Today in History: The Last Stage Coach Robbery

On this day (May 30) in 1899, Pearl Hart committed what may have been the last stagecoach robbery in the U.S. Pearl had been born to affluent parents who gave her the best education, but at 16 she ran off from her boarding school to elope. Unfortunately, her new husband was an abusive drunkard. They split and reconciled several times, having two children who were raised by Pearl’s mother. At the Chicago World Fair she saw Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and decided to become a cowboy. She left for the west, possibly with a man other than her husband. She had a variety of jobs, possibly including prostitution, but decided to rob a stagecoach to raise money when she learned her mother was ill and needed her. The crime earned $412 of which Pearl returned $1 to each passenger. A posse caught them eight days later and Peal became a media sensation due to the fact she was a female stagecoach robber.

On October 12th she escaped the room she was being confined in (they didn’t want to put a lady in a jail cell) by making a hole in a plaster wall. She was recaptured two weeks later. During her trial, Pearl pleaded with the jury to find her not guilty because she had needed the money to go to her mother’s side. The jury acquitted her (enraging the judge). Almost immediately thereafter, she and her partner were re-arrested for tampering with the mail. This time they were convicted. Boot, her partner, got thirty years, Pearl got five. She was the only woman in the prison and was given an oversized eight-by-ten foot cell with a small yard so she could entertain the numerous reporters who called upon her. She was pardoned in 1902. After getting out of jail, she worked for a time (under an alias) in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She died in either 1955 or 1960.