BIG NOSE GEORGE
On a recent drive across the country I stumbled upon a the Carbon County Museum of Carbon County, Wyoming. Aside from a native american statue depicting how you can catch a bald eagle by hand the Big Nose George display definitely takes the cake…
Big Nose George was a bad man. He terrorized the wild west, robbed stagecoaches and trains with the James brothers, and eventually killed two lawmen which resulted in his lynching by an angry mob.
One of the doctors who did his autopsy decided to take his brain so he could test a theory about what causes people to commit violent crimes. See this doctor, who coincidentally had been a passenger on one of the trains Big George robbed, had a wife who had become criminally insane after being thrown from a horse and suffering head trauma. Having followed Big Nose George ’s career and having known about his similar head trauma from a horse, he thought there might be some connection to wrinkles in the brain causing people to become criminally insane.
The other doctor, John Eugene Osborne, had a separate agenda. After the autopsy he put George in a barrel and hid him away. He later skinned George and had him made into a wallet, a medicine bag and a pair of shoes. The shoes he wore to political rallies and his inauguration as Wyoming’s governor in 1893. In the wild west you really had to make a strong statement about being tough on crime to make it as a politician.
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