Billy the Kid 1859–1881

Also known as Henry McCarty, William H. Bonney

Henry McCarty, known as Billy the Kid and also as William H. Bonney, was an outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West. Two birth days are on record for 1859, 17 September and 23 November, so this sheet keeps only the year. He died on 14 July 1881. The English Wikipedia article links him with nine killings, four of them as the only shooter, and with New Mexico's Lincoln County War of 1878, when he rode with the Regulators. It says he was orphaned at fifteen, arrested for stealing food at sixteen, and soon escaped. In 1877 he began to use the name William H. Bonney. The portrait is a black-and-white crop of the upper body from an unretouched tintype. The public-domain file is titled as a tintype made at Fort Sumner in 1879 or 1880, and the photographer is unattributed. This sheet does not treat that place as a record of where he died. Wikidata is Q44200.

Existence span 1859–1881