Thursday, September 1, 2016

Ways West


California Trail
Following the Oregon Trail from the Missouri River to the South Pass on the Continental Divide in Wyoming, emigrants bound for California then branched out. Some took a northern route via Fort Hall in Idaho, above the Great Salt Lake; others ventured south around the Great Salt Lake. Either way, emigrants sought the lifeline of the Humboldt River.

On the desert approaches to the Sierra Nevades, the routes again diverged; but all routes or "cut-offs" forced emigrants to face risks and endure severe hardships. In their worst imaginings, they could not suspect what was in store over the next 800 miles. The remaining challenges of the Rockies, weeks of plodding through loose sand, days of little or no water, nights of vigilance againse thieving and sometimes hostile Indians and the backbreaking work of hauling wagons over 70 miles of the Sierra Nevades, haunted by the fear of early snows.

Mormon Trail
Stretched nearly 1,400 miles across prairies, sagebrush flats and mountain barriers. From 1846-1869, this trail carried an estimated 60,000 Mormons westward to Salt Lake City. A later trail, starting in the southwest corner of the Utah territory, connected the various Mormon settlements in southwestern territories to the major temple at St. George.

Oregon Trail
Blazed by fur traders and missionaries, the Oregon Trail remained in use from the early 1830s to the mid-1880s. In 1841, less than a hundred settlers, the Bidwell-Bartleson Expedition, followed the trail to the "Oregon Country," an area in dispute between the United States and Great Britain. By 1847, the dispute was settled and emigration along the trail swelled to 4,000. Wagon trains rolled almost 2,000 miles from the Missouri River to the Dallas settlement located along the Columbia River. With the trailblazing that led to the opening of the Barlow Road between Dallas and Oregon City, the extremely fertile and temperate Willamette Valley opened to settlement.

Montana-bound prospectors and settlers turned north from the Oregon Trail and North Platte River, skirted the Bighorn Mountains, passed through the Crow Indian hunting grounds and wound by was of the Yellowstone River and Gallatin Valley to Virginia City in Idaho.  The Bozeman Trail offered dependable water and abundant grass for livestock, but this trail was probably the most dangerous in terms of Indian raids. By late 1866, three army forts guarded the trail in Indian country.

Sante Fe Trail
The Santa Fe Trail cut across prairie, mountain and desert and reached more than 900 miles from Missouri to New Mexico. It endured for about 61 years, from opening in 1821 to 1880, when the completion of the railroad to Sante Fe put it out of business. Travelers had a choice of two branches: The northern route angled through the Colorado Rockies, a difficult passage for wagons, The southern route (or Cimarron cutoff) shortened the journey by 100 miles but took emigrants far from reliable sources of water. Early in it's history, the Sante Fe Trail was recognized as a primary economic route to Mexican territory, carrying products and livestock.

Westerly routes from Sante Fe and El Paso joined in Apache country to form the Gila Trail. Traversing the deserts of the southwestern frontier, it took a course determined by sources of water and passages through the mountains. Soldiers and settlers, miners and mail carriers, and freighters and outlaws traveled the trail beginning in the 1840s.

Old Spanish Trail
For traveling Mexican caravans between 1829 and 1848, the Old Spanish Trail was known as the shortest path to riches between Los Angeles and Santa Fe. It was a trail of commercial opportunity and western adventure as well as slave trading, horse thieving and raids. The trail route was established along a loose network of Indian footpaths that crossed the wide expanse of the Colorado Plateau and the Mojave Desert. With time, this newly established trade corridor attracted frontiersmen and U.S. military expeditions.

The 2,700 miles of trail which linked Santa Fe with Los Angeles pushed mule caravans to the limit. In the first week on the trail alone, the mules scrambled, swam or dragged their handlers through more than a dozen river crossings. By the time the pack trains reached Los Angeles, they had crossed dune fields in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, found their way around the Grand Canyon, skirted the continent’s harshest deserts at Death Valley, and slaked their thirst at Stinking Springs, Salt Creek, Alkali Canyon, Bitter Spring and the Inconsistent River.

Monday, August 15, 2016

The Harvey Girls

A Slice of American History

HubPages / Travel and Places / April 26, 2012


A Harvey Hotel
How the West Was Won

The Harvey Girls came into being in the early years of railroads. Before railroads included dining cars on their trains, a railroad passenger's only option for meals while travelling was to eat at a roadhouse near a water stop, en route. The food was terrible. Rancid meat, cold beans and week-old coffee. The trip out west, from New York to Sante Fe by rail, took about five days, and these conditions discouraged many travellers, until the advent of Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls. Fred Harvey, who was a railroad freight agent, saw an opportunity there.

The Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe Railroad Company contracted with Harvey for several eating houses along the route west. Harvey staffed his places with the Harvey Girls; waitresses with very high standards.

The subsequent growth and development of the Fred Harvey Company was closely related to that of the Sante Fe Railway. Harvey opened his first depot restaurant in Topeka, Kansas, in January of 1876. Railway officials and customers alike were impressed with Fred Harvey's strict standards for high-quality food and first class Harvey Girl service. As a result, the Sante Fe Railway entered into subsequent contracts where Harvey was given a "blank check" to set up eating houses along the entire route west. At more prominent locations, these restaurants evolved into hotels, many of which survive today, though not many are open for business. The Harvey Girls were almost as famous as the Harvey restaurants and hotels along the railroad route west.

Of the 84 Fred Harvey facilities, some of the more notable include:
  • The Alvarado — Albuquerque, New Mexico; closed in 1969. Demolished. Exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History (March 8- June 7, 2009.) 
  • The Bisonte — Hutchinson, Kansas; closed in 1946 
  • The Casa del Desierto — Barstow, California; closed in 1959. Refurbished 1999; operating as two museums and city offices. 
  • CastaƱeda — Las Vegas, New Mexico; closed in 1948, used in the film Red Dawn 
  • El Garces — Needles, California; closed in 1958. Undergoing restoration (2008). 
  • El Navajo — Gallup, New Mexico; closed in 1957. 
  • El Ortiz — Lamy, New Mxico; closed in 1938. 
  • El Otero — La Junta, California; closed in 1948. 
  • El Tovar — Grand Canyon, Arizona; still in operation. 
  • El Vaquero — Dodge City, Kansas; closed in 1948. 
  • The Havasu House — Seligman, Arizona; closed in 1955. Demolished 2008. 
  • The Escalante — Ash Fork, Arizona; closed in 1948, demolished in the 1970s 
  • The Fray Marcos — Williams, Arizona; restored and reopened as a historic hotel and train depot for the Grand Canyon Railway 
  • La Fonda — Sante Fe, New Mexico; still in operation 
  • Las Chavez — Vaughn, New Mexico; closed in 1936 
  • La Posada — Winslow, Arizona; closed in 1957; restored and reopened as a historic hotel 
  • The Sequoyah — Syracuse, Kansas; closed in 1936 
Harvey Girl Poster
The Orange Empire Railroad
Museum
Fred Harvey's biggest challenge was not delivering fresh food to his far-flung outposts but finding reliable help. So he placed advertisements in the East and the Midwest for single "young women, 18 to 30 years of age, of good character, attractive and intelligent."

These women became the famed Harvey Girl waitresses, trained in rules of etiquette and given black and white uniforms befitting a nun. Humorist Will Rogers once said Harvey and his Harvey Girls "kept the West in food and wives." Indeed, one estimate put the number of Harvey Girls who wound up as brides of western cowboys and railroad men at 20,000.

Mrs. Harvey met each girl as she was hired. Mrs. Harvey had strict standards of etiquette and codes of behavior, and the prospective a Harvey Girl had to measure up. The jobs were considered plum positions in those days. Paid $17.50 a month, this was a dream job for many young girls who were unable to find work in Eastern cities, with the burgeoning populations of big cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

Many Harvey Girls, who were always respectable, left their employment as a Harvey Girl to became the wife to a customer. One railroad baron said "The Harvey House was not only a good place to eat; it was the Cupid of the Rails". It is estimated that more than 100,000 girls worked for Harvey House restaurants and hotels and of those, 20,000 married their regular customers

How Did They Do It?

