Tombstone Memories by Harry H. Bishop
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Tombstone Epitaph Newspaper Sept 27, 1934
Harry H. Bishop Played With Allie Behan in 1881
Bubbling over with recollections of childhood here between the years of 1880 and 1883, Harry Bishop of San Francisco spent last Friday night in Tombstone.
Mrs. Annie Bishop and her small son came here very shortly after the founding of the camp. She ran a boarding house on Fremont St. for a couple of years and then, with the beginning of the first big depression here, departed, expecting to return some day. But she never did and her son has been back but a couple of times since.
Mrs. Bishop says that there were 6,000 men working in Tombstone in 1881 at an average wage of $4 per day. "As many as $24,000 circulating each day made a town of Tombstone," says Mr. Bishop. He recalls vividly his school when M. M. Sherman was principal and Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. McFarland were his teachers. "We were a sort of bad bunch of kids," he says, "going armed to school without the knowledge of our parents and doing promiscuous shooting that often got us into trouble. I remember shooting the leg of the expressman's horse. The expressman was also the city marshal, Dave Nagle, who afterwards became known throughout the southwest for his shooting of a certain Terry in the performance of his duty as bodyguard to Judge Fielding.
"Another time a bunch of us were playing at a shaft near the school building and decided to see how fast we could make a bucket go down. We loaded it with rock and started it down and whoops! Up went the windlass, and then down into the shaft, wrecking all in its path. The owner found out who did it and came to school with a demand for $75 damages!"
The day after the Earp - Clanton battle, Harry Bishop was one of the boys who dug bullets from the wall to the Fly's photograph gallery. "No, I did not see the battle," he says, "and I guess not many did. Most folks were glad to be in another neighborhood about that time."
Mr. Bishop recalls the great fire of 1881 that wiped out several blocks on Allen street. He states that it started when a barrel of whiskey exploded in one of the many saloons, near a burning cigar lighter.
"Does the town look at all natural?" he was asked. "Yes except that there is more vegetation, as I remember it. In those early days, when water was brought in in carts for one cent a gallon, not much was used for irrigation. And not much for sprinkling the streets, either. On Fremont street, the dust lay inches thick."
Allie Behan, the son of Johnny Behan, sheriff, was a special friend of Harry Bishop and of the other boys as well, since he had $3 or $4 a day spending money from his father and was just as generous in sharing it with his friends as his father was in giving it to him. "Allie and I had an Indian pony between us," stated Harry.
"Several other things I recall," said Mr. Bishop, "on the night the city expected an attack from Geronimo when his camp fires could be seen in the valley and only the arrival of the soldiers from Fort Huachuca scattered the enemy and saved the town; the day when the beautiful Mrs. Ed Corrigan shot herself in the temple while I was taking her riding horse to the stable for her and the fact that Rev. McIntrye, the methodist minister, married the lovely daughter of a saloon keeper."
Mr. Bishop was accompanied to Tombstone by Frank Willard of San Francisco and Mr. and Mrs. L. Strasser of Oakland. The party was enroute to California after a trip to the Chicago fair.
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Tombstone Nugget Newspaper November 20, 1881
Attempted Suicide
Sunday Evening about half-past five o'clock, Mrs. T. H. Corrigan made a third attempt at suicide at her room on Allen Street, near Second. In an interview with her following facts were elicited; She attributes the act to despondency and a general feeling of discouragement. At the time and on the day mentioned she took a nickel-plated, 41-calibre self-acting Colt's revolver and deliberately placing it to her head, discharged it. Several persons hearing the report rushed into the room where they found her lying senseless. Dr. Matthews was immediately sent for, and on his arrival it was found that the bullet had entered the right side of the head just above the ear, passing beneath the skin toward the front of the face till striking the frontal bone above the right eye it crashed through glancing obliquely toward and coming out of the center of the forehead. It was afterward found imbedded in the wall above the bed. The wound is not necessarily fatal and the patient will in all probabilty recover but may lose the use of her right eye. The doctor yesterday afternoon removed several large pieces of bone from above her eye, and says that the only danger to the eye will be from shattered pieces of bone being driven into it...Tombstone Nugget...
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