"Such Men Must Be Hung": The Notorious "Irish Tom" Carberry
[W]e think it high time that customers such as Carberry should be made to select some other place besides the corner of Main and Cedar streets to carry on their pistol practice. This makes the second man this fellow bags near that corner within a year. He was arrested and is now in jail. 1
Thomas A. Carberry (?-1869), alias “Irish Tom”, had killed again, and the editor of the Reese River Reveille was not amused. In his opinion, Austin, Nevada – a mining boomtown – was being ruined by the public adoration for gunfighters who had no regard for human life2.
Irish Tom had emigrated to the United States from Cork, Ireland in 1849. He initially lived in California – between 1859 and 1862, specifically in Visalia. Around 1862 or 1863, he moved to Aurora, Nevada, a mining boomtown. This was the beginning of his career as a “rough”3. This article sketches some of the more interesting aspects of his life.
A rough in Aurora
An “Irish Tom” spent a night in jail in Salt Lake City in November, 18634. However, the real excitement would begin in Aurora.
Around this time, the infamous “Daly Gang” ruled the roost in that town. Their activities ranged from political corruption and thieving to murder. They had also participated in rivalries between competing mining companies, acting as hired guns. Eventually, they went too far: the ringleaders Daly, “Three Fingered” McDowell, Buckley and Masterson brutally murdered a man called William Johnson on the street. This was more than the citizens of Aurora could endure, and they formed a Vigilance Committee to round up Daly’s gang. Those arrested were the gang’s ringleaders as well as Samuel Vance, Irish Tom and assorted other ruffians.
There was no mercy to be had: The four ringleaders were unceremoniously hanged by the vigilantes in February, 18645. Some of them were stoic, others enraged. Buckley allegedly gave the following advice to a young man:
On his way to the gallows Buckley met a young man of his acquaintance; addressing him he said— “Will, will you take a dying man’s advice? I realize that my time is but of a few moments’ duration; I know I shall die today, and therefore I must not be false to my feelings. Young man, never enter a dance house; never drink liquor, and keep out of bad company; had I taken this advice, I should not be on my way to the gallows now. Oh! that I had another life to live!”6
Incredibly, both Vance and Irish Tom escaped hanging, apparently because they were not directly involved with the murder. The Vigilance Committee still ran them out of the town, and Irish Tom had to find a new place to stay.
This did not go without difficulty. Irish Tom had stopped in a town called Owensville for rest, but his reputation preceded him; the citizens in that town absolutely refused to have any “roughs” in town7, nor would they allow any cutting or shooting; Tom had to leave within two hours. The paper reports that
This was too much for Tom; he couldn’t see the joke.
After some prominent citizens intervened, he was allowed to stay two days, but no more than that.
Later in the summer of 1864, Irish Tom decided to become politically active. He worked – perhaps as a hired gun – for the Democratic Party, opposing the Republicans. A local newspaper editor opined that the Democrats had attempted to gain victory by recruiting a band of ruffians and brawlers such as Irish Tom to their cause8. Tom and his friend Pendergast did not take kindly to this; they assaulted the editor9. This brought an end to the political career of Irish Tom.
After this, Tom apparently lay low for some time, as little trace of him surfaced in the newspapers. A man named Corcord recalled later that he met Irish Tom in a mine between Aurora and Bodie in 1866. According to that report, Tom never went into town – one assumes due to his notoriety. Tom had entertained him with the story of how he escaped hanging in Aurora by just one vote cast in the Vigilance Committee10.
Killing an old friend
By 1867, Irish Tom had resurfaced in Austin, Nevada, another mining boomtown. Also present was his old friend Vance, with whom he had narrowly avoided the death penalty in Aurora.
On August 2, 1867, Tom was sitting in a bar when a very drunken and angry Vance asked people to take a drink with him. Others apparently acquiesced, but Irish Tom said he’d had enough, and attempted to leave the bar. Vance pulled out a derringer and said that Tom had to drink with him, or else Vance would shoot him. Tom, demonstrating remarkable cool-headedness, contemptuously queried “how big a shot” Vance would give him, at which point Vance fired the gun.
Irish Tom pulled out his own revolver and fired. Just at that time, Officer Marshall attempted to restrain Vance, who fell to one knee; Tom fired again, mortally wounding Vance 1112. Tom was not convicted, for it was a clear case of self defence.
Carberry was not out of trouble, though. The next morning he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, which was an ordinance violation, and fined for it12. The hardheaded gunfighter seemingly could not stay out of hot water: less than a month later, on August 29, he was charged with assault with intent to murder as well as with displaying a weapon13. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty5.
The editor of the Reese River Reveille was not pleased by what was happening. He complained that the town’s good reputation was endangered by violent crime; it might become infamous for its criminality like Aurora11. Indeed, the rough element in the town “habitually carries weapons in defiance of the law”, causing “criminal mischief”, firing their weapons at random with the “indifference of monkeys”14. It is safe to say that the citizens of Austin were not particularly happy about the goings-on at Main and Cedar streets, which was quickly becoming a troublesome spot with its saloons and shootings.
