Doc Holliday’s Woman, Big Nose Kate, and the Untold Story of the West’s Most Misunderstood Lady

This is Our American Stories, and our next story comes to us from a man who’s simply known as The History Guy. His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages over on YouTube. The History Guy has also heard here in Our American Stories. Mary Katherine Horny, also known as Big Nose Kate, was more than just a beautiful woman who was associated with one of the most dangerous men in the Wild West. He was more than just Doc Holliday’s on-and-off girlfriend turned wife. Here’s The History Guy with the story a Big Nose Kate.

Virgil Morgan and Wyatt Erp and Doc Holiday walked into history on October 26, 1881, when they exchanged gunfire with a group of outlaws in the town of Tombstone in The Arizona Territory. What happened there is fairly well known, but much less well known was the story of the woman who briefly accompanied Doc Holiday at his time there in Tombstone, and who may have saved his life earlier in his career. Without her, Wyat Erp and Doc Holiday may not have walked Sideby’s hide into the most famous gunfight in the history of The Wild West. Mary Catherine Horny, better known as Big Nose Kate, was another larger-than-life, colorful character of The Wild West, and hers as a story that deserves to be remembered. Some historians say Kate was born in Hungary, Slovakia, in November 1849. Others claim the year was 1850. Whatever the truth, Kate’s parents died when she was a teenager at 14 or 15, and left her and her siblings without parents in Iowa. Unhappy with her situation, she ran away from the foster home that took her in and stowed away on a riverboat that was traveling down the Mississippi. In later memoirs, Keith claims that she was discovered by the riverboat captain on this trip was taken under his wing. She began to use his last name Kate Fisher, and enrolled in a school at a convent in Saint Louis. She claims that in Saint Louis she married a man named Silas Melvin and had a child with him, but both he and the child died of an illness, but again, the historical record is unable to prove that claim. But it also appears to be in Saint Louis where she first began working as a prostitute. It was there, some historians claim, that Kate first met a man named John Henry Holiday, who go on to fame in the West with the moniker Doc Holiday. Holiday had recently graduated from a dental school in Pennsylvania, but could not yet get a license to practice because he was too young—not yet 21 years of age. Holiday was in Saint Louis because a friend, a Jimison Fuchs Junior, offered Holiday a job in his practice in the interim. Fuchs’s office was only a few blocks away from where Kate was plying her trade. Holiday, with his Georgia drawl and legendary manners, was probably quite memorable to Kate among the other men she entertained. He returned to Georgia in 1872 to open his own dental practice, leaving her behind plying her trade. After this, historians believe Kate was working as a prostitute in Dodge City, Kansas. We know Kate changed locations because there is documentation showing she was fined in Dodge City for being a sporting woman, which was what officials called prostitution. At the time, she was working at a brothel owned by Nellie Erp, the wife of James Irp, who was one of the lesser known Ierp brothers. Throughout her busy life, Kate was known by many nicknames because of her marriages and reputation of moving from place to place. In addition to Big nos, she was also known as Katie Elder, Missus, John H Doc Holiday, Nosey Kate, Kate Cummings, and Kate Melvin. The nickname Big Nose Kate was actually used by White Erp in an article he wrote for a San Francisco newspaper in 1896. Erp wrote that this wasn’t a comment on her actual nose, but referred to her strong, bold character. He said she had a legendary temper and valued her freedom over most anything else. Despite numerous film depictions to the contrary, Kate wasn’t particularly fond on de verb, and the feeling was reciprocated. She was not a blushing violet and never apologetic for her profession or her hard-drinking ways. The men around Kate may not have appreciated the way she didn’t ask for permission to live the way she wanted to. They may also have been intimidated by her intelligence, which Holiday was known to have said was equal to his own. In the 1870s, Kate was living with J. S. Elder, a saloon keeper in Wichita, who gave her the surname made famous in the 1965 Western film The Sons of Katie Elder, starring John Wayne and Dean Martin. She was arrested for prostitution in June of that year, and that brush with the law may have encouraged her to move somewhere more friendly to her profession. Kate went upspring from Dodge City to Great Band, and her protector J. S. Elder went elsewhere. Unfortunately, trouble found her again in Great Pen, and Kate was fined $10 for assault and battery. She found another man to protect her, a saloon owner, gambler, and gunslinger named Tom Sherman, a man with a fearsome reputation. Sherman wasn’t someone to mess around with. One story: After shooting a man in a gunfight, Sherman said to the people watching, “I’d better shoot him again, hadn’t I Boys?” And he did, walking up to Point Blake Range to do so. Kate and Sherman wandered the west, going from town to town seeking opportunities for both prostitute and gambler. She was working in Fort Griffith, Texas, when Doc Holiday blew into her life again. In the time since she had known him in Saint Louis, Holiday had been shot in the leg and now walked with a limp. He had also picked up what people at the time called lung disease or consumption. Doctors today call it tuberculosis. It would eventually kill him, but in the meantime, Holiday went west, seeking the drier climates that were believed to help those with his condition. Along the way, he was developing his own reputation for violence and no patience for those he felt were shortchanging him. In addition to reuniting with Kate, it was at Fort Griffin that Holiday met White RB, then a Deputy U. S. Marshall, was on the trail of the notorious outlaw Dirty Dave Rudaba. Holiday had played cards with Rudubau and described him as an ignorant scoundrel. It is entirely possible that Wyatt and Doc Holiday were introduced by Kate, who was probably already familiar with RP, having worked at James Irp’s saloon earlier in her career. Later, Irp told a story about what happened in Fort Griffin. According to Irp, Holiday was playing cards with a notorious gambler named Ed Bailey when things went awry. Bailey, apparently not trusting Holiday to play fairly, was looking through the discard pile after every hand that was blatantly against the rules of the card game. Holiday asked Bailey to stop, and when he didn’t, Holiday raked in the paw, apparently intending to leave. Bailey drew his gun to make Holiday put the money back, but Holiday gutted Bailey with a knife, killing him. The townspeople nabbed Holiday and threw him in jail, rumbling about ropes and murder. Kate jumped a Holiday’s rescue by setting a huge fire to attract the town’s attention, and then showed up at the jail toting a gun in both hands, demanding Holiday’s release. However, the jail big happened. Kate and Holiday fled town and were at Dodge City, Kansas. Shortly thereafter, she claims that they married sometime before arriving in Dodge City, and they registered at the hotel there under the name Doctor and Missus Holiday. Now together, Holiday continued to work as both a dentist and a gambler, while Kate continued to practice the world’s oldest profession. They continued on Western after Holiday was accused of bertilizing a store in Dodge City. His cough was becoming worse. They weren’t tied down to any one place for very long. Holiday established a saloon in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory, but the town was already guarding a reputation for violence, so he sold up and the couple moved on. When the RBS encouraged Holiday to move to Tombstone, a rustic silver mining camp in Arizona Territory, Kate lived elsewhere for a time, but joined him before the big shootout for which he is most well remembered. By some accounts, she may have witnessed the shootout. Their relationship throughout their time together was tempestuous. Once after a serious argument, Holiday’s enemies took advantage of their estrangement and talked Kate into filing a fall’s claim with authorities that Holiday had helped to rob the Benson stagecoach. She had been very drunk at the time that she made the statement, but it was a very serious accusation. Two men had been killed in the holdup. The Earth stepped in and provided witnesses, proving Kate’s statement false, but the damage to Kate in Holiday’s relationship seemed permanent. They were never as close after that time. Things deteriorated further after Tom Marshall Virgil Erp arresticate for disorderly conduct, and she left town furious. Holiday died in Colorado in 1887. Kate married again in 1890 to George Cummings, a miner and, according to Kate, abusive alcoholic. They moved to Bisbee, Arizona. Kate opened a bakery that failed. She divorced Cummings and moved in with Jack Howard, another miner. This final relationship seemed to be a good fed, as Kate put down roots and stayed with Howard for thirty years. Howard left the home they lived in after his death in 1930. She remained feisty and outspoken to the end. Died of heart disease in November of 1940. She’s buried at the cemetery at the Airs on a Pioneer’s Home in Prescott, Arizona. While she after years on a Pioneer’s Home, several authors came to her, offering to write her story. At first, she was angry because they didn’t offer her money, and then she was angry because the story never seemed to get written. But those conversations did tell us something about her relationship with Doc Holiday. She said, of him, “I loved Doc, thought the world of him, and he was always kind to me until he got mixed up with those herbs.” One wonders what nickname Big Nose Kate use when she was referring to Wyatt Erp. She said of her life, “once part as funny, part as sad. Such is life any way you take it.” Very reminiscent of a quote about life that Doc Holiday give when he said, “there is no normal life, There is only life,” and that famous couple represented life in The Wild West.