(John Holliday)

August 14, 1851
November 8, 1887

Gunslinger

Doc Holliday has been celebrated—and criticized—for his involvement in the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral as well as several other murders. An alcoholic who suffered from tuberculosis, he spent much of his life in the gaming dens of the West with his girlfriend, a prostitute called “Big Nose Kate.”

A Confederate upbringing

Born in Griffin, Georgia, on August 14, 1851, John Henry Holliday was his parents’ only surviving child. The Hollidays’ first child, Martha Eleanora, died at the age of six months, possibly from diphtheria, a contagious bacterial disease that was spreading rapidly through some parts of the South. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby, John was born with a birth defect: a cleft palate (a division in the roof of the mouth) and partially cleft lip, which later required surgery and years of speech therapy...