How these girls did it, I'll never know. The rules were strict: No fraternizing with the guests. Fred Harvey, who would overturn tables in a fit of temper if he was displeased with the way it was set, was a real stickler for the rules. Any least infraction would result in instant dismissal, without the rest of the person's pay. Fred Harvey advanced the girls a train ticket and half their first month's pay on hiring them, but expected them to keep their end of the bargain, and work the full year's contract, abiding by every strict rule he imposed.

It drove him crazy! His staff kept getting married out from underneath him, over and over. At one point, a rule was imposed that a Harvey girl could not sit down, anywhere, while on duty. Harvey girls were on duty twelve to fourteen hours per day.

How did they do it? How did they find a way to establish enough of a relationship to get married, without being able to talk to their suitors, or even sit down in their company; while wearing black hosiery, black dresses with white aprons, full length, to the floor; high collars, hair back, no makeup...I love it. These Harvey Girls kept working miracles!

Mail-Order Brides

The concept of mail-order brides was first seen on the American frontier during the mid-1800s. The huge emigration of men to the Western U.S. resulted in a disproportionate ratio of men to women in such places as Washington, Arizona and especially California during the Gold Rush. While most men found financial success out west, they missed the company of a wife.

Back East, for women who were not of the privileged classes, finding a husband could be difficult particularly after the Civil War when thousands of young men died in battle and thousands more moved west. To make ends meet, many went into domestic service or nursing at an early age and were unable to take part in the courtship rituals allowed middle and upper class. Ingenuity and perseverance were needed to find a worthy mate if the most desirable qualifications – money and social standing – were not in abundance.

San Francisco-based Matrimonial News was the first newspaper for singles. It began publication in post-Gold Rush San Francisco in 1870 and promoted honorable matrimonial engagements and true conjugal facilities for men and women. Men paid $0.25 to place an ad (about $4.50 in today's dollars). Women posted for free. It eventually boasted 300 ads a week, with most advertisers claiming good looks and circumstances. 

In spite of the occasional mismatch or short-lived union, historians believe that mail-order brides produced a high percentage of permanent marriages. The reason cited is that the advertisements were candid and direct in their explanations of exactly what was wanted and expected from a prospective spouse. If requested, the parties sent accurate photos of themselves along with a page of background information. Often, when the pair met, the groom-to-be signed an agreement, witnessed by three upstanding members of the territory, not to abuse or mistreat the bride-to-be. The prospective bride then signed a paper (also witnessed) not to nag or try to change the intended!

With the turn of the 20th century, matrimonial papers remained popular, but many mainstream newspapers stopped running personal ads. The New York Times dropped them as early as the 1870s, with other papers, like the Manitoba Free Press and Atlanta Constitution, following suit in the 1920s. A touch of scandal tended to color this sort of advertising, and newspapers preferred to report on it, not cause it.

The Busy Bee Club was formed by six Tucson, AZ wives who were distressed by shootouts over eligible Black females. They formed the “Busy Bee Club” in 1885 to arrange mail-order brides for young Black miners by contacting Black churches and newspapers in the east. Men with "seniority" got first dibs.

Good Reads

“Hearts West: True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier” 
“I Do! Courtship, love, and marriage on the American Frontier”
“Black Women of the Old West”.

Mercer Girls

"The Departure" - Harper's Weekly, January 6, 1866, p. 8-9.
The Mercer Girls or Mercer Maids were the 1860s project of Asa Shinn Mercer, an American who lived in Seattle. Mercer decided to bring women to the Pacific Northwest in order to balance the gender ratio. While frontier Seattle attracted many men to work in the timber and fishing industries, few single women were willing to relocate by themselves to the remote Pacific Northwest. Only one adult out of ten was female, and most girls over 15 were already engaged. White men and the women of the Salish tribes often were not attracted to each other and prostitutes were scarce until the arrival of John Pennell and his brothel from San Francisco.

In 1864, Mercer decided to go east to find women willing to relocate to Puget Sound. To satisfy Victorian era moral concerns over the propriety of importing single women to the frontier, he enlisted prominent married couples to act as hosts when they arrived. He also had support from the governor of Washington Territory, though the government could not offer financial support.

Mercer set off for Boston, MA and the textile town of Lowell. He recruited eight young women from Lowell and two from the nearby community of Townsend, who were willing to move to the other side of the country. They traveled West through the Isthmus of Panama, first landing in San Francisco where locals tried to convince the girls to stay there instead. On 16 May 1864 they arrived in Seattle, where the community staged a grand welcome on the grounds of the Territorial University.

Original 11 Mercer Girls
  • Annie May Adams (16) from Boston: Planned to sail as far as San Francisco, but changed her mind and continued on to Seattle. She married and lived in Olympia.
  • Antoinette Josephine Baker (25) from Lowell: Taught school in Pierce County and married a man from Monticello.
  • Sarah Cheney (22) from Lowell: Taught school in Port Townsend and later married.
  • Aurelia Coffin (20) from Lowell: Married in lived in Port Ludlow.
  • Sara Jane Gallagher (19) from Lowell: Married a year after arriving in Seattle and taught music at the university.
  • Ann Murphy (24/age unconfirmed) from Lowell: The only woman among the first eleven Mercer Girls to leave the Washington Territory.
  • Elizabeth "Lizzie" Ordway (35) from Lowell: The oldest of the original Mercer Girls. Ttaught school on Whidbey Island, Port Madison, Seattle and Port Blakely. Later elected superintendent of Kitsap County schools.
  • Georgianna "Georgia" Pearson (15) from Lowell: The youngest Mercer Girl. She and sister Josie brought their father Daniel Pearson on the trip. (He had been ill and it was believed that a change of climate might to him some good.) Left their mother Susan, brother Daniel and sister Flora in Lowell. They traveled to Seattle with Mercer in 1866. Georgia later married and lived on Whidbey Island.
  • Josephine "Josie" Pearson (19) from Lowell: Died during her first summer in Seattle.
  • Katherine "Kate" Stevens (21) from Pepperell: Accompanied by her father, Rodolphus Stevens. Kate married and lived in Port Townsend.
  • Catherine Adams "Kate" Stickney (28) from Pepperell: She and Kate Stevens were cousins. Kate Stickney was the first Mercer Girl to marry (two months after arriving in Seattle). She died five years later. 
The Next Trip

In 1865 Mercer tried again, this time on a larger scale. To bring suitable wives, he asked for $300 from willing bachelors and received hundreds of applications. 

In the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, his next trip east went wrong until speculator Ben Holladay promised to provide transport for the women. But the New York Herald found out about the project and wrote that all the women were destined to waterfront dives or to be wives of old men. Authorities in Massachusetts also were not sympathetic. Because of the bad publicity by the time he was to depart, he had fewer than 100 willing women, when he had promised five times that many.

On 16 Jan 1866 his ship, the former Civil War transport SS Continental, sailed for the West Coast around Cape Horn. Three months later, the ship stopped in San Francisco, where the ship’s captain refused to go any further. Unable to convince the captain otherwise, he telegraphed to Washington governor Pickering asking for more money, but was refused because the governor could not afford it. 

Mercer finally convinced lumber schooner crewmen to transport them for free, leaving a few women behind who decided to stay in California. Among those who financed the trip was Hiram Burnett, a lumber mill manager for Pope & Talbot, who was bringing out his sister and wanted wives for his employees. 

When Mercer returned to Seattle, he had to answer a number of questions about his performance. At a meeting on 23 May, public dismay softened, probably because the women were with him. A week later, Mercer married one of the women, Annie Stephens. Most of the other women found husbands as well.

Further reading;

Saloon Girls

Saloon Girls of the Wild West
By Amy Lillard / www.hhhistory.com / January 26, 2015


It’s no secret that Queen Victoria’s habits and manners influenced a generation. So much so that we call it the Victorian Age. From clothing to wedding traditions, she touched more than England. The eastern states were equally affected. But the Wild West? That was another matter.

