Maybe Billy was cheating at croquet. Or he’s making fun of his jacket.
Point and laugh at the Regulator
Them’s fightin’ words!
Did the PBS special, or the gf, mention that the original known ferrotype of Billy was reversed (mirror image), or that Billy actually worn his pistol on his right hip?
I thought that said Billy the Kids phone…I read it twice that way too!
I thought…Billy was dead long ago, right? :smack:
Don’t think that it did, just remember that part from her that I went and found at the 37:20 mark of the documentary.
It has a free on-line 54 minute version on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peMYV393xLQ
I get so drawn into old pictures like this. I find myself just taking in every single detail. A single moment in the lives of these people, long dead, who could not even conceive of someone looking at their picture 140 years later.
Thanks for posting this.
It’s definitely true that early photography had long exposure times, but a lot of people think these long exposures were around far longer than they were:
Note that even before the 1880s, exposure times were 1/100 of a second. And tintypes were popular because the exposure time was so much shorter than for a daguerreotype; photographers (well, tintypists :)) used tintypes for street scenes, boardwalk/beach/tourist sales, etc. Even the earliest types needed only ~5 seconds for the exposure. That’s an eternity today, but nowhere near several minutes.
The links on that page lead to this one, which is allegedly Robert Ford and Jesse James (recently authenticated, according to the article)
I wonder why anyone ever suspected in the first place that one figure of many in an old tintype might be BtK? If it was part of a miscellaneous lot that seems kind of strange. Perhaps they’ll explain that in the show, which as you probably noticed is this Sunday.
I tried comparing Billy’s features to that of the only substantiated picture of him. Due to the distance of the shot it’s difficult. Among a couple of features he does have one ear that appears to be larger than the other, that’s seen in both pics. I assume it’s on the same side in the originals.
I’ve already got the recorder set for Sunday evening, should be interesting.
This story says that Randy Guijarro, the guy who bought the photo at a junk shop, had no idea who might be in it. He just thought it was interesting. He must have shown it to someone versed enough in western history to suspect that it might be BtK’s gang. Perhaps the photo had some kind of identifying clue that it was taken in New Mexico.
I plan to watch the Nat Geo special this Sunday.
I’m curious too how anyone even thought this photo could be important. It wouldn’t occur to most people that anyone historically important is in the photo. Tintypes aren’t that rare. They were basically the Polaroids of that era. They can be found at many flea markets and junk shops.
its scheduled Sunday Oct 18 at 8 Central
It didn’t occur to most people that anyone historically significant would be in the photo – which is why the guy got it for two bucks with a bunch of other photos. 
On the world news last night, ABC I guess, he said he suspected it was BtK right away, which is why he bought it.
What I meant was, nobody else before him thought it was significant.
Two hours seems like an awfully long time to spend talking about one photograph.
I don’t know much about Billy the Kid, but I surely have heard that name before even when I don’t know much about the Western American history.
That’s so that the portion of the audience who tuned in because this is an area of ongoing interest can sit through a lot they already know, plus commercials.
I’d love it if a show would come on and say “you should already know about Abe Lincoln and Succession and Fort Sumter. If you don’t, record this for later, read some books and then come back because we need this time to do an in-depth examination of the Fort Pillow massacre.”
All educational TV is 100-level.
Thanks for posting this. It so fascinating!
The thing I’ve always been curious about is how most contemporary accounts mention how attractive he was… contrasted of course with popular photo.
Probably the most well-known, at least to history nerds, are the North Carolina Regulators, a pre-Revolutionary group of colonists from what was then the frontier of central and western North Carolina, whose protests against the colonial government in the eastern part of the state eventually led to violence.
No idea if the Lincoln County Regulators were consciously evoking the Tarheels, or if the term was just floating around in the American zeitgeist of the time.