John Henry "Doc" Holliday
1851-1887

The epitome of the "gentleman" gambler & gunfighter, the image of Doc Holliday will always evoke the legends of the gunfighters. Born in 1851 in Griffin, Georgia, his family's fortune collapsed along with the confederate dollar after the Civil War. Apparently studying dentistry as an apprentice, He opened a Dental business in Atlanta, but was advised to move out west after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. "Doc" practiced gambling much more often than dentistry, as he travelled to frontier boomtowns at their peak; Dallas, Dodge City, Denver, Cheyenne, Pueblo, Tuscon and Tombstone, where he joined his friend Wyatt Earp in the now legendary gunfight at O.K. Corral. As Doc travelled from town to town he had a penchant for finding trouble.

Holliday spent many years with a female companion, a prostitute known as "Big Nosed" Kate, who later implicated Doc in a murder and stagecoach robbery near Tombstone. Doc was also accused of the murder and scalping of Johnny Ringo, although several other men were suspected as well. As with most of his gunfights, Doc managed to win a legal acquittal. It was not a gun, but tuberculosis that finally claimed the life of Doc Holliday. As he lay peacefully on his deathbed in a Colorado health resort in 1887, he reflected on the irony of such an anticlimactic ending, and uttered his last words, "This is funny."

Gunfighter Statistics:
Number of Gunfights: 8
Number of Killings: 2
Number of Possible or Assisted Killings: 2

Quote:
"Forsight is a virtue, they say — so I carried my .44 and a rifle in case some of my many admirers were unable to resist the desire to take a large chunk of my hair for a tender memento." (testimony during a court appearance in 1881)