Song from the gallows

Gallows ballads were once as common as turkey buzzards in Illinois. The scaffold, it seems, was a sure inspiration to poets and condemned prisoners, who recorded their adventures and misdeeds in popular songs that were often as entertaining as they were morally instructive.

Shachna Itzik Birger, better know as Charlie Birger, was arguably the most notorious and beloved outlaw in southern Illinois history. His crimes included murder, arson, bootlegging, procuring, kidnapping, extortion, bribery, and theft. Birger's gang of thugs ran the Shady Rest, a mean roadhouse in Williamson County, and were once proudly photographed hugging their machine guns. Yet the outlaw was considered by many to be a gentleman and a philanthropist, a man who took care of his friends and neighbors.

Justice caught up with Birger in 1928. He was publicly hanged on April 19, outside the courthouse in Benton. His ballad, penned by songwriter Carson Robinson, was recorded by Vernon Dalhart in the late 1920s.

"The Hanging of Charles Birger"
by Carson Robison, recorded by Vernon Dalhart

I'll tell you of a bandit,
Out in a western state,
Who never learned his lesson
Until it was too late.
This man was bold and careless,
The leader of his gang,
But boldness did not save him
When the law said "You must hang."

This bandit's name was Birger;
He lived at Shady Rest,
And people learned to fear him
Throughout the Middle West.
'Twas out in old West City
Joe Adams was shot down,
And then the cry of justice,
"These murderers must be found."

Then Thomasson was captured
And turned state's evidence.
Birger was found guilty,
For he had no defense.
He asked for a rehearing,
But this he was denied.
In the county jailhouse
To take his life he tried.

On the 19th day of April
In 1928
Away out west in Benton
Charles Birger met his fate.
Another life was ended;
Another chapter done;
Another man who gambled
In the game that can't be won.

The Ten Commandments show us
The straight and narrow way,
And if we do not heed them
Sometime we'll have to pay.
We all must face the Master,
our final trial to stand,
And there we'll learn the meaning
Of houses built on sand.

20    ILLINOIS HERITAGE