Rube Burrow, king of outlaws, and his band of train robbers

L. C. Brock, alias Joe Jackson, was placed in the penitentiary at Jackson, Miss., for safe keeping, on the twenty-first day of July, pending his appearance for trial at the November Term of the Federal Court. He had elected to plead guilty, and receive a sentence of life imprisonment for the offense of robbing the United States mail at Buckatunna, Miss., September 25, 1889, rather than be taken to Duck Hill, because the penalty of death by hanging he knew would be his fate. Again, he felt that the outraged friends of Chester Hughes, the heroic passenger who had, in assisting Conductor Wilkinson on that fateful night, been shot down in cold blood, would probably mob him if taken there for trial, and fearless and bold as he was, his heart quaked within him whenever the alternative of being taken to Duck Hill was presented to him. Again and again he had been told by the officials of the Southern Express Company that whenever he repented of the conclusion he had made to plead guilty to the Buckatunna robbery and testify against Smith, that the confession he had made could be withdrawn, and he could elect a trial for the murder at Duck Hill.

Meantime Rube Smith, unaware that Brock had made a confession, had notified the officials of the Express Company that he would turn state’s evidence against Brock, provided a nolle pros. could be entered in his case in the Federal Court. Rube Smith’s proposition was, however, rejected, but Brock was told of Smith’s offer to testify against him, and thus he found the coils tightening, day by day, about him. On August 22d Brock, under the assumed name of Winslow, the name he at first gave when captured, wrote the following letter to his uncle, at Pleasant Hill, La.

Mr. Harrell called on his nephew, Brock, about September 1st, succeeding the date of his letter, and for the first time learned that his nephew was charged with murder and train robbery. He had no idea who J. B. Winslow was until he met his nephew face to face, within the walls of the state-prison. The scene was an affecting one. The conversation between the two occurred in the presence of Sergeant Montgomery, of the prison. Brock made no effort to secure counsel, or to summon any witnesses, but merely expressed a desire to have his uncle sell his land, a tract of two hundred acres owned by him in Coffee County, Ala., and turn the proceeds over to his mother.

On the 16th of October, by appointment, the U. S. District Attorney, A. M. Lea, Col. J. H. Neville, Special Counsel employed by the Government to assist in the trial, and the express officials, who were familiar with the facts, all met at Jackson, Miss., to arrange for the approaching trial of L. C. Brock and Rube Smith. All of these gentlemen called in company upon Brock, in his cell at the penitentiary, and District Attorney Lea told Brock if he had any witnesses he desired summoned he would have subpœnas issued, and that he was free to choose as to whether he would plead guilty or employ counsel. Brock then and there reiterated his determination to plead guilty, so frequently made prior to that time to the author, and said he had no money, and did not intend to employ any counsel. He said he was willing to testify against Smith, but remarked:

“What will people think of me for doing that—see how the world looks upon Bob Ford?”

When told that all fair-minded and Christian people would applaud him for standing on the side of honesty and truth, he added:

“Well, the Bible does not give Judas Iscariot a very fair name.”

And so it was easily discovered that the ill-fated criminal was battling against opposing ideas. On the one hand he was confronted with the certainty of conviction and an ignominious death at the hands of the hangman, on the other life imprisonment, with the added alternative of standing as a witness against his copartner in crime and assisting to fasten guilt upon him. He had often said:

“I prefer death to imprisonment for life, for what is life without liberty.”

On Saturday, the 8th of November, two days before his suicide, he said to a fellow prisoner, whose hat was worn and old:

“You need a new hat; you may have mine Monday.”

Brock had evidently made up his mind, as indicated by these remarks, to take his own life. About nine o’clock on the morning of November 10, 1890, the day set for his trial, Detective Thomas Jackson and United States Marshal Mathews went to the penitentiary building to bring the prisoner to the Federal Court, as he had been notified would be done. Sergeant Montgomery sent the officer of the prison charged with the special surveillance of Brock to bring him into his office, where the detective and marshal awaited him. At night he was confined in one of the cells on the ground floor of the prison, but was permitted to occupy during the day one of the guard rooms situated on the third floor of the building. The prisoner was in this room when the keeper went after him to bring him to the sergeant’s office. Just as the keeper was in the act of unlocking the door, Brock walked to the iron barred window of the room, and beckoning to a fellow convict standing in the yard of the prison, threw out of the window the following note:

The officer, unlocking the room door, announced that he had come to take him to the sergeant’s office, where the marshal and Detective Jackson were in waiting to take him to the courtroom. “All right,” said Brock, and immediately followed the officer out.

