This isn’t a very good quality image, but it has historic interest. First, it shows the different attitude toward criminals a century ago. It is also an example of the different attitude toward the display of dead bodies. On the positive side, it happens to be a good example of typical working-man clothing for the time period as well.

The picture shows a group of men holding up the bodies of Ben Kilpatrick and Ole “Frank” Holbeck, who had tried to rob the mail and express passenger train near Sanderson Texas on the 13th of March, 1912. They were killed by the Wells Fargo Express Messenger (Doug Trousdale), who struck one in the head with an ice pick while he was gathering up the $60,000 in loot. Taking the gun from the dead man, he waited patiently until the other robber, who had been in front holding the engine crew at gunpoint, came back to investigate why his partner was taking so long. Trousdale shot him as soon as he stuck his head in the baggage car.

The photo was taken by Norman E McLeod. There was a Norman E McLeod who was a photographer in Cleveland in the 1870s and 1880s, but this is a different one. This McLeod was born in Georgia about 1855. The earliest mention of his photographic activities I found was in the late 1880s when he opened ‘Happy Hollow’ in Hot Springs Arkansas, a comical souvenir photograph gallery that turned into tourist park that:

Makes specialty of photos in the act of hunting, fishing, Indian fighting, or riding broncos, donkeys, steers, and buffaloes, in picturesque scenery. Everything furnished free. Menagerie. Always open, with music. Donkeys, ponies and rigs for hire cheap. Vaudeville Theater open in season.

According to one source McLeod sold his interest in ‘Happy Hollow’ to Dave Anselberg in 1908, but in the 1910 census we find him still listed as a photographer, though he was also running a boarding house. His last listing in the Hot Springs directories was for the 1912-13 issue, but that information was probably gathered late in 1911 — as this picture shows he was in Texas in the Spring of 1912.