'excitation du magasinage. Mais avez-vous ce frisson d'obtenir le meilleur deal? Les membres de Rakuten, eux, oui. Ils magasinent les marques qu'ils aiment et font d'importantes économies, en plus des remises en argent. Et vous pouvez aussi commencer à gagner des remises en argent dans vos magasins préférés, comme Old Navy, Best Buy et Expedia, et même cumuler les ventes et les remises en argent. Et vous pouvez aussi commencer à gagner des remises en argent dans vos magasins préférés comme Old Navy,

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