To the westward pioneer, a great deal of these Victorian practices were just not practical and were quickly dropped. Consequently, the west took on a shape of its own.

Rowdy frontier towns gave rise to rowdy frontier saloons which in turn gave us the saloon girl.

I’ll be honest and tell you that I stumbled across this topic a little on accident. I was working on a story idea to submit to my publisher and wanted to make sure the term I was using to describe my character was correct. I’d used the term “saloon girl,” but was thinking more of a Gunsmoke-Miss Kitty type. What I found was that there was a great deal of difference between the saloon girl and the prostitute of the Old West.

The saloon girl had many different names. The 49ers in California called them “ladies of the line” or “sporting women.” Cowboys called them “soiled doves.” Kansas trailers knew them by many names, "daughters of sin,” "fallen frails,” "doves of the roost,” and "nymphs du prairie.” Still others referred to the saloon girls as "scarlet ladies,” fallen angels,” "frail sisters,” "fair belles,” and "painted cats,” to name a few.

But they were all the same: saloon girls.

Now, east of the Mississippi River, women didn’t go in saloons, but the west was different. To the “proper” woman, there were two kinds of improper ones: saloon girls and prostitutes. And to this “proper” miss, these were lumped together and considered a necessary evil.

But to saloon girls, what they did was vastly different than the prostitutes. Only in the roughest of saloons were the ‘’girls” and prostitutes one and the same. Otherwise, saloon girls held themselves higher than the prostitutes and wouldn’t be caught dead associating with one.

So what exactly was a saloon girl? They were workers, hired by the saloon to entertain the lonely men. And men in the West tended to be lonely. They outnumbered the women three to one in most places. In California in the mid-1800s, the population was ninety percent male! The saloon girls’ job was to dance with the men. They sang to them, talked to them, and otherwise kept them in the saloon buying drinks and playing games.

Most of the girls had come west from farms and mills seeking a better life, the opportunities that the West had to offer. A great deal of them were widows who, without a husband to support them, had to work for a living. Unfortunately, the Victorian Age didn’t offer a great deal of employment opportunities for women. In fact, the men of culture acted like women were brainless. The only legitimate opportunities for a woman’s employment were cooking, cleaning, or washing clothes, all backbreaking work.

That’s not to say that being a saloon girl was easy. A high probability of a violent death was a certain job hazard. Most of the ladies carried small pistols or daggers to protect themselves from overzealous patrons.

The girls were encouraged to dance with the men, then get the men to buy them drinks. The men would pay regular price for the ladies’ drinks though the women would secretly be served cold tea or colored water. (A practice my deputy husband tells me is still in use today. Who knew?) The girls got a commission off the drinks and a set salary for the week. They were also discouraged from spending too much time with one patron as the saloon owners lost a lot of employees to marriage.

As I mentioned, the saloon girls were there to dance with the men. Dancing usually started at eight or so in the evening. Each "turn” lasted about fifteen minutes and a popular girl could average as many as fifty dances a night. Often times they could make more a night than a working man could make in a month. Because of this, it was rare for them to double as a prostitute. In fact, many ladies of ill repute found they could make more money as a dance hall girl.

Most saloon girls were considered "good" women by the men. And in most places the women were treated as "ladies.” True, Western men tended to hold all women in high regard, but the saloon girls and/or the saloon keeper demanded the respect. Any man who mistreated one of these women was quickly deemed an outcast. If he insulted one, he would most likely be shot and killed.

I think we’ve all seen the picture of a dance hall girl, with her brightly-colored, ruffled dress ending at her knees (scandalous!) and her painted face. Yet with as many westerns as I watched with my dad as I was growing up, I never picked up on the distinction between dance hall girls and ladies of the night.

So what say you? Miss Kitty…saloon girl or not?

Sunday, August 14, 2016

... And Women Who Understood Supply & Demand

How 19th Century Prostitutes Were Among the Freest, Wealthiest, Most Educated Women of Their Time

The following is an excerpt from A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell (Free Press/Simon & Schuster/2010). It recounts how prostitutes won virtually all the freedoms that were denied to women but are now taken for granted.

In the nineteenth century, a woman who owned property, made high wages, had sex outside of marriage, performed or received oral sex, used birth control, consorted with men of other races, danced, drank, or walked alone in public, wore makeup, perfume, or stylish clothes -- and was not ashamed -- was probably a whore.

In fact, prostitutes won virtually all the freedoms that were denied to women but are now taken for granted. Prostitutes were especially successful in the wild, lawless, thoroughly renegade boomtowns of the West. When women were barred from most jobs and wives had no legal right to own property, madams in the West owned large tracts of land and prized real estate. Prostitutes made, by far, the highest wages of all American women. Several madams were so wealthy that they funded irrigation and road-building projects that laid the foundation for the New West. Decades before American employers offered health insurance to their workers, madams across the West provided their employees with free health care. While women were told that they could not and should not protect themselves from violence, and wives had no legal recourse against being raped by their husbands, police officers were employed by madams to protect the women who worked for them, and many madams owned and knew how to use guns.

While feminists were seeking to free women from the "slavery" of patriarchal marriage, prostitutes married later in life and divorced more frequently than other American women. At a time when birth control was effectively banned, prostitutes provided a market for contraceptives that made possible their production and distribution. While women were taught that they belonged in the "private sphere," prostitutes traveled extensively, often by themselves, and were brazenly "public women." Long before social dancing in public was considered acceptable for women, prostitutes invented many of the steps that would become all the rage during the dance craze of the 1910s and 1920s. When gambling and public drinking were forbidden for most women, prostitutes were fixtures in western saloons, and they became some of the most successful gamblers in the nation. Most ironically, the makeup, clothing, and hairstyles of prostitutes, which were maligned for their overt sexuality (lipstick was "the scarlet shame of streetwalkers"), became widely fashionable among American women and are now so respectable that even First Ladies wear them.

Women who wished to escape the restrictions of Victorian America had no better place to go than the so-called frontier, where a particular combination of economic and demographic forces gave renegade women many unusual advantages.

Boom

Between 1870 and 1900, the number of farms in the United States doubled, and more land was brought under cultivation than in the previous two and half centuries. Most of this newly cultivated land was in the Great Plains and the Southwest. In addition to all of this farming, other industries developed rapidly in the West during the second half of the nineteenth century.

The largest of these were metal and coal mining in California, the Rockies, and parts of the Southwest; cattle ranching on the Plains; lumber in the Pacific Northwest; large-scale fruit and vegetable agriculture in the inland valleys of California; and oil in Texas, Oklahoma, and Southern California. Connecting these industries to one another and to eastern U.S. and European markets were railroads, which crisscrossed the West by the end of the nineteenth century. The federal government contributed to this explosive growth with massive expenditures for the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, which ran from the Pacific Ocean to the Missouri River, but also to the building of roads, dams, and vast irrigation systems without which the West as we know it could never have been created.

Towns were created virtually overnight in mountains where precious metal was discovered, in deserts near oil strikes, along cattle trails and around railroad stations, and in forests next to lumber mills and logging stands. Some boomtowns grew into the major urban hubs of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and Seattle. The people who filled those towns were overwhelmingly male, since the labor that brought them there was brutal, physically onerous, and almost universally considered to be men's work. The non-Indian population of California in 1850 was 93 percent male. In the mining towns along the Comstock Silver Lode in Nevada, a census taker in 1860 counted 2,306 men and 30 women. These were men without families, without land, without property, and without a stake in any one community. They moved from town to town in search of money. And, since most of the towns they lived and worked in were brand new, the legal apparatus was usually very weak. These were exactly the conditions that bred bad people.

