Dora Hand, her stage name was Fannie Keenan, (c. 1844 – October 4, 1878, aged c. 34), was an American dance hall singer and actress in Dodge City, Kansas, who was mistakenly shot to death from ambush by a young unwanted suitor who was acquitted of criminal charges in the case.
Hand was also linked romantically with James H. "Dog" Kelley, the mayor of Dodge City from 1867 to 1871.
Kelley took action, sending a telegraph to lawman Wyatt Earp in Deadwood, South Dakota, asking him to come to Dodge City and restore law and order.
While Kelley was out of town, in a hospital in Fort Dodge, he let Hand and her friend Fannie Garretson stay at his home.
Cattlemen took cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail to deliver their product to Dodge City.
Hand’s friends and the town's lawmen, Sheriff Bat Masterson, Assistant US Marshal Wyatt Earp, Charlie Bassett and Bill Tilghman pursued Kenedy.
Masterson fired a 50-caliber rifle and hit Kenedy in the shoulder, causing him to fall off his horse.
[7] Claire Trevor played Hand in the 1943 film The Woman of the Town, which depicts a fictional romance with Bat Masterson.
In the story line, Hand nurses the ungrateful gunslinger Slim Kennedy (Peter Haskell) back to health after he is shot in self-defense by Dora's boss, Mayor James H. Kelley (Stephen Roberts) of Dodge City, Kansas.