When Fight Night Led to Mob Mayhem. By Hank Nuwer
Randolph and Shelby County served as home to many distinguished citizens in the 1890s.
However, rowdies also roamed the area. A custom on weekends in both counties for a time was called “Fight Night” in which local males squared off for the dubious honor of being called the toughest hombre around.
Shelbyville had its unfair share of rowdies. Charged with keeping the peace was Marshal Don C. Bruce.
Bruce was born in Henry County, Kentucky, on October 19, 1861.
He moved to Shelbyville and married. He ran for Shelby County sheriff on the Democrat ticket in 1890 and won.
Bruce hung out with friends of dubious character. He could wander into any saloon to find a man eager to stand a drink for a man with the badge.
He began to wink at any number of offenses. Shelbyville gained an unsavory reputation as a “wide-open town,” according to the Vincennes Commercial.
One of the persistent disturbers of the peace was Charles (Charlie) Hawkins. He lived outside the city In Marietta and was viewed as a menace by Shelbyville’s town fathers.
A drunken Hawkins challenged a reluctant John Chambers to a fight in a local saloon on August 22, 1891. Chambers refused and walked outside.
Bruce got between the two men to stop the squabble. Hawkins, enraged, shot the marshal in the chest.
Bruce pulled out his weapon, but it misfired. After he grabbed Hawkins, he collapsed. Another officer collared the shooter.
Just before midnight, a mob marched to the jail.
A jailer named Burke and a sleepy Sheriff McDougall offered token resistance. A mob member grabbed a set of keys and threw open the main cell.
When informed of the mob’s purpose, Hawkins begged.
“Give me time to pray,” he pleaded.
“Too late for that,” someone saif.
Hawkins then fought for his life, but a board flattened him.
The mob dragged Hawkins from jail and hauled him headfirst to a tree in the courthouse yard. The rope, tied by amateurs, failed to break his neck, and he strangled.
Whereupon, a local citizen approached the cadaver and pumped five bullets into the warm body.
Only then did Deputy Sheriff McDougall come to the courtyard. He agreed to the mob’s entreaties to leave the body untouched.
Friends of wounded Marshal Bruce approached his bed.
“Don, we fixed him,” one said. “He was strung up and shot.”
“Wish I could have helped,” Bruce said.
Coroner Clarence Bruce (a brother of the marshal) defied the catcallers and cut the rope.
The body was dressed and laid to rest. The aged parents of Hawkins, the mob members, and most of the town gawked at the cadaver.
“The grief of the mother was heart-rending,” wrote a reporter.
Papers as far away as the New York Times covered the “desperado’s” hanging.
None of the mob ever was charged. Sheriff McDougall claimed he couldn’t identify even one fellow citizen.
Bruce recovered. He resumed his duties and his visits to saloons.
By 1893, the marshal hit bottom. The Shelbyville City Council lost patience with the drunken buffoon. They preferred charges of dereliction of duty and public drunkenness.
Bruce begged for a second chance. The City Council obliged.
On February 26, 1893, Bruce burned dress goods his wife was creating and hit her. Darlene Bruce picked up her two children and ran two miles along a muddy road to get away.
City Council stripped Bruce pf his office.
He roomed with a local businessman named Kennedy who pulled off home burglaries. Authorities raided their home to find a cache of loot. Kennedy committed suicide by gunshot.
Charged as an accessory, Bruce was sentenced to a two-year prison stretch.
Indiana Governor Claude Matthews reduced his sentence, so Bruce could take care
of his dying mother.
A week before Bruce died, a newspaper story described Bruce in trouble with another man’s young wife.
Disgraced, spurned by his society relatives, and despised by his wife, on July 4, 1897, 37-year-old Bruce went to his sister’s house.
The ex-lawman found his brother-in-law’s .38 caliber revolver, sat on a bed and put a bullet through his brain.
Not all of our heritage was pretty.