The Whorearchy

With good reason, the keepers of American morality in the nineteenth century were terribly worried about all the single men in the West. One Protestant minister wrote, "Left by themselves, men degenerate rapidly and become rough, harsh, slovenly -- almost brutish." He was correct. Ironically, most of these men were white and full American citizens. But they cared little for the restrictions and responsibilities of citizenship. One moral reformer in Montana reported this about life in a mining town: "Men without the restraint of law, indifferent to public opinion, and unburdened by families, drink whenever they feel like it, whenever they have the money to pay for it, and whenever there is nothing else to do. … Bad manners follow, profanity becomes a matter of course …. Excitability and nervousness brought on by rum help these tendencies along, and then to correct this state of things the pistol comes into play." In the silver mining boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, in 1879 there were 120 saloons, 19 beer halls, 188 gambling houses, and only 4 churches.

Into this world stepped legions of women who understood something about supply and demand. A U.S. Department of Labor study in 1916 found that in the major legitimate occupations for women -- department store clerking and light manufacturing -- the average weekly wage was $6.67, which at the time represented a subsistence standard of living. In such industries, jobs were few, and due to the ban on women's labor in most of the economy, the number of available workers in the industries that allowed women was great. This oversupply of labor pushed wages down to the minimum. By contrast, women who chose prostitution enjoyed a highly favorable market for their labor. Demand was enormous and constant, especially in the West, and the pool of available labor was kept relatively small by the great number of women who internalized or feared the stigma attached to prostitution. According to historian Ruth Rosen, who pioneered the social history of prostitution in the United States, "The average brothel inmate or streetwalker" -- the lowest positions in the trade -- "received from one to five dollars a 'trick,' earning in one evening what other working women made in a week." Prostitutes in a 1916 study reported earnings between $30 to $50 per week, at a time when skilled male trade union members averaged roughly $20 per week. In their study of Virginia City, Nevada, George M. Blackburn and Sherman L. Ricards found that prostitutes in that 1860s boomtown, unlike the stereotype of the innocent, young "white slave," were actually considerably older on average than women of the western mining states Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. "From the age data on prostitutes, it is clear that they were old enough to realize the nature of their behavior and also old enough to have married had they so desired, for this was an area with many unattached men. Thus we conclude that these were professional women intent on economic success." After working as a domestic in El Paso, Texas, for $3 per week, a Mexican-born woman quit her job and "decided to become a puta" for the extra money. She later recalled, "It took me a long time to get used to having men intimately explore my body… Of course, I had guilt feelings at the beginning, but they soon disappeared when I saw my savings begin mounting up."

Even in the tighter markets of the East, prostitutes were extraordinarily well paid. In New York City, according to historian Timothy Gilfoyle, "an affluent, but migratory, class of prostitutes flourished." Low wages "in the factory and the household made prostitutes the best-paid women workers in the nineteenth-century city." In studies conducted in New York during the 1900s and 1910s, 11 percent of prostitutes listed coercion as the reason for entering the trade, but almost 28 percent named the money they could earn. Members of the Vice Commission of Chicago, like many anti-prostitution reformers, faced the hard truth of the wealth being accrued by prostitutes with a bitter question: "Is it any wonder that a tempted girl who receives only six dollars per week working with her hands sells her body for twenty-five dollars per week when she learns there is a demand for it and men are willing to pay the price?" One Chicago prostitute who supported her family with her wages had an answer. She told an interviewer, "Do you suppose I am going back to earn five or six dollars a week in a factory, and at that, never have a cent of it to spend for myself, when I can earn that amount any night, and often much more?" Historian Ruth Rosen was "struck again and again by most prostitutes' view of their work as 'easier' and less oppressive than other survival strategies they might have chosen."

Prostitutes were the first women to break free of what early American feminists described as a system of female servitude. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one of the leading feminist intellectuals at the turn of the twentieth century, noted that human beings were the only species in which "an entire sex lives in a relation of economic dependence upon the other sex." Since wages in respectable occupations were so low, the only culturally sanctioned means for a woman to attain wealth was through a rich husband. And since states in the nineteenth century granted few or no property rights to married women, even women who "married well" owned little or nothing of their own. But women who chose to be bad could live well on their own.

Prostitutes who rose to the top of the industry to become "madams" owned more wealth than any other women in the United States. Indeed, they were among the wealthiest people in the country, and especially in the West. "Diamond Jessie" Hayman began work as a prostitute in the gold country of the Sierra Nevada foothills in the 1880s, then moved to San Francisco to become one of the most successful prostitutes in the city's history. Hayman's three-story brothel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco included three fireplaces, a saloon, a champagne cellar, and fifteen suites filled with imported furniture. She provided each of her employees with a $6,000 wardrobe that included a fox fur coat, four tailored suits, eight hats, two dress coats, twelve pairs of shoes, twelve pairs of gloves, seven evening gowns, and seven negligees. Hayman earned enough money from her business to buy several parcels of land in the city. After the 1906 earthquake that destroyed much of San Francisco, Hayman and other madams provided food and clothing to the thousands left homeless. She died in 1923 with an estate worth $116,000.

Jennie Rogers, the "Queen of the Colorado Underworld," owned several opulent brothels in Denver that featured ceiling-to-floor mirrors, crystal chandeliers, oriental rugs, marble tables, and grand pianos. Rogers provided her prostitutes with personal hairstylists and dressmakers, ensuring that they were among the most stylish women in the world. Her profits were so great that she was able to purchase large tracts of Denver's most valuable land as well as several shares of an irrigation and reservoir project that not only provided the city with much of its water but also paid Rogers sizable dividends. Rogers's major competitor was Mattie Silks, who had risen from the ranks of streetwalkers in Abilene, Texas, and Dodge City, Kansas, to become a brothel owner by the age of nineteen. Soon after moving to Denver in 1876, she purchased a three-story mansion with twenty-seven rooms, then outfitted it with the finest furnishings available.

Visitors to the Silks brothel were greeted by a symphony orchestra in the main parlor. Silks eventually opened three other brothels and purchased a stable of race horses. After her retirement from the trade, she told a newspaper, "I went into the sporting life for business reasons and for no other. It was a way for a woman in those days to make money, and I made it. I considered myself then and I do now -- as a businesswoman." Her employees, who were among the highest paid women in the United States, "came to me for the same reasons that I hired them. Because there was money in it for all of us."

Other madams ruled major portions of the West. Eleanora Dumont purchased real estate in gold and silver boomtowns all over the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, where she established lucrative brothels, saloons, and gambling houses. Josephine "Chicago Joe" Airey used the proceeds from her brothels to purchase a sizable portion of Helena, Montana's, real estate in the 1870s and 1880s. Lou Graham was not only early Seattle's most prominent madam, she was also one of its wealthiest residents. Graham arrived in Seattle in 1888 and soon opened an immaculately appointed brothel in the Pioneer Square area. To advertise her business, she paraded with her employees on carriages through the city streets. Graham invested heavily in the stock market and in real estate, becoming, according to one historian, "one of the largest landholders in the Pacific Northwest." The "Queen of the Lava Beds" also contributed enormous sums to help establish the Seattle public school system and saved many of the city's elite families from bankruptcy after the panic of 1893. Anna Wilson, the "Queen of the Omaha Underworld," owned a substantial portion of the city's real estate. Toward the end of her life she bequeathed to the city her twenty-five room mansion, which became Omaha's first modern emergency hospital and a communicable-disease treatment center.

It is unlikely that there were more wealthy or powerful black women in nineteenth-century America than Mary Ellen "Mammy" Pleasant and Sarah B. "Babe" Connors. Pleasant was born a slave but became one of the most influential women in early San Francisco. She operated boardinghouses in which wealthy businessmen were paired with prostitutes. With the revenue from her primary business, she invested in mining stock and made high-interest loans to the San Francisco elite. Pleasant also filed suit to desegregate the city's streetcars, making her "the mother of the civil rights movement" in California. Connors's brothels in St. Louis were among the most popular in the Midwest. Known as "the Castle" and "the Palace," they featured luxurious rugs, tapestries, art work, and crystal chandeliers. The parlor of the Palace was famous for its floor, which was made entirely of mirrored glass. Connors herself was always elegantly appointed with drapes of jewelry on her body and gold and diamonds embedded in her teeth. Many of the most famous songs of the ragtime genre -- the principal precursor to jazz -- were invented by Letitia Lulu Agatha "Mama Lou" Fontaine, who performed as the house act at Connors's brothels.

