Dock Driver (Execution of)

Dock Driver was hanged at Walnut Ridge (Lawrence County) on January 31, 1913, for murdering a town marshal the previous fall. It was the last legal hanging in Lawrence County.

Dock Driver, who was born on March 6, 1876, in Missouri, was a concrete worker who lived in Walnut Ridge with wife Laura and stepson Carle Heniman. Driver was one of nine Lawrence County men who were arrested on April 29, 1912, for nightriding and attacking the homes of local African Americans in what has been called the Walnut Ridge Race War.

Driver and his wife had separated by October 30, 1912, when Laura Driver was working at a street carnival in Walnut Ridge. Dock Driver “was intoxicated and had been annoying her,” so she went to the mayor and asked that her estranged husband be arrested. When town marshal J. P. Biggers, age sixty-five, who was also a preacher, approached him, Driver pulled a pistol and shot him three times; one bullet also “passed through the hand of a small boy.” Biggers died of his wounds.

Driver was arrested and taken to Newport (Jackson County) for safekeeping after officers seized his pistol, which reportedly already had four notches cut into it, indicating that he had already claimed to have killed four people. The Arkansas Gazette reported: “Sentiment is strong against Driver and a petition asking for a special session of court in order that justice may be meted out speedily is being circulated and extensively signed.” Judge R. E. Jeffrey responded to the petition by calling a special term of the Lawrence County circuit court for December 9, 1912.

Driver was indicted on first-degree murder charges on December 9 after the grand jury heard from twenty-seven witnesses to the shooting of Biggers. Jeffrey set a court date two days later to hear Driver’s response, but that was delayed until December 17 after his lawyers did not show up for the hearing. At the trial, “Driver introduced no witnesses in his behalf, and plead that he acted in self defense.” The jury deliberated only sixteen minutes before returning a guilty verdict.

On December 21, 1912, Jeffrey sentenced Driver to hang on January 31, 1913; a newspaper reported that “as Driver heard the sentence he showed no emotion whatever, and seems perfectly indifferent to the situation.” As the gallows were being built in the attic of the Lawrence County Courthouse, the Gazette reported that Driver “is retaining the sullen silence which he has kept since his conviction.”

Governor Joseph T. Robinson declined to commute Driver’s sentence, and on January 30, Jackson County jail inmates told officers that the condemned man planned to kill himself with poison. When they went to the cell to search him, Driver wielded an iron bar to hold them off, even as the sheriff warned that he would shoot him. They saw him swallow something, and Driver “was sick throughout the night, and it is generally believed that he took a small dose of arsenic.”

He survived and issued a statement on the morning of January 31, 1913, in which he said, “I have in the heat of passion done wrong and feel that I am ready to answer the sentence meted to me by 12 good men and will die without malice in my heart toward anyone.” Climbing the scaffold at 12:35 p.m., “he made no speech before the black cap was placed upon his head, nor did he show signs of fear. His only words were ‘May the Lord be with you all’ five minutes before the trap was sprung.”

Driver was declared dead after hanging for twelve minutes, and his body was placed in a casket in a courthouse hallway, “where more than a thousand persons viewed the body.” He was taken for burial to Mammoth Spring (Fulton County), the town he and his mother had moved to when he was a child.

For additional information:
“Alleged Slayer Arraigned.” Arkansas Gazette, November 5, 1912, p. 2.

“Condemned Man Fights Officers.” Arkansas Gazette, January 31, 1913, p. 1.

“Dock Driver Must Hang.” [Memphis, Tennessee] Commercial Appeal, December 22, 1912, p. 17.

“Dock Driver to Be Hanged Jan. 21 [sic].” Arkansas Gazette, December 23, 1912, p. 2.

“Dock Driver Will Hang Tomorrow.” Arkansas Gazette, January 30, 1913, p. 2.

“Driver Goes to Death Calmly.” Arkansas Gazette, February 1, 1913, p. 1.

“Driver Trial Is Postponed.” Arkansas Gazette, December 12, 1912, p. 1.

“Hastens Murder Trial.” Arkansas Gazette, November 7, 1912, p. 1.

“Jury Finds Driver Guilty of Murder.” Arkansas Democrat, December 19, 1912, p. 2.

“Marshal Slain in Carnival Crowd.” Daily Arkansas Gazette, November 1, 1912, p. 1.

Perkins, J. Blake. “‘Kit Karson and Band’: Race, Class, and New South Nightriding in Northeast Arkansas.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 81 (Autumn 2022): 252–281.

“Special Session for Trial of Dock Driver.” Arkansas Gazette, December 10, 1912, p. 2.

“Want Special Term to Try Dock Driver.” Batesville Daily Guard, November 6, 1912, p. 1.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System

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