Digital Bob Archive

Western frontier mining camps such as Juneau had a reputation for violence, but Juneau, during its first couple of decades probably had less violence than many other such camps. Still, there was some violence here, and a considerable amount of it was contributed by one John L. Timmins.

Timmins arrived in Juneau in 1886 and was reported to have been known in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle as Black Jack Timmins and as Bull Roaring Timmins, the latter nickname derived from his loud voice, especially when he was drunk. Most of his violence was, in fact, committed while, as one newspaper put it, he was on a tear.

Offenses in Juneau included shooting William Henning in the groin after a card game argument. Henning lived and was said to have been bribed not to prosecute. Timmins chewed the fingers of John Curry during one altercation and another time threw a bowling ball at the head of a dance hall girl, giving her a severe concussion. He was not prosecuted in either instance.

The offense that did land him in San Quentin prison had its inception on Saturday morning, April 13, 1895, when a fire started in Mark Cohen's brewery, where the Alaskan Hotel now stands. Timmins was a member of the volunteer fire department but was not an officer. He was also drunk. In his loudest bull.roaring voice he attempted to take command. He gave conflicting orders, he got in the way; he was a real hindrance to the business of the firemen.

Frank E. Howard had come to Juneau in 1887 and, with his father, started Juneau's first newspaper, The Alaska Free Press. In 1895 he was working as a reporter for a successor to the Press, The Alaska Mining Record. In the paper which appeared on Monday, April 15, Howard had a story on the Timmins performance and suggested that he might be expelled from the department. Late Tuesday afternoon Timmins entered the newspaper office where Howard was seated, pulled out a .38 revolver and fired three shots. One hit Howard in the groin, the second one missed, and the third entered Howard's head below the eye and lodged just under the skin.

Timmins gave himself up at the court house; Howard was taken to the hospital.
The Timmins trial began on May 23 and lasted five days but it took the jury only 45 minutes to reach a verdict of guilty. He was sentenced to six years at San Quentin.

Frank Howard recovered, operated a mine at Sheep Creek for a time, then went to the Interior where he became a U.S. Commissioner. He died in 1930, apparently of natural causes.

Timmins served three years and they apparently did him good. He went to Dawson, Nome and Fairbanks and seems to have stayed out of trouble. In 1912 he moved to Los Angeles and started the Royal Gum Company and before long was reported to have had some 10,000 penny gum machines in that area. He died in 1924.

Did those many gum machines, I have wondered, dispense among other flavors, the licorice variety we used to know as Black Jack Gum?