High-end madams were not the only prostitutes who acquired substantial wealth. A middle-class reformer in Virginia City, Nevada, noted with disdain that local prostitutes were "always dressed the richest." The historians Blackburn and Ricards concluded that while prostitutes in Virginia City were not the richest people in town, they "did amass more wealth than most of their customers. In addition, compared with other women of the city, the white prostitutes were well-to-do. This was because virtually none of the married women and very few unmarried women had any money at all. If the prostitutes came West to compete economically with others of their sex, they were successful."

Similarly, historian Paula Petrik found that approximately 60 percent of the prostitutes who worked in Helena, Montana, between 1865 and 1870 "reported either personal wealth or property or both." The town's "fancy ladies" also made 44 percent of the property transactions undertaken by women and acquired all twenty mortgages that were given to women during the period. Most impressive of all were Helena prostitutes' wages compared to male workers in the town. Petrik estimates that the average monthly income of "a fancy lady plying her trade along Wood Street" was $233. By contrast, bricklayers, stone masons, and carpenters earned between $90 and $100, and even bank clerks made only $125 per month. Moreover, "[c]ompared with the $65 monthly wage the highest paid saleswomen received, prostitutes' compensation was royal." At a time when leading feminists were demanding an end to women's economic dependence, the red-light district in Helena was, in Petrik's words, "women's business grounded in women's property and capital."

Today's women attorneys might also find their earliest ancestors among western madams, who regularly appeared in court on their own behalf and won quite frequently. Petrik found a large number of court cases in Helena in which prostitutes brought suit against one another to "settle petty squabbles among them that could not be resolved by the Tenderloin's leaders" or to "challenge men who assaulted, robbed, or threatened them." In half of the cases involving a prostitute's complaint against a man, "the judge or jury found for the female complainants." Petrik discovered in Helena "a singular lack of legal and judicial concern with sexual commerce" before the influx of moral reformers. "[O]fficers of the law arrested no women for prostitution or keeping a disorderly house before 1886, even though the police court was located in the red-light district" and prostitution had been a central part of the town's economy for two decades. The era of legal tolerance coincided with a period in which Helena's prostitutes suffered very little of the self-destructiveness assumed to be common among sex workers. "Not one whore in Helena died by her own hand before 1883," and though the town's prostitutes were "rampant users of alcohol and drugs," there were "no reports of prostitutes dying of alcoholism or drug overdose between 1865 and 1883 in Helena."

Some madams abused their employees or placed them in peonage, but these tended to be the less successful brothel keepers. To attract women in the highly competitive markets of western boomtowns, where red-light districts nearly always included several brothels, most madams not only paid their employees far higher wages than they would find in any other employment, they also provided free birth control, health care, legal assistance, housing, and meals for their employees. Few American workers of either sex in the nineteenth century enjoyed such benefits.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the wealth, power, and ubiquity of prostitutes caused several urban reformers to warn of a "whorearchy" that threatened to undermine the virtues of the nation. Madams led an "under-ground universe" with "a regularly organized community of thieves, who have their laws and regulations," as George Foster put it in his 1850 novel Celio: or, New York Above-ground and Under-ground. In George Ellington's 1869 journalistic account, The Women of New York: or, the Underworld of the Great City, madams were "female fiends of the worst kind, who seem to have lost all the better qualities of human nature." Worse still, they had "entree to the good society of the metropolis" with "the friends and chosen companions of some of the wealthiest and most intellectual men of the city."

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Alice Abbott ~ "Fat Alice"

When the railroad first reached El Paso in the 1880s, it brought a variety of good people and an abundance of savory characters. Among them many "Ladies of the Night".

Known behind her back as "Fat Alice" or "Big Alice", Alice Abbott was about 6' tall and weighed better than 200 pounds. Before long, she established a very popular brothel at 19 South Utah Street and became known as the queen of the red light district.

Located across the street was Alice's competitor, Etta Clark. It's unclear why the two women first became bitter rivals, though Alice was quoted as having said, "Etta Clark was a whore to niggers" ... the ultimate insult in that prejudicial time period.

On 18 April 1886, an argument took place between Alice and one of her girls, Bessie Colvin, who wanted to leave and work for Etta. Bessie sought refuge in Etta’s parlor, with Alice in pursuit. Alice pounded on Etta’s door with her ham-like fists. When Etta finally opened the door, Alice punched her in the face. With great pain and anger, Etta turned and ran to grab a gun. The incident is reported as follows: "The weapon roared its authority, sending a bullet into Alice’s pubic arch. Clutching her groin, Alice screamed: “My God, I’m shot.” She lurched from the hall and staggered down into the street.” Etta shot again but missed. When Alice looked up, she caught Clark with a smile on her face as she went back in her house.

Alice survived the shooting, despite the risk of blood poisoning and chance of dying. Reported by newspapers as the incident as the "Public Arch Shooting", the widely circulated story caused the public to make fun of Alice, adding to her anger and hatred. To add insult to injury, it only took the jury only 15 minutes to find Etta innocent on grounds of self defense. Alice’s humiliation was now complete.

In the early hours of 12 July 1888 Etta Clark’s parlor house caught fire while she and all her girls were asleep. Everyone managed to escape, but the house and everything in it was destroyed. It was later determined that Alice had hired a couple of drunks to start the fire, but gaps in the evidence led to the acquittal of all accused.

Etta and her girls were reduced to the level of street walkers. Her luck changed with the appearance of J.P. Dieter, one of her adoring clients, who built her a new, huge parlor. His wife divorced him and took their children back east. Etta and Dieter lived as husband and wife without ever becoming married.

In February 1890 Alice leased her brothel to Tillie Howard. Alice died of a heart attack on 7 April 1896. She was buried in El Paso's Evergreen Cemetery. Her death went unreported in the papers because of widespread interest in a boxing match and municipal elections.

In 1904, Etta became ill and decided to run her business from the third floor of the Mayar Opera House, which caught fire and burned down in 1905. Etta barely escaped alive and suffered complications from smoke inhalation. In 1908, as a result of those complications, she died during a trip to see her sister in Atlanta.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

Laura Bullion ~ "Rose of the Wild Bunch"

Laura Bullion, daughter of Henry Bullion (a Native American) and Fredy Byler, was born about October 1876 (the exact day is unknown). Most sources indicate she was born in Knickerbocker, Irion, Texas. 

Data in the 1880 Federal Census suggests she might have been born on a farm in the township of Palarm, Faulkner, Arkansas and might have grown up in Tom Green County, Texas. The 1900 Federal Census shows a 23-year-old Laura Bullion, born October 1876 in Arkansas and notes her occupation as "housekeeper" living with her grandparents E. R. & Serena Byler, her aunt Mrs. Mary Allen and her three children at the Byler homestead in Commissioner's Precinct Number 4, Tom Green County, Texas. 

In an arrest report dated 6 November 1901, her age is mentioned as 28. If the birth year of 1876 is correct, she would have been 24 or 25 years of age at that time. Her death certificate states Laura's age as 74 and her date of birth as October 4, 1887. If the birth year of 1876 is correct, she would have been 84 or 85 years of age at the time of death. The certificate is issued under the name Freda Bullion Lincoln, a false identity she assumed when she moved to Memphis, claiming to be the war widow of Maurice Lincoln and making herself about ten years younger than she was.

Laura's father had been an outlaw and was acquainted with outlaws William Carver ("News Carver") and Ben Kilpatrick ("The Tall Texan"), both of whom Laura met when she was around 13 years old. Her aunt, Viana Byler, married Carver in 1891 but she died from fever soon after the marriage. At age 15, Laura began a romance with Carver.

She also worked as a prostitute for a time, until reaching the age of either 16 or 17. It's believed she returned to prostitution from time to time, working mostly in the brothel of Madame Fannie Porter in San Antonio, Texas ... a frequent hideaway for gang members.

