Science: Quick on the Draw

Redheads, who have been given a hammering by the jokesmiths, got no comfort from science last week. In the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Dr. Hans von Hentig of the University of Kansas City told of his researches on U.S. frontier outlaws. A disproportionate number, Dr. von Hentig reports, had red hair.*

The outlaw Big Harpe, who terrorized the Ohio Valley about 1800, had “coarse hair of a fiery redness.” William Clarke Quantrill, the murderous Civil War guerrilla, was a redhead. So was Wild Bill Hickock, and Jack McCall who killed him. The records, Dr. von Hentig says, are thick with “Big Reds,” “Reddys,” and “Red Mikes.”

Possible explanation: redheads often have “accelerated motor innervation,” i.e., they are quick on the draw. With this advantage, Dr. von Hentig thinks, it is no wonder that they rose to prominence in the shooting business. “The frontier was an all-male society,” the report adds, with a hint of regret. “It was therefore easy to omit the issue of the red-haired woman.”

*Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, wrote of the unpleasantly human Yahoos: “It is observed that the red-haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom they much exceed in strength and activity.”