"Madame Moustache" was the nickname of Eleanor Dumont (also known as Eleonore Alphonsine Dumant), a notorious gambler on the American Western Frontier during the California Gold Rush. Her nickname was due to the appearance of a line of dark hair on her upper lip.
She arrived in San Francisco in 1850, claiming to be the only daughter of a French Viscount who’d returned to the South of France after Napoleon’s fall to find his estate and finances in ruins. To restore the family fortune, the Viscount supposedly arranged her marriage to an overbearing husband. After an affair with a Lieutenant ended in her virtual imprisonment in a French chateau, she contrived to escape and, following a series of adventures which she never disclosed, found herself in California where she presented herself as Emiliene Dumont and took a job dealing cards at the Bella Union.
In Nevada City, California, she opened up the gambling parlor named "Vingt-et-un" on Broad Street. Only well-kept men were allowed in, and no women save herself. All the men admired her for her beauty and charm, but she kept them all a nice distance away. She was a very private lady, so she flirted, but only to keep the boys coming. Men came from all around to see the woman dealer - this was rare then - and considered it a privilege. The parlor found much success, so she decided to go into business with Lucky Dave Tobin, an experienced gambler. They opened up Dumont's Place, which was very successful until the gold started to dry up in Nevada City. But Tobin was no gentleman; he beat her and tried to take over the gambling parlor. She eventually came to her senses, fired him, sold the business and decamped to Virginia City, Nevada.
Over the next few years, Eleanor rarely stayed long in one place, moving from boomtown to boomtown. She was described as “a small woman, one of the kind who would be called little, with a form almost perfect and with a grace of movement rarely equaled. Her complexion was strongly brunette, her hair being jet back, and her eyes, though large, as is common with the women of southern France, were wholly lacking in that dreamy expression associated with the daughters of the south, both on the contrary were sparkling in their jetty blackness.”
At her gambling parlor in Banneck, Montana, she earned the nickname 'Moustache Madame' from a disgruntled miner who’d lost his temper and a bundle at her table. The nickname didn’t prevent cattleman Jack McKnight from winning her affections. With Eleanor's capital, the two bought a cattle ranch outside of Carson City, Nevada. But McKnight didn’t stick around very long; he was gone a few months later, after cleaning out Eleanor's bank account and taking all her jewelry and selling the ranch. When McKnight was found a few weeks later filled with bullets from a double barreled shotgun, the local sheriff didn’t investigate too closely.
The 'Moustache Madame' was now penniless. She moved around from city to city, gambling and building up her money again. But, as her age started to increase, the beauty that once entranced miners faded. The lovely petite brunette of the 1850s turned into a dowdy dowager, the mustache grew and got darker, and it was no longer her good looks that brought men to her card table. She still drew crowds, though, and had a long-standing reputation for dealing fair.
She added prostitution to her repertoire during the later years and became a "madame" of a brothel in the 1860s. To promote her business, she would parade her girls around the town in carriages, showing off their beauty in broad daylight, much to the gasping of the 'proper' women.
Her last stop was Bodie, California. On 7 September 1879, a friend loaned Eleanor $300 to stake her in a card game. But she misjudged a play and suddenly owed a lot of money. Despondent, she wandered into the desert and was found dead the following morning of a morphine overdose, an apparent suicide.
Eleanor's grave still stands in Bodie, California. Her funeral was attended by friends from as far away as Carson City.
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