When she first became involved with Carver, he was riding with the Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum gang, and Laura wanted to join him. However, he would not allow it at first, and they only saw one another between robberies. While in Utah and on the run from lawmen, Carver became involved with the Wild Bunch gang, led by Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay.

In the early 1890s, she became involved romantically with Ben Kilpatrick ("The Tall Texan"), after Carver began a relationship with a prostitute named Lillie Davis, whom he had met while at Fannie Porter's brothel in San Antonio, Texas. As the gang robbed trains, Laura supported them by selling stolen goods, and making connections that could give the gang steady supplies and horses.

Laura became a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang in the 1890s; her cohorts were fellow outlaws, including the Sundance Kid, "Black Jack" Ketchum, and Kid Curry. For several years in the 1890s, she was romantically involved with outlaw Ben Kilpatrick ("The Tall Texan"), a bank and train robber and acquaintance of her father. Members of the Wild Bunch nicknamed her "Della Rose", a name she came by after meeting Della Moore. She was also referred to as the "Rose of the Wild Bunch". 

By 1901, she was again involved with Carver, as well as occasional involvement with other members of the gang. When Carver was killed by lawmen on 1 April 1901, she was back with Kilpatrick again, and the two fled to Knoxville, Tennessee. Della Moore and Kid Curry met up with them there, and the four stayed together for a number of months, until October, when Della was arrested for passing money linked to one of the gangs robberies.

After the Great Northern Train robbery in 1901, she and Kilpatrick fled east to evade the law and traveled under the names "Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Arnold".

On 6 November 1901, she was arrested on federal charges for "forgery of signatures to banknotes" at the Laclede Hotel in St. Louis. She had $8,500 worth of robbed banknotes in her possession, stolen in the Great Northern train robbery. In the arrest report, Laura's name is filed as "Della Rose" and her aliases are stated to be "Clara Hays" and "Laura Casey & [Laura] Bullion". Her profession as prostitute. 

According to a New York Times article, she was "masquerading as "Mrs. Nellie Rose" at the time of her arrest. The same article also mentions the suspicion that she, "disguised as a boy", might have taken part in a train robbery in Montana. The paper cites Chief of Detectives Desmond: "I wouldn't [sic] think helping to hold up a train was too much for her. She is cool, shows absolutely no fear, and in male attire would readily pass for a boy. She has a masculine face, and that would give her assurance in her disguise." 

On 12 December 1901, Kilpatrick was arrested. Curry escaped capture on 13 December 1901, killing two Knoxville policemen in the process. Laura and Kilpatrick were both convicted of robbery, with Bullion being sentenced to five years in prison, and Kilpatrick receiving a 20-year sentence. She served three and a half years before being released in 1905. Kilpatrick was not released from prison until 1911.

Kilpatrick stayed in contact with Bullion through letters. By the time of his release from prison in 1911, she had become involved with at least four other men, but they never reconnected nor did they ever see one another again. Kilpatrick was killed robbing a train on 13 March 1912. By that time, all the members of the Wild Bunch gang were either in prison, dead or had served a prison sentence and moved on to other things in their lives.

In 1918, Laura moved to Memphis, where she spent the remainder of her life working as a householder and seamstress, and later as a drapery maker, dressmaker and interior designer. In Memphis she used the names "Freda Lincoln", "Freda Bullion Lincoln" and "Mrs. Maurice Lincoln", claiming to be a war widow and her late husband had been Maurice Lincoln. She also made herself ten years younger, claiming to have been born in 1887. 

According to her obituary, Bullion died of heart disease at the Shelby County Hospital at 6:45 p.m. on December 2, 1961. The memorial service was held two days later, at 11:30 a.m. on December 4. She is buried in the Memorial Park Cemetery (Memphis, Tennessee). She was the last surviving member of the Wild Bunch gang. Her bronze grave marker has a border of embossed rose vines and reads:  
Freda Bullion Lincoln
Laura Bullion
The Thorny Rose
1876 - 1961

For a number of years prior to her death, Laura was one of only three people who had actually known the mysterious Etta Place, girlfriend to the Sundance Kid. Place simply disappeared in 1909, following his alleged death in Bolivia. At that same time, a woman named Eunice Gray began operating a brothel in Texas, Gray was often speculated to be Etta Place. Only Laura Bullion, Ann Bassett, and Josie Bassett could have confirmed otherwise. 

Milinda May Bryant ~ Mollie May

Found at Colorado Central Magazine / November 2014

Mollie May - Early Sweetheart of Leadville
by Jan MacKell Collins

It is no secret that prostitutes were some of the most mobile pioneers of the West. The law, family members and lust for money enticed thousands of women to traipse from state to state, town to town, camp to camp. One of the most prominent, well-traveled prostitutes in the West was Mollie May. Born Milinda May Bryant to German and Irish immigrants in about 1850, Mollie was said to have lost her virginity to a “lustful suitor.” By the 1870s, she was working as a prostitute and performer at Jim McDaniels’ Theater in Cheyenne, Wyoming. In 1876, she and McDaniels moved to Deadwood, South Dakota.

The Black Hills Gold Rush and Deadwood were just beginning. In the “Badlands District,” Deadwood’s euphemism for its red-light district, one of Mollie’s admirers was Jim May, a local Black Hills freighter whose brother was the notorious bounty hunter Boone May. Boone and Jim once had an altercation over Mollie at the Gem Theater near the “Badlands.” One brother shot at the other, missed, and hit Mollie instead. Thankfully the bullet hit a steel rib in Mollie’s corset, saving her life.

In her book, Old Deadwood Days, Estelline Bennett describes a similar account of a shoot-out between prostitute Lou Desmond and an unidentified woman. As in Mollie’s story, a bullet struck one of the girls but deflected off her corset. Whether these two events really happened or became a part of one another in the telling is unknown.

State Street, Leadville
[Pictured Right] Leadville’s expansive red-light district included State Street, pictured here around the time Mollie May was in town. Photo courtesy Jan MacKell Collins. 

It is known for sure that during another skirmish, part of Mollie’s ear was bitten off by another Gem Theater prostitute, Fannie Garretson. The dispute was over “Banjo” Dick Brown, who married Fannie in November 1876. The ear-biting incident apparently happened while Mollie, Fannie and Dick were jaunting along in a closed carriage.

Perhaps the fight with Fannie Garretson made Mollie decide to move to Colorado. Upon her arrival, she almost immediately gained a bad reputation in Silver Cliff and Bonanza for running around with an outlaw named Bill Tripp. She also spent some time in Pueblo, where she became known as the girl of gambler Sam Mickey. Sometimes Mollie went by the name "Jennie Mickey."

By 1878, Mollie was in the new boomtown of Leadville. Mollie staked her claim at 555 5th Street in a section of the expansive red-light district. With her was her old friend, Jim McDaniels, who shipped an amazing 40,000 pounds of theater scenery to Leadville and opened a new place called McDaniels’ New Theater.

Mollie did well in Leadville. In 1880 she employed ten girls and two men at her brothel. She also had the only telephone in town. One night, longtime Leadville resident Lewis Lamb “committed suicide” in front of a neighboring bordello. The only witness was a bully Lamb had known from childhood, former marshal Martin Duggan, who had just attempted to run over Lewis with a sleigh he was delivering. It was widely suspected that Lewis had not committed suicide at all, but was actually shot to death by Duggan.

Mindy Lamb, Lewis’ wife, swore revenge on Duggan, promising him: “I shall wear black and mourn this killing until the very day of your death and then, Goddam you, I will dance upon your grave.” The quote was widely circulated, and a few days later Mollie May stopped Mindy on the street. “You don’t know me,” she told Mindy, “but I wanted to tell you that what happened to a decent man like your husband was a dirty rotten shame and I’m really sorry for you.” The women remained friends, often chatting right in front of Mollie’s place.

