Dear Weird US:
I just saw your show on the History Channel about a guy by the name of LeBlanc that was hung and his skin was made into some wallets. Your hosts said at the end of their story that they had never heard of anything like this happening before. I was raised in a small town in Wyoming called Rawlins; this is the home of the Wyoming State Prison. When I was growing up the museum there had a display with the skull of a man named Big Nose George. Along with the skull was a pair of shoes said to have been made for a Doctor from the skin of Big Nose George. You might check this out and get more information for another possible show. Might be worth a look. –Winferd J. Schram
This is not so much a story as a correction to one of yours. I believe you two guys cited Morristown, NJ's Leblanc as the only hanged American murderer to have his corpse skinned, tanned and turned into souveneirs, such as wallets. Well, even though New Jersey hung Leblanc in 1833, Wyoming strung up robber George Parrot about 40 years later, tanned his skin into shoes, and then parted out the other body parts in formaldehyde jars. The city of Rawlins, WY hung Parrot but to my understanding, the local historical society still has his shoes and perhaps other goodies.
–Mike Jamison
In life, George Manuse was known to one and all as Big Nose George Parrot. His prominent schnoz was what he was known for. But in death, it is not his nose, but his shoes that he is known for. And we’re not talking about the shoes he wore; we’re talking about the shoes he became!
Big Nose George was a criminal who ran with the James brothers in the days of the Wild West. In 1881, he and his friends decided to rob a train in Wyoming. Big Nose convinced them the best way to do it would be to wreck the tracks themselves, so that the train would be forced to stop and they could have their way with it. Unfortunately for them, a watchman caught them tampering with the tracks and alerted the authorities. When the authorities arrived, a gunfight ensued, and two lawmen ended up dead.
The members of the gang split up and headed for different states. The first one caught was Dutch Charley, out in Montana. When he was hauled back to Wyoming, he confessed to his crimes, hoping for leniency, but found none. He was hung instead. When they finally caught up with Big Nose George Parrot, he had not learned from his friend’s experience. He too confessed and was similarly shown no mercy for it. It seemed that he would experience the same fate as Dutch Charley, as he was also sentenced to hanging. But Big Nose had other plans. He had no intention of waiting around just to be killed. He attempted an escape, but was unsuccessful. He got into a fight with a guard during the escape attempt, beating the man soundly before being restrained. The local townsfolk heard of this and decided that they had had just about enough of Big Nose George Parrot. They grabbed him from the jail and strung him up on a telegraph pole.
Big Nose George was dead. But his story was far from over.
A doctor named J.E Osborne saw what happened to George and decided it was an opportunity for him to do some experimentation. He took George’s body and made a desk mask of him. He then sawed his skull in half to take a look at his brain. He found that there were no marked differences between George’s brain and a normal human one, despite George’s criminal behavior.
From here, it’s fair to say that Dr. Osborne went a little bit overboard. He had Big Nose George skinned, and sent his skin to a tannery in Denver with some odd instructions. He asked that they use the skin to make him a pair of shoes, including the dead man’s nipples. He soon received his shoes, but to his chagrin, they were nipple free. This didn’t stop him from wearing them often, even as he became prominent in local politics. Rumor has it that he even wore the shoes to his inauguration when he later was elected the governor of Wyoming.
Big Nose George’s skull didn’t suffer a very dignified fate, either. For years, it served as a doorstop in the office of Wyoming’s first female doctor.
Nowadays, the skin shoes and George’s skull can be seen in Rawlins, Wyoming, in the Carbon County Museum.
You can’t help but feel a little bit bad for Big Nose George. Sure, he was a cop killer who assaulted a man in an attempt to dodge the justice he deserved. But no matter how bad he was, nobody deserves to get walked all over like that.
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