Wild West History Association Review of According to Kate

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According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

As the reader of the journal knows, Mary Katherine Harony, a.k.a. Big Nose Kate, was the paramour of Doc Holliday. She figures in all the literature about Tombstone and the Earps. In the early books, especially, she lends herself to caricature. She is the perfect dancehall girl who is mostly known for going on what is frequently termed, “a monumental drunk,” and implicating Doc in an attempted stage robbery and murder. In short, she is a colorful subordinate character in the Tombstone saga. Author Chris Enss brings her to center stage in this first-book length biography.

Ms. Enss utilized a wide range of sources but primarily used Kate’s own recollections to put together his narrative. These include the Bork and Mazzanovich interviews as well as Kate’s handwritten notes compiled between 1935 and 1939. I was previously unaware of the last. Ms. Enss relates the story as Kate remembered it, inaccuracies, and all. The author rightly does not appoint herself as a corrector of historical errors. After all, what is interesting is Kate’s take on her past.

Devotees of the Tombstone story should find much in this book to interest them. Few pages pass without a new twist on an old story. For instance, to pluck on from the canon, when Doc saves Wyatt’s life in Dodge City, the leader of the rowdy cowboys is James Kenedy, the later killer of Dora Hand. Also, a new suspect in the killing of Johnny Ringo is brought forth. It is certainly one I have never heard before.

Needless to say, when one encounters nuggets of this variety an immediate flip-through to the endnotes follow. The notes in this book are specific and you will learn the source. You might quibble with the source, but it will be there. I learned from the notes that an Indiana newspaper, The Fort Wayne Sentinel, retold the story of Doc’s evisceration of Ed Bailey and Kate’s subsequent rescue of Holliday. This article appeared in November of 1896, so they probably got it from the San Francisco Examiner article of August 1896 by Wyatt Earp. It was interesting to see the story had a wider circulation that I previously thought. Incidentally, Kate ridiculed this legend.

This book contains many photographs. The ones of the principal characters are all familiar ones. There are some good pictures of the towns Kate and Doc lighted in as well as a map of Tombstone. The book reads well. Many times, I picked it up planning to read only ten pages but kept going. There have been many individual tales of outlaws, cowboys, and gamblers. Here now is one of the dancehall girl, and a famous one at that.

Garth Gould, Wild West History Association

To learn more about Kate Elder read According to Kate