Also in 1880, Mollie’s old enemy Fannie Brown surfaced. After traveling with Dick Brown during 1878, the couple separated and Fannie – like many other “Black Hillers” seeking greener pastures –wound up in Leadville. In 1879 she performed at McDaniels’ New Theater, an event that reached the newspapers at Deadwood. Perhaps fearing Mollie, Fannie left Leadville shortly after her performance. Mollie also made the papers again when a raid netted seventeen prostitutes on the row and two young men jumped from her second-story window to avoid arrest.

Mollie also had altercations with other prostitutes, including her neighbor, Sallie Purple. The Leadville Democrat reported that the women got into an argument. Insults were exchanged between their brothels, then gunfire. The battle ended two hours later with no injuries. “Both parties are resting on their arms,” chortled the Democrat, “and awaiting daybreak to resume hostilities.”

They say Mollie sold her house in about 1881 to the city, which used it for a city hall. Mollie’s new brothel was among the finest houses in town, and silver millionaire Horace Tabor was rumored to be a silent partner. Mollie continued dealing with the everyday issues of her profession. In 1882, she charged Annie Layton with stealing a dress. The argument escalated in court when Annie accused Mollie of running a house of ill fame, and Mollie retaliated by revealing that Annie was employed as a prostitute. Ultimately, all charges were dropped.

Next, Mollie became the subject of yet another scandal when news circulated that she was buying a nine-month-old baby named Ella from a couple known as Mr. and Mrs. Moore. The madam stayed silent until a local newspaper voiced concerns about her intentions. In May, Mollie contacted the Leadville Herald and gave an exclusive interview, explaining that the child belonged to a decent woman who was too poor to care for her. Mollie was caring for the baby until the mother could contact relatives for assistance. She ended the interview by angrily reminding the general public of all the charities she donated to on a regular basis.

Despite Mollie’s claim, Ella’s mother never reclaimed her child and Mollie adopted her. She was called Ella Moore, even though Mollie said the Moores were not the child’s parents. As soon as she reached school age, Ella was sent off to St. Scholastica’s Institute in Highland, Illinois. Her guardian was listed as one Robert Buck.

Mollie May died April 11, 1887 from what the Leadville Weekly Chronicle called “neuralgia of the heart.” Her funeral was one of the largest processions in Leadville, and even Mindy Lamb insisted on attending. The services took place in Mollie’s brothel before a $3,000 hearse and eight carriages accompanied Mollie to Leadville’s Evergreen Cemetery. Her obituary, which circulated as far away as Pueblo, stated, “She was a woman who, with all her bad qualities, was much given to charity and was always willing to help the poor and unfortunate.”

Mollie’s estate was valued at $25,000, with $8,000 in diamonds. Her personal property sold for $1,500, and her house was purchased by one Anna Ferguson for $3,600. The papers speculated the money would go to six-year-old Ella Moore, but little else is known about the child. In 1901, the Leadville Herald published an article about 20-year-old Lillian Moore, adopted daughter of Mollie May, who attempted suicide in Leadville. Doctors saved her life and she was last seen on a train headed to Denver where, like so many others, she disappeared without a trace.

Jan MacKell Collins is an author and historian who writes about the West. She currently lives in Arizona and is working on a new book about prostitution history in Prescott.

Dora Bolshaw ~ "Black Hills Madam"


Dora Bolshaw, later known as Dora DuFran, was the daughter of Joseph John and Isabella Neal (Cummings) Bolshaw. She was born on 16 November 1868 in Liverpool, England. Dora emigrated to the United States with her parents around 1869. The family settled first at Bloomfield, New Jersey and moved to Lincoln, Nebraska in 1876-1877. 

An extremely good looking woman in her youth, she got her start in prostitution around the age of 13 or 14. She then became a dance hall girl, calling herself Amy Helen Bolshaw. 

The gold rush hit Deadwood, South Dakota when she was around 15. It was there that Dora promoted herself as a Madam and began operating a brothel. She coined the term "cathouse" after having Charlie Utter bring her a wagon of cats.
In early 1876, Utter and his brother, Steve, took a 30-wagon wagon train of prospectors, gamblers, 180 prostitutes and assorted hopefuls from Georgetown, Colorado to the gold rush in Deadwood, South Dakota. Like many wagon trains, the wagons were Shutler wagons which were notable for "gaudy paint jobs". In Cheyenne, Wyoming Wild Bill Hickok became partners with Utter in the train, and in Fort Laramie, Wyoming, Calamity Jane also joined up. The train arrived in Deadwood in July 1876, and Utter began a lucrative express delivery service to Cheyenne, charging 25 cents to deliver a letter and often carrying as many as 2,000 letters per 48-hour trip. Dora picked up several girls from Charlie's train.
Dora picked up several girls from Charlie's train and, from time to time, Old West personality Martha Jane Burke (Calamity Jane) was in her employ. Dora's main competition in Deadwood was Madam Mollie Johnson.

She had several businesses over the years and demanded that her girls practice good hygiene and dress well. Her most popular brothel was called "Diddlin' Dora's", located on Fifth Avenue in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Diddlin' Dora's advertised itself as 'Three D's ... Dining, Drinking and Dancing ... a place where you can bring your mother.' Though the cowboys frequented the popular place, most just wanted to 'get down to business,' with at least one man remarking, 'I wouldn't want my mother to know I had ever been there.' Dora's other brothels in South Dakota and Montana were located in Lead, Miles City, Sturgis and Deadwood. 

While in Deadwood, Dora married Joseph DuFran, "a personable gentleman gambler" who helped grow her business. After her husband's death, she moved the business to Rapid City, South Dakota where she continued having success as a brothel owner. She died of heart failure on 5 August 1934. Her pet parrot Fred and husband Joseph are buried with her at Mount Moriah.

The Bird Cage Theatre

The Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona was opened on 26 December 1881 by William J. "Billy" Hutchinson. Hutchison, a variety performer, originally intended to present respectable family shows like that he'd seen in San Francisco that were thronged by large crowds. After the Theatre opened, they hosted a Ladies Night for the respectable women of Tombstone, who could attend for free. But the economics of Tombstone didn't support their aspirations. They soon canceled the Ladies Night and began offering baser entertainment that appealed to the rough mining crowd.

Once inside, customers could buy a drink at the long bar. The bar was made in Pittsburgh, PA, shipped on the Star of India around the tip of south America to Mexico, then by wagon train the rest of the way. There's a 45 caliber bullet hole with the bullet still intact in one of the posts in the bar. 

Across from the bar hung a painting of Fatima, a buxom belly-dancer in an exotic Oriental outfit. The painting was given as a thank-you gift from Fatima to the Bird Cage Theatre for helping her to start her career. It is still hanging on the wall across from the bar. The canvas has six bullet holes and a knife slash in it. 

The main hall contained an orchestra pit and a 15' x 15' stage about 5' above the main floor. The stage was lit by a row of gas jets along the front side. There were 14 cages or boxes on two balconies located on either side of the main hall. These boxes, also known as cribs, featured drapes that patrons could draw while entertained by prostitutes. A dumbwaiter at the end of the bar was used to hoist up the whiskey, beer and cigars to the male customers in the cribs.

Between acts, the dancing girls in short dresses and low-cut necklines served drinks and offered sex. Beer was 50 cents on the main floor and $1.00 in the cages. The ladies received a percentage of all the drinks they sold.

In the basement, a poker room was the site of the longest-running poker game in history. Played continuously 24 hours a day for eight years, five months and three days, legend has it that as much as $10,000,000 changed hands during the marathon game, with the house retaining 10%. Some of the participants were Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson, Diamond Jim Brady, George Hearst and Adolphus Busch of the Busch Brewery. The basement also had two more ornate and expensive bordello rooms with more high dollar escorts. Josephine Sarah Marcus worked as both a performer and escort in the bordello room. That is where she met Wyatt Earp and they began their love affair. She eventually became his third wife and they were together for over 47 years.

