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Doc Holliday: Biographical Information
Shortly after graduating from the Pennsylvania College of
Dental Surgery and establishing a successful Atlanta dental practice,
the well-educated John Henry Holliday, D.D.S. discovered that he was
suffering from a slowly advancing case of pulmonary tuberculosis, the
same disease that had killed his mother when he was fifteen years old.
On the advice of his family physician, who was also his uncle, he
left his genteel Georgia home in 1873 (at the age of 22) and
attempted to establish a dental career in the West, where the family
hoped that the dry climate might prolong his life. But his Texas
dental practice flagged (partly due to his illness and partly due to
his increasing involvement in Dallas night life), and he soon found
himself giving up dentistry for the life of a roving professional
gambler. At various times, he practiced dentistry along with gambling.
Doc apparently used his dental practice as something of a cover at
times, but he also took pride in his work (he was, by all accounts, a
good dentist). His livelihood, however, was mostly derived from his
skill at the card table, which was substantial. He dealt faro and
Spanish monte and played poker. His keen intelligence and particular
skill in mathematics stood him in good stead, as he could quickly
calculate percentages and count cards. He didn't often need to cheat
during a card game, although he was not entirely honest in his faro
dealing. Almost no actual faro dealers of the time were entirely
honest—and Doc owned a fine pair of card-trimming shears as well as
other implements of the trade. He moved around a lot, due to the
nature of his gambling pursuits, and he became involved in a number
of armed confrontations, although he is undoubtedly most famous for
the part he played in the shootout near the OK Corral with the Earp
brothers in Tombstone, Arizona in 1881.
Doc was tall (just slightly over 5 feet 11 inches) but sickly,
with a persistent TB cough, and not much good in an un-armed physical
encounter, so, for protection, he usually carried a knife and at
least one pistol, usually in a shoulder holster, sometimes with an
additional gun on his hip. It is perhaps not surprising that when Doc
was brought up on gaming charges there was usually an accompanying
charge of carrying a deadly weapon. Doc may not have been a
gunslinger in the classic Hollywood sense, but he had to be skilled
at using weapons, or he would not have survived. Western lawman Wyatt
Earp once described him as the “nerviest,”
“speediest” and “deadliest” man with a gun he had
ever seen, although, in terms of his documented activities, he
appears to have drawn said gun relatively seldom (considering his
formidable reputation) and not always with impressive results.
Doc’s less impressive encounters seem to have been fueled by
whiskey. There were, nevertheless, several occasions upon which Wyatt
would have seen him draw and/or fire his pistol in a non-inebriated
state, sometimes with few or no other witnesses around. Given this
fact, it seems reasonable to take Wyatt’s word for it,
especially since it is not terribly likely that Wyatt, fond of Doc as
he was, would have fabricated such high praise. It is also, once
again, reasonable to consider that Doc, a physically frail, but quite
successful, gambler, whom Wyatt also described as “a caustic
wit,” would have needed to be able to defend himself with speed
and assurance.
To do him justice, self-defense does seem to be the most
frequent reason Doc ever drew his knife or pistol. Court records and
other accounts tend to corroborate claims that he didn’t look
for trouble but defended himself forcefully when he had to. Even
lawman Bat Masterson, who, when all was said and done, did not
particularly like Doc, and who described him as having a "mean
disposition," proclaimed that when he got into trouble he was
usually in the right more often than in the wrong:
Holliday seemed to be absolutely unable to keep out of trouble
for any great length of time. He would no sooner be out of one scrape
before he was in another, and the strange part of it is he was more
often in the right than in the wrong, which has rarely ever been the
case with a man who is continually getting himself into trouble.
—Bat Masterson, from
Gunfighters of the Western Frontier, 1907
Notably, Masterson never emphasized Doc's illness in his
largely negative portrait, merely referring to him somewhat
dismissively as "physically...a weakling." Wyatt Earp, on
the other hand, stressed the fact that Doc was ill, thus putting a
more positive spin on his physical endurance and mental fortitude,
highlighting his bravery in spite of being "nearly dead with
consumption." He also called him "a loyal friend and good
company." Virgil Earp described Doc as “gentlemanly,”
“a good dentist” and “a friendly man,” who
nevertheless had something “very peculiar” about him, which
kept him from making very many friends. Virgil's wife Allie, on the
other hand, apparently simply did not like Doc, calling him "cold
and disagreeable," and he may indeed have appeared aloof to her.
Usually, though, it was Doc's wit and his propensity for derision,
along with his deadly willingness to back up most of what he said,
that garnered him more enemies than friends. Bat Masterson said he
was "given to quarreling," but it is very likely that
frequent disputes were merely part of his life as a gambler. And, his
circle of friends and friendly acquaintances actually did extend
beyond the Earp family, although the circle was somewhat limited and
tenuous.
