The 1873 Tale of Two Competing Brothel Owners

The day that Rowdy Joe killed Red Beard in the streets of an old West cow town.

I own a small bar in the Delano district of Wichita, Kansas.

Now just a neighborhood of Wichita, Delano was once an independent town across the river from the bigger city. The small cow town was truly part of the old, wild West.

Saloons and brothels lined the block-long dirt road of the town of Delano. Across the river in more civilized Wichita, good people stayed away from Delano as the noise from the fresh-off-the-trail cowboys letting off steam drifted across the river.

The place was so notorious for being absolutely wild that they had to rely on equally tough lawmen such as Wyatt Earp who once patrolled the streets of Delano and Wichita.

On the very site where my bar now sits, there was a saloon and combination brothel, long since torn down, owned by a man named Rowdy Joe Lowe. Across the street, another saloon and brothel sat. It was owned by Edward T. “Red” Beard.

The following is an account of an infamous feud that resulted in one of the men’s deaths in 1873.

On Thursday, October 30th, 1873, according to the local newspaper, the Wichita Eagle, “a melee Monday night between the proprietors of the two dance houses in West Wichita resulted in Rowdy Joe being shot in the back of the neck and Red Beard being wounded in the arm and hip.”

The story actually started north of Wichita in another small cow town, Newton, Kansas.

Born in 1845, Rowdy Joe, was originally from Illinois. A fighter with both his fists as well as a gun, he was known as Rowdy Joe. In 1871, he, along with his wife, Rowdy Kate, moved to Newton, Kansas, and set up a saloon and brothel.

In 1872, Rowdy Kate left Rowdy Joe to be with her husband’s competition, another brothel owner. When Rowdy Joe found her and the man who made him a cuckold, he shot him.

Her lover dead, Kate decided to return to Rowdy Joe. However, the people of Newton had grown tired of Joe’s rowdiness and ran him out of town.

Source: http://www.americancowboychronicles.com/2017/05/red-beard-vs-rowdy-joe-lowe-gunfight.html

So, he purchased a saloon and brothel twenty-five miles south of Newton in the tiny cow town of Delano, Kansas, across the river from the bigger and more peaceful Wichita, Kansas.

The saloon made him quite a lot of money, and Rowdy enjoyed good business until Edward T. “Red” Beard arrived in town and built a saloon right across the street from Rowdy’s.

Source: https://www.kansasmemory.org/item/450917

Red Beard, like Rowdy Joe (and Wyatt Earp for that matter), was originally from Illinois. He moved west after the Civil War where he gained a reputation as a mean man who was good with a gun.

Red Beard and Rowdy Joe quickly developed an intense hatred for one another. Both called the other a swindler who cheated their customers. They were known to shout and threaten each other from across the street.

One evening in 1873, some soldiers were in Red Beard’s saloon drinking when a fight broke out resulting in the shooting of one of the women who worked for Red Beard.

An angry Red Beard opened fire on the soldiers. The soldiers left but came back later and burned down Beard’s saloon.

Source: http://www.americancowboychronicles.com/2017/05/red-beard-vs-rowdy-joe-lowe-gunfight.html

Not giving up, Red Beard quickly began reconstruction on his new saloon. While he worked on the rebuild, Red Beard grew resentful of Rowdy Joe as he watched him make loads of money from his loss of business.

When Red Beard finally reopened, the rivalry continued but escalated from shouts and threats. A drunk Red Beard, feeling particularly angry one afternoon, took a shot at Rowdy from across the street. Rowdy returned fire but luckily neither was seriously injured.

On October 25th of 1873, a drunk Red Beard accused one of his saloon girls of holding back money from him. She got angry and ran across the street to Rowdy’s saloon where she was also known to entertain customers.

Red Beard followed her into Rowdy’s and started shooting, hitting one of Rowdy’s other girls. Rowdy Joe got a shotgun from behind the bar and shot back. They soon were in the heat of a full-fledged gunfight.

Red Beard grazed Rowdy Joe’s neck and shot a customer sitting in the bar in the head. That customer would be blind for the rest of his life.

Source: https://truewestmagazine.com/article/rowdy-joe-vs-william-red-beard/

Red Beard ran out of the saloon with Rowdy Joe chasing him, shooting the entire time. He finally hit Red Beard. Red Beard went down, and Rowdy Joe left him for dead.

Found lying in the street bleeding from his wounds, Red Beard would die two weeks later.

Source: https://tomrizzo.com/bawdy-bloody/

On November 13th, 1873, the Wichita Eagle reported that “E. T. Beard, better known as ‘Red,’ the proprietor of one of the dance houses across the river, paid the penalty for his misdeeds with his life on Tuesday morning. It will be remembered that he was shot in a row at his dance house some two weeks since.”

A few months later, Rowdy Joe Lowe was acquitted of murder. Apparently, the jury of his peers, the town folk of Delano, thought that Rowdy Joe did them a favor by ridding them of the mean and violent Red Beard.

However, the town of Delano had grown tired of the violence and card cheating that Rowdy Joe was known for and business in the saloon severely dropped off. Eventually, Rowdy Joe sold his bar and left town.

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/joseph-rowdy-joe-lowe/

Where he went from there is not clear. Some stories have him moving to Dodge City, Kansas. Other stories say Tombstone, Arizona. Still, other stories report that he moved to Texas.

What is known is how he met his end.

At some point, he ended up in Colorado. On February 11th, 1899, Rowdy Joe was drunk in a saloon in Denver. He insulted a police officer and got into a fight with him. The lawman shot and killed Rowdy Joe Lowe.

Source: https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/rowdy-joe-and-rowdy-kate-lowe/16526

A violent end to a man who led such a violent life and a violent end to a story that took place in the now quiet, unassuming district of Delano in Wichita, Kansas.

As a man who now owns a bar on the exact site where Rowdy Joe’s once stood, I can happily say that there have been no more reported gunfights between local saloon owners since Rowdy Joe gunned Red Beard down.

For another story about Wichita’s history: