Bloody Beat 22

Bloody Beat 22 was a pejorative name given to the Jefferson County voting precincts known as "Beat 22" due to the infamy of an informal collection of saloons and whisky houses at the intersection of Stouts Road and Walker's Chapel Road which served the nearby Lewisburg and Newcastle mining communities in the early 1910s.

The "Wild West" character of the district expressed itself in countless fights and feuds. A gang led by brothers Arthur and Walter Jones, along with Will Watson, Teck Duncan and Henry Cole, were blamed for most of the murders that beset the community.

In 1914 Judge Harrington Heflin, serving as Jefferson County Solicitor, organized a clean-up of the district. Governor Emmet O'Neal contracted with special counsel to help prepare cases for trial. Arthur Jones and Watson were convicted, in a notable prosecution, of the murder of John Holland, an African American, and were sentenced to hang.

Those prosecutions, along with the closure of the saloons during prohibition (a version of which the eligible voters of Beat 22 supported by a 73-39 margin in the 1907 prohibition election) helped the district to reinvent itself as the suburb of Fultondale.

References

• "Birmingham Third in Murder List: 112 Slain in 1925, Only Two Hanged." (April 2, 1926) Birmingham Post