Many have called him a “cold-blooded killer,” and it
is true that he would not hesitate to kill if he was threatened.
However, biographers Ben Traywick and Karen Holliday Tanner have both
shown that, overall, he did not kill as many men as some have
previously claimed. The only documented killings by Doc Holliday
were of the McLaury brothers, although he shot at least three others
and was probably responsible for the deaths of still others while a
member of the Earp posse. Most, if not all, of his documented violent
acts were arguably in self-defense. Tombstone historian Ben Traywick
says Doc was not a cold-blooded murderer but merely “a
hot-tempered Southerner who stood aside for no man.” On the
other hand, writer Jeff Morey points out that Doc could also be quite
composed under pressure. He certainly appears to have behaved in a
cool-headed manner during his most well-documented confrontation at
the OK Corral.
Doc was
partly committed to the genteel southern notion of “honor,”
and he had a temper to go along with it, but the key to the mix was
probably his illness, which sometimes made him a target, and which
produced a rather strangely manifested survival instinct. As many
have noted before, Doc was aware that he did not have long to live,
and this awareness probably contributed to his tendency to manifest
profound indifference in certain dangerous situations. His obituary
in the Leadville Carbonate Chronicle referred to his reputation as
"one of the most fearless men on the frontier."
Many descriptions of Doc are on record by journalists of the
time (mostly from the early 1880’s) with at least some interest
in accuracy, all of which describe him as a tall, slender, elegant
gentleman and a fine dresser (he usually wore a black tailored suit
with a cravat and a diamond stickpin). He had blue-gray eyes, dark blonde hair with a
sandy moustache, and he was cultured and witty. One journalist from
the Denver Republican on May 22, 1882 noted that the first
thing one noticed about Doc upon meeting him was "his soft voice and
modest manner." Doc’s companion
Kate (Harony, Fisher) Elder also described him as neat, modest and
gentlemanly and noted that he always ensured that she was as well
dressed as he was. It was Doc’s refined ways, as a matter of
fact, that drew Kate, the "fallen" daughter of a
respectable European family, to him in the first place.
Well-mannered and usually soft-spoken, Doc was also
highly literate and a good conversationalist. He kept up on current
events by reading newspapers, and he was classically educated,
familiar with Latin, Greek and French, as well as various English
literary works, and he could play the piano quite well. In addition
to his own extensive formal vocabulary and knowledge, however, he
used, and apparently enjoyed, the slang of the South and West. He
also used, and apparently enjoyed, profanity. He was fond of irony
and of irreverent rejoinders and, depending upon the situation, was
likely to use either understatement or exaggeration, especially in
the service of a desired immediate effect on his listener. The
admixture of these elements produced a unique verbal style. The
Denver Republican once quoted one of his attorneys, Colonel Deweese,
who stated that Doc would “just as lief kill a man as not,”
adding: “All he looked out for usually was to have the law on
his side.” Deweese further added: “I said to him one day,
‘Doctor, don’t your conscience ever trouble you?’
‘No,’ he replied, with that peculiar cough of his, ‘I
coughed that up with my lungs long ago.’” But Doc also
said, apparently in a more serious mood, and interested in setting
the record straight: “I've had credit for more killings than I
ever dreamt of.”
Doc drank a good deal, partly in an attempt to relieve the
symptoms of his illness, and it did not always improve his ability to
get along with others. But he was not actually chemically dependent
until the last few years of his life (1883-1887). At that point, his
advancing illness, compounded by several bouts with pneumonia,
contributed to dramatic weight loss as well as to growing alcoholism
and laudanum dependency. All of this also took a toll on his
prosperity, and he found himself in narrowed financial straits. He
even had to pawn most of his jewelry (he did not pawn his stickpin,
which had been a going-away present from his uncle and which he
valued as a family gift and marker of his identity). It was a vicious
circle: as he grew more wasted by disease, he grew more dependent
upon alcohol and, later, laudanum, to relieve his symptoms, which, in
turn, exacerbated his illness. He also grew more withdrawn. Toward
the end, he was enervated and frequently intoxicated, a skeletal
shadow of his former self. But Doc, for a very long time, took pride
in being able to hold his liquor and to comport himself as a
gentleman. And Kate, who had doubtless seen her fair share of
alcoholics, emphatically denied he was a drunk.
Doc Holliday finally lost his grueling battle with tuberculosis on
November 8, 1887 at the Glenwood Hotel in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
One of the last people, besides Kate, to see him alive was the
bellboy at the hotel, who recalled that the dying Doc was a generous tipper.
He is buried in the Linwood Cemetery in Glenwood Springs,
although the exact location of his grave is unknown.
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