715 North 11th Street

Sometime early in the evening, Harry Duncan struck a white officer named Gaffney in the face when that officer laid hands on Duncan’s brother Luther. Gaffney was trying to break up Luther’s fistfight with a fellow African-American barber, near Charles Starkes’ saloon at 715 N 11th Street. After further concerted assault upon the officer, the Duncan brothers ran in Starkes’ establishment. Alerting other officers in the neighborhood by firing his pistol twice in the air, a dazed Gaffney then followed the Duncan brothers inside. While the officer tried to arrest Luther, Harry attacked him and ended up with Gaffney’s revolver.

Other patrolmen, including Brady, came in to Starkes’ saloon just after that scuffle. In the ensuing melee, Brady advanced on Harry Duncan, who had taken a position crouching behind the bar. In reaching or leaning over the bar to fire, Brady took a fatal bullet to his chest. Police gunfire wounded Duncan several times as well, but they took him alive.

Two days before his execution and after nearly three years of legal appeals, Duncan publicly accused the tavern owner Charles Starkes' of shooting Brady. The claim had come up in previous trials, raised by Farmer in Duncan’s defense to cast a reasonable doubt about his guilt. It seems though only two witnesses with questionable character and motives testified to that version of events. Duncan though, at that late date, was claiming he saw it happen, though he’d never told his legal team. Starkes died more than a month prior, but Duncan made no explanation as to why he’d waited so long to come forth with such a statement.

Lawyers had already put forth several other arguments to stay Duncan’s execution. Indeed, courts granted such five times in the last year before it was carried out. In the end though, his new claim notwithstanding, William Henry Harrison Duncan went to the gallows on July 27, 1894.

Starkes’s daughter Lizzie (Randall) Ray in 1904 seems to have provided information to the St. Louis Dispatch that led them to publish a startling claim. Allegedly, Charles Starkes confessed to Brady’s murder on his deathbed, a month before the state executed Duncan. This claim was apparently verified by the St. Louis judge and local historian Nathan Young in the 1960s.

In July 1894, Duncan was hanged from the Bridge of Sighs for allegedly killing police officer James Brady. While awaiting execution, Duncan often sang from his cell to crowds gathered outside. The day before his death, he invited reporters into his cell and proclaimed his innocence. He told them his only hope was to meet death like a true man. Before they left, he performed a final concert that included songs such as "My Mother's Picture" and "Night to the Grave." According to reporters, his voice carried beyond the courthouse walls. The next morning, nearly 400 spectators gathered outside to witness the execution. R. Lee Mudd, the county’s prosecuting attorney, later stated that Duncan should never have been convicted of first-degree murder or sentenced to death. His story was memorialized in the folk song "Ballad of Brady and Duncan."

SOURCE: “Duncan and Brady” / “Been on the Job Too Long”
Jan 14, 2013 Patrick Blackman [https://singout.org/duncan-and-brady-been-on-the-job-too-long/]