The Bird Cage Theatre operated continuously, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 8 years, from 1881 to 1889. It's reputation prompted the New York Times to report in 1882 that "the Bird Cage Theatre is the wildest, wickedest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast". More than 120 bullet holes are found throughout the building.

One of the first acts at the Birdcage was Mademoiselle De Granville (real name, Alma Hayes), also known as the "Female Hercules" and "the woman with the iron jaw". She performed feats of strength, specializing in picking up heavy objects with her teeth. Other acts included the Irish comic duo Burns and Trayers (John H. Burns and Matthew Trayers), comic singer Irene Baker, Carrie Delmar, a serious opera singer, and comedian Nola Forest. Lizette, "The Flying Nymph", flew from one side of the theatre to the other on a rope. One of the more elaborate acts featured "The Human Fly" in which women dressed in theatrical tights and brief costumes walked across the stage ceiling upside down. This act lasted until one of the clamps supporting the performers failed and she fell to her death.

Entertainment included masquerade balls featuring cross-dressing entertainers like comedians David Waters and Will Curlew who appeared in outrageous female costumes, sang vulgar ballads and performed outlandish antics, bawdy skits. Each evening entertainment began with a variety show at 9:00 p.m. and lasted until 1:00 a.m. or later. When the stage show ended, the wooden benches where the audience sat were stacked on the side. The orchestra performed and the audience danced and drank until the sun rose. Miners could drink and dance all night if they chose.

In March 1882, miners in the Grand Central Mine hit water at 620'. The flow wasn't at first large enough to stop work, but constant pumping with a 4" pump was soon insufficient. The silver ore deposits they sought were soon underwater. Hutchinson sold the Birdcage to Hugh McCrum and John Stroufe and they sold it again in January 1886 to Joseph W. "Joe" Bignon and his wife, Matilda "Big Minnie" Quigley.

Bignon had managed the Theatre Comique in San Francisco and performed as a black face minstrel and clog dancer. He refurbished the building and renamed it the Elite Theatre. He hired new acts interspersed with the bawdy entertainment the miners were used to. Matilda was 6' tall and weighed 230 pounds. She wore pink tights, sang, danced, played the piano, and sometimes acted as madam to the prostitutes in the cribs and bouncer.

The large Cornish engines brought in by the mine owners kept the water pumped out of the mines for a few more years, but on 26 May 1886, the Grand Central Mine hoist and pumping plant burned. When the price of silver slid to 90 cents an ounce a few months later, the remaining mines laid off workers. Many residents of Tombstone left and the Bird Cage closed in 1892.

The building was not opened again until it was purchased in 1934. The new owners were delighted to find that almost nothing had been disturbed in all those years. It has been a tourist attraction ever since, and is open to the general public year-round.

Jennie Bauter ~ "Belgian Jennie"

Center / In Black Dress
Jennie Bauters (1862–1905) operated brothels in the Territory from 1896-1905. She was an astute businesswoman with an eye for real estate appreciation, and a way with the town fathers of Jerome regarding taxes and restrictive ordinances. She was not always sitting pretty; her brothels were burned in a series of major fires that swept the business district; her girls were often drug addicts. As respectability closed in on her, in 1903 she relocated to the mining camp of Acme. In 1905, she was murdered by a man who had posed as her husband.

Mary Ann Boyer ~ "Madam Damnable"

Mary Ann Boyer was born in 1821 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In 1851 she met (and may have married) Captain David W. "Bull" Conklin. Conklin commanded a whaling ship in Alaska, at the time Russia. In 1853, he unceremoniously dropped Mary Ann in Port Townsend and sailed away to Alaska.

She eventually moved to the village of Seattle, where she hooked up with Leonard Felker, Captain of the brig Franklin Adams, and   became the boss of his hostelry. She ran an efficient hotel with clean sheets and good food. During the day she rented out unused rooms for the Territorial Court.

Her salty language became legendary, not only in Seattle but among West Coast travelers. It was said that her profanity was equally colorful in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese and German. Mary Ann's reputation grew and Felker establishment became known as "The Conklin House". In later years she earned the name "Madame Damnable" because she ran a brothel in the upstairs of her hotel. (Mary Ann's hotel burned to the ground in the Great Seattle fire of 1889.)

At the time of the Battle of Seattle (26 January 1856), sailors from the sloop-of-war U.S. Decatur wanted to improve Seattle's defenses by building a road that passed her hotel and incidentally threatened the bushes that assured the discretion of her well-to-do customers. According to memoirs of the sloop's navigator, later Rear-Admiral Thomas Stowell Phelps:

"...the moment our men appeared upon the scene, with three dogs at her heels, and an apron filled with rocks, this termagant would come tearing from the house, and the way stones, oaths, and curses flew was something fearful to contemplate, and, charging like a fury, with the dogs wild to flesh their teeth in the detested invaders, the division invariably gave way before the storm, fleeing, officers and all, as if old Satan himself was after them."

Mary Ann died in 1873 and was buried in the Seattle Cemetery. In 1884, its graves were removed to other cemeteries and the site was turned into Denny Park. According to legend, when her coffin was dug up, it was unreasonably heavy. When the lid was removed, it was found, it was found that her body had somehow "turned to stone" with all features intact. The authenticity of this legend is difficult to verify. You decide ...

“Removing the Dead.” August 22, 1884. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
A reporter of the Post-Intelligencer called upon Mr. O.C. Shorey, the contractor for removing bodies, monuments and stone work from the old city cemetery to the new burying ground, adjoining the Masonic cemetery, and asked him for anything of interest in connection therewith that has so far come under his observation. Mr. Shorey said: “I have been at work about three weeks, and have removed so far 120 bodies together with most of the monuments and stone work, and have, I think, over half of the work done. I have been laying off for a few days, waiting for the Catholics to get their grounds in readiness for the reception of the bodies of those of that faith. I have also delayed some in order to give all friends of deceased persons an opportunity to select new lots, and to give all such friends an opportunity to be present during the removal of the remains of their friends and loved ones.

“Last week among the remains taken up and removed were those of Mrs. Mary Conklin, who died and was buried eleven years ago, at the age of 70 years and 10 months. During her life she was known by the old settlers as ‘Mother Damnable,’ and many will remember her by that name. We discovered that the coffin was very heavy, weighing at least 400 pounds and it took six men to lift it out of the grave. On removing the lid to the coffin we found that she had turned to stone. Her form was full sized and perfect, the ears, finger nails and hair being all intact. Her features were, however, somewhat disfigured. Covering the body was a dark dust, but after that was removed the form was as white as marble and as hard as stone.

When we took up the coffin under the headstone marked “William Carnes,” who will be remembered as a large butcher, who died some ten years ago, we found the form of a small, delicate woman, with her clothing on and watchchain about her neck. The way I account for this is as follows: Some time after Carnes died, his friends had a stone made to mark his grave, and the parties employed to set the stone placed it over the wrong grave.

When the remains of James McKay, the tanner, who died ten or eleven years ago, were taken up, they were found well preserved, though the features were unrecognizable. All the graves, at certain seasons of the year, are full of water and the coffins float in their boxes. The action of the water has turned most of the bodies black. In a greater number of the coffins there is nothing but a few bones. The coffins are mostly sound, and before removing them we place them in new cedar boxes. So far we have found nothing of an offensive nature so far as smell is concerned, most of the bodies having been buried so long that the flesh has either all turned to dust or been eaten by the worms. I shall take up and remove all the bodies that can be found, including those who sleep in unmarked graves within the Pottersfield, but shall not interfere with the Chinese graves, as the Chinamen desire to take up the bones of their dead and ship them to the Flowery Kingdom.

Many graves have been sadly neglected, and I fear that some will be consequently overlooked. I wish you would tell the people again that I am anxious to hear from all those who have friends buried in the old cemetery, and have them point out the graves to me, especially those that are unmarked. A forest fire ran through the cemetery two years ago, and burned up a number of wooden grave marks, which adds to the difficulty of finding some of the graves. The new cemetery is located on a fine site between the two lakes, and can be made a beautiful burying ground with proper care and attention.”