Duelling Ridgely
Irish Tom stayed out of trouble for a while. However, in September 1868, he found trouble again. A man called Charles Ridgely, evidently a gunfighter friend of Vance’s5, had sworn to kill Irish Tom1516, apparently for what he did to Vance.
Ridgely and Tom quarreled on September 4. Furious words were exchanged between the men, and apparently Ridgely had threatened to kill Tom. Tom flagged down a police officer and told him to arrest Ridgely for threatening his life. The officer searched Ridgely for weapons but didn’t arrest him. He instead instructed that the men should retire for the evening, which they did.
The following morning, Irish Tom and Ridgely encountered each other again at the corner of Main and Cedar streets. Carberry, furious at having been threatened, called Ridgely up, displayed a revolver and cocked it. Carberry said he was ready to fight Ridgely right there or anywhere else. Ridgely was not armed, so Tom told Ridgely to go arm himself. Ridgely did. He returned, gun in hand, to where he’d left Irish Tom. The men fired simultaneously, but both missed; Ridgely kept walking forwards, and both fired again. Ridgely missed, but Carberry shot him in the chest. Ridgely kept walking forward for a few more steps, and then collapsed to the ground, dead1.
Reese River Reveille reprinted a note from Gold Hill News17 denouncing Carberry on September 18:
The Grand Jury of Lander County last week found a true bill of indictment for murder in the first degree against Thomas Carbery[sic]. Carbery is a very bad man, having murdered one or two men before. He murdered one man in Idaho because he resisted him when Carbery robbed him. Such men must be hung, and society got rid of their evil presence.
Friends of Carberry replied a few days later, demanding proof that Tom had even been in Idaho18. As far as I can tell, Irish Tom never did kill a man in that state.
Carberry was arrested for shooting Ridgely. However, luck was again on his side as he was acquitted on the basis of self defence5. Old West juries could be relatively sympathetic to mutually agreed upon duels; there was no question that Ridgely and Carberry had agreed to the deadly gunfight and fired at the same time. Witnesses stated that Ridgely had boasted of his intention to kill Carberry, which was presumably helpful for the self defence claim.
The trial was continued several times to locate witnesses1516. Once the trial was done, Carberry decided he had had enough of Austin and left for the nearby White Pine.
Incidentally, no known photograph of Irish Tom survives. However, there is a description from The Woman in Battle, an 1876 book by Loreta Janeta Velazquez – not an entirely reliable source, but the best we have. She claims to have seen Irish Tom around this time in a hotel in Austin. A maid had surreptitiously shown her two pairs of pistols and two large knives she said belonged to a noted desperado who had killed two men. Irish Tom arrived, and was apparently not annoyed at having his belongings looked through. He was tall and handsome, with nothing of the ruffian in his appearance. Velazquez noted that Tom was known to take insults without retaliation in some cases, but occasionally reacted violently. She figured Tom couldn’t be such a bad man, since he was a gentleman with the ladies.
Lawman in White Pine and death
Turning over a new leaf in his career, Irish Tom became a police officer in White Pine. This was not unusual for frontier towns: the same man could be an outlaw at one time, a gambler the next moment, and an officer of the law subsequently.
He never got the chance to distinguish himself as a lawman, because Irish Tom died in late September 186919, with his boots off – a result of protracted illness. The papers noted that he had attempted to avoid trouble of late, and that he had many friends in the region.
As with many other gunfighters, Irish Tom’s legend lived on. As late as 1873, imaginary exploits were being attributed to him in the papers; for example, the Southern Watchman published on November 26, 1873 “The Judge’s Story”, in which a lawyer complains that his client got a sentence for killing a man, even though it was self defence. He said the jury was prejudiced. When asked what would have prejudiced the jury, the lawyer said: why, my client was Irish Tom, and he had already killed three men in Austin!
After 1864, most of the trouble he got in seems to have been related to his old life in the Daly gang. Vance was in it; Carberry attempted to leave the bar rather than fight, but Vance would not leave the issue alone and shot at him. Ridgely had been threatening to kill Tom evidently to avenge Vance, and when police protection failed, Irish Tom resolved to sort the issue himself. It appears that Tom’s participation in the Daly gang kept causing him grief for years after Daly was dead.
Irish Tom’s body count kept climbing after his death, as per usual for gunfighters. He was an interesting man with many chances to die with his boots on. He participated in one of the rare genuine arranged duels of the Wild West, of the kind Hollywood writers dream of. To echo one obituary: whatever his faults might have been, let them be buried with him.
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McInnes, Ritchie-McInnes: “Nevada Gunsmoke: Frontier Fighters of the Boom Years, 1850-1890”, 2022, McFarland. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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The Esmeralda Star, February 13, 1864 ↩
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Esmeralda Daily Union, September 9, 1864. ↩
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Reminisces of Life in Territorial Nevada, California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1928. ↩