Roy Bean

Roy Bean was a saloonkeeper and justice of the peace in remote west Texas during the late nineteenth century. Calling himself the “Law West of the Pecos,” he held court in his saloon and became famous for eccentric rulings, self-promotion and admiration of actress Lillie Langtry. Many stories about hangings and arbitrary justice were exaggerated or invented. Bean nevertheless became an enduring symbol of improvised frontier authority.

Bean appears in western fiction and was fictionalised in works associated with The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Novelists often treat him as comic rogue, tyrant or folk judge whose personality substitutes for institutions. Historically grounded portrayals distinguish his real minor court business from the much more violent legend created by journalists and entertainment.

In Larry McMurtry’s Streets of Laredo, Encounters with John Wesley Hardin, Judge Roy Bean and Charles Goodnight place the fictional chase inside a frontier whose legendary figures are ageing, dying or becoming part of history.