The penitentiary cells are four deep, one above the other, around a large corridor, eighty feet long, making an open court sixty feet deep. When the prisoner reached the head of the stair-way, in front of the door of his room, instead of descending with the officer he turned down the hall-way and commenced to ascend the stair-way leading to the fourth floor. At the same time he drew a murderous looking knife, which he had secured and secreted in some unaccountable manner, and bade the guard stand back or he would cut him. Sergeant Montgomery was at once notified of the unusual conduct of the prisoner, and, in company with Detective Jackson and Marshal Mathews, immediately repaired to the rotunda of the court and inquired of the prisoner what he meant by such conduct. Brock was then calmly walking to and fro along the floor of the fourth story brandishing his knife, and at once declared his intention to jump to the ground beneath and kill himself. Meantime the note thrown from the window had been handed to the officers of the prison, and Brock was asked to name the party to whom he had given letters, asking that witnesses be summoned. This he refused to do, but stated that the Southern Express Company intended to “railroad” him either to the gallows or to life imprisonment without giving him even the shadow of a showing, whereupon Marshal Mathews assured him that he should not go to trial without counsel, and further stated that he would see that all the witnesses he desired should be summoned.

Brock refused to come down, and, despite the assurances and entreaties of the officers, continued to repeat his intention to take the fatal leap. The stern and determined expression upon the desperate man’s face, his cool and collected demeanor, convinced all who saw and heard him that an awful tragedy would soon be enacted.

At this juncture the prisoner placed a table near the balcony railing, mounted it, declared he was alone and friendless in the world, and preferred death to life imprisonment. He asked that his uncle, Mr. Harrell—then at Jackson, although the prisoner did not know it—be telegraphed the information of his death, and that his body be sent to his mother.

Sergeant Montgomery, meantime, had conceived the idea of climbing the latticed walls of the court, and while the other officers diverted his attention, would reach the fourth story, directly under him, and overturn the table, and before the prisoner could regain his footing he would pinion him and prevent his suicide. Divesting himself of coat and hat, the Sergeant climbed as far as the third story, when he was prevailed upon not to risk his life in such a hazardous feat, as the prisoner would undoubtedly knife him before he could carry out his project. He then came down.

The officers vied with each other in appealing to the prisoner’s manhood, and entreating him to forego the fatal project. Finally Detective Jackson and Marshal Mathews noiselessly went up the stair-way until they stood on the landing just behind and about six feet from the prisoner, urging him all the while to put away his knife and come down stairs. Detective Jackson, approaching within three or four feet of the prisoner, said:

“Joe, you are not going to jump, are you?”

“Yes, I am,” replied the prisoner, and stepping from the table to the railing, he sprang head foremost into the awful space. Vaulting over and over in his rapid flight to the stone-covered corridor, sixty feet below, he fell, crushed and bleeding, with a sound that reverberated through the long tiers of cells, from which the gaping eyes of his fellow prisoners looked, in speechless horror, upon a tragedy so appalling as to make strong men shudder and turn pale. The unfortunate victim of his own desperation lingered for about one hour, unconscious, his body writhing in horrible contortions until death ensued. He was buried in the prison cemetery at Jackson at five o’clock on the evening of his death.

The author, having repeatedly visited Brock while confined at Jackson, takes pleasure in acquitting the officers of the State penitentiary of any maltreatment of the prisoner.

The prisoner made no attempt to secure witnesses; in fact, repeatedly stated he had none. The statement written and thrown from the window, is, therefore, not entitled to credit. A few minutes before his suicide he freely confessed to having received fair treatment at the hands of the prison officials.

The following lines were found on his person after death, indicating that the bold outlaw, in his hours of retrospection, had garnered the bitter fruitage of despair and remorse so aptly depicted: