Constable George Bravin
The Englishman Who Policed Tombstone
George Bravin may not be a household name like Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday, but he did serve as a lawman in Tombstone, Arizona, for the better part of three decades. Hell, he once even survived getting two of his toes shot off by an outlaw inside his own jail.
Bravin, unlike many of his contemporaries, was born across the pond in Devonshire, England, in March of 1860. Sadly, he lost his mother at a very early age, and by the time he was nine, he was forced to work various jobs to make ends meet. Tough childhood, to say the least.
It wasn’t until the age of 18 that George was able to make his way to the United States. He initially headed to Colorado, where he worked as a miner for a spell, before drifting south to Tombstone. Worth noting that this was in 1882, so Tombstone was still plenty wild. The gunfight at the OK Corral had taken place just a few months prior, so Bravin arrived right in the thick of it.
He spent the next several years working in the nearby mines until 1888, when he was nearly asphyxiated on the job. Around the same time, he married a 19-year-old local named Mary Ellen Butler, who was herself the daughter of a British immigrant. The pair would then go on to have ten children, the eldest of whom was still living as recently as 1992.
Following that mining incident, Bravin shifted gears. Ran a livery barn for a couple of years, started buying up mining claims as investments, and in 1891 was elected as county assessor. He also bought himself a saloon over on Allen Street called the Arcade.
His law enforcement career began in 1894 when he took a job as a deputy sheriff. By 1895, he was appointed U.S. Deputy Marshal, and by 1896, he became the very first elected constable of Pearce, Arizona. Not too shabby for a foreigner who had arrived with next to nothing.
It was while serving in Pearce that Bravin hired a young deputy named Burt Alvord. Although Alvord would eventually switch sides and start robbing trains, he actually had a pretty sterling reputation back in 1896.
Still, though, reputation or not, Alvord wouldn’t last long in the job. Bravin cut him loose after just a few months, at which point Burt moved on to Willcox. Little did either one of them know that they’d meet again in a few short years under entirely different circumstances.
You see, by 1900, Bravin had returned to Tombstone and taken employment as jailer at the Cochise County jail. And as luck would have it, his old deputy, Burt Alvord, had just been arrested for orchestrating a pair of train robberies along with a buddy of his by the name of Billy Stiles.
Stiles cut a deal with the law and turned snitch, but it was all a ruse. On April 8th, 1900, Stiles walked into the Tombstone jail with a hidden pistol, came face to face with Bravin, and demanded that he turn over the keys. When Bravin refused, Stiles shot him in the foot, taking off two of his toes. He then grabbed the keys and freed Alvord and several others.
Believe it or not, getting two toes shot off didn’t slow ole George down one bit. He went right back to work and continued serving as a lawman in Tombstone for nearly another decade. In June of 1908, he and another constable were involved in a wild gunfight with a man named Marcello Mendez, who had just shot a woman. The lawmen tracked Mendez to a house and found him hiding under a bed. As they crouched down to pull him out, Mendez opened fire. I guess Lady Luck was smiling, because Bravin and the other constable somehow came away unscathed, other than a few powder burns. Mendez wasn’t so lucky. By the time the smoke cleared, he had fresh bullet holes in both his heart and his noggin.
Bravin kept his badge until 1917, at which point he fell ill and had to be hospitalized in Douglas. Sadly, he never recovered, passing away at his daughter’s home on October 21st, 1918, at the age of 58. Legend has it that his funeral was one of the largest that Tombstone had ever seen. If you’d like to pay your respects, Bravin can be found resting at the Tombstone Cemetery (not Boot Hill).
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