Tom Bell (1825 â€" October 4, 1856) was a western outlaw and physician
known as the "Outlaw Doc". He is the first outlaw to organize a
stagecoach robbery in the United States.[citation needed]Born Thomas
J. Hodges in Rome, Tennessee, he saw action in the Mexicanâ€"American
War as a surgeon. Following the war he traveled to California during
the California Gold Rush but was unsuccessful as a prospector, later
drifting around California as a gambler and as a doctor at times for
several years. The outlaw "Doc Hedges" was arrested for stealing five
mules. When he was arrested in 1855, wanting to confuse the peace
officers, he gave the name Tom Bell, a small time cattle rustler. In
1855 he was serving time in Angel Island Prison for robbery when he
met Bill Gristy and successfully escaped several weeks later. He
escaped with the help of his profession as a doctor by faking a severe
illness that fooled the prison doctor, which allowed him to escape.
With Gristy, Bell formed an outlaw gang of five men and began robbing
stages for several months.On August 12, 1856, after their spy spotted
the Camptonville-Maryville stage carrying $100,000 worth of gold
bullion, the gang unsuccessfully attempted to rob it. In an exchange
of gunfire a woman passenger was killed and two male passengers were
wounded before the gang was driven off by the stagecoach guards. The
woman passenger on board who was killed by the attempt, was a black
woman by the name of Mrs. Tilghman, the wife of a popular barber from
Maryville.The robbery and death of the woman passenger angered
citizens, and both a sheriff's posse and citizen vigilantes conducted
a massive search for the gang. By late September Gristy was captured.
Under threat of being turned over to the irate lynch mob outside the
jail, he confessed the location of Bell. The Stockton Sheriff raced to
arrest him. When he found Bell near Firebaugh's Ferry on October 4,
1856, an impromptu posse commanded by Judge George Gordon Belt, a
Merced River rancher, had already hanged him. Tom Bell (outlaw) Biography, NetWorth, Height, Age, Weight, Family, Married, Son, Daughter