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Pearl Heart: ‘The Girl Bandit’ By Marshall Trimble
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or most of her life, Pearl Hart lived in dismal obscurity. She got her chance for 15 minutes of fame following a bungled stagecoach robbery on May 29,
1899. An adoring eastern press dubbed her the “Girl Bandit” and chastised the callused Arizona judicial system for putting such a pretty young lady behind bars in the notorious Yuma Territorial Prison. Not much is known about her early years. She was born Pearl Taylor of French descent in Lindsay, Ontario, Canada. It was said she came from a respectable, well-to-do family, but things started going downhill at age 17 when she married a gambler named Freddie Hart. (Not the country singer.) They traveled to Chicago in 1893 where Fred took a job as a carnival barker at the Chicago Exposition, and she worked at odd jobs. At the exposition, she got a chance to see Annie Oakley perform and became enthralled at the Wild West show, something that likely inspired her to dump her worthless husband and head west. In Trinidad, Colorado, she took a job as a saloon singer but had to return to her family when she learned she was expecting a baby. She gave birth to a son, left him with her family and headed for Phoenix but soon found that life in the West wasn’t as glamorous as those Wild West shows she’d seen at the exposition. Sometime in 1895, her shiftless husband Fred showed up in Phoenix begging her to take him back. For a time, things were good between them until they began living it up in the saloons along Washington Street. It was there Pearl got into drugs. A second child, a girl, was born and their domestic problems resumed. Fred became bored with domestic life. An argument between the two got out of hand and he beat her up, then left town. One version says he joined Teddy
Pearl Hart, dressed in male attire, robbed a stagecoach in 1899. She was ultimately arrested, and after being found not guilty by an all-male jury, she was tried and sentenced for stealing a pistol. (Submitted photos)
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and went to Cuba, but his name doesn’t show up on the roster. Pearl returned to her family, left the baby with her mother and headed west again. Pearl was 5 feet, 2 inches tall; weighed less than 100 pounds; was reasonably intelligent and was considered quite attractive. She took up residence in various Arizona towns like Globe, Phoenix, Tucson and Tombstone, sometimes working as a prostitute and others as a waitress or cook. She was working in a café in Mammoth when she
took up with a miner named Joe Boot. Boot was a combination of miner, gambler and con man. A letter came from home saying her mother was ill and needed money. Boot decided the couple could solve their money problems by robbing a stagecoach. On the evening of May 29, 1899, Pearl, dressed in male attire and her hair pulled up under her hat, and Boot held up the stage near Kane Springs on the road from Florence to Globe. Their take was $431 and some change. She also pilfered stage driver Henry Bacon’s Colt .45. She generously gave the three passengers and NORTHVALLEYMAGAZINE.COM DECEMBER 2021 | JANUARY 2022
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