Jordan Gayle was born in March 1868 in Christiansville, Mecklenburg County, Virginia (now Chase City), to Banister and Mary Gayle. Mr. Gayle had wool-colored hair and black eyes, stood just under 5'7", and was a Protestant. At 13, he worked as a laborer. By 1895, Mr. Gayle was incarcerated in the Allegheny County Workhouse in Pennsylvania. After his release, he worked as a porter while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mr. Gayle entered the Massachusetts Reformatory on September 14, 1898. Boston's Inspector Shields reported that he had arrived from the South nine months before this incarceration. Mr. Gayle died at the Reformatory at 2:15 P.M. on July 1, 1899, of tuberculosis at 31.
