Wicked Women
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Wicked Women
Wicked Women
Notorious, Mischievous, and Wayward Ladies from the Old West
Chris Enss
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Copyright © 2015 by Chris Enss
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ISBN 978-1-4930-0801-8 (paperback)
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For Big Nose Kate, who gave as good as she got from Doc Holliday
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Libby Thompson: Squirrel Tooth Alice
Kitty LeRoy: The Deadly Paramour
Tessie Wall: Barbary Coast Madam
Lottie Deno: The Cosmopolitan Gambler
Julia Bulette: Siren of the Silver Town
Alice Ivers: Deadwood Cardsharp
Jennie Rogers: Queen of the Denver Row
Eleanora Dumont: The Twenty-One Dealer
Madam Harriet: A Curious Criminal Case
Minnie Smith: A Violent Hand
Jessie Hayman: The San Francisco Favorite
Gertrudis Maria Barceló: The Evening Angel
Josie Washburn: Nebraska’s Reluctant Madam
Kate O’Leary: The Redheaded Rival
Martha Jane Canary: The Black Hills Calamity
Kate Horony: The Hungarian Madam
Jenny Rowe: The Faro Bandit
Florence Mabel Dedrick: Our Sister of the Street
Belle Starr: The Outlaw Gambler
Jessie Reeves and Cad Thompson: Scarlet Ladies in Texas and Nevada
Belle Siddons: The Reformed Spy
Mattie Silks: Denver’s Red Light Royalty
Belle Ryan Cora: The Loyal Gambler
Rosa May: The Outcast’s Friend
Laura Bell McDaniel: Courtesan of Colorado City
Mary Hamlin: Mary the Owl
Ella Watson: Wyoming Cattle Baroness
Rose Ellis: Last of the Old West Madams
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Chasing down the history of the wicked women of America’s Old West has been a daunting but rewarding task. I have depended constantly upon the historians and photo archivists from Maine to Montana to complete this volume.
I am sincerely grateful to Chrystal Carpenter Burke at the Arizona Historical Society for going out of her way to provide me with some of the rarely seen pictures of the lady gamblers included in this volume. The Historical Society of New Mexico and the State Records Center and Archives department in Santa Fe were most helpful in supplying much of the information needed to write about Gertrudis Maria Barceló. The staff at the California History Room in Sacramento is always attentive and kind and makes visiting the library a true joy.
I appreciate the assistance of Jerry Bryant at the Adams Museum and House in Deadwood, South Dakota, and that of Matthew Reitzal at the South Dakota State Historical Society. Special thanks to Sara Keckeisen at the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka for generously giving her time and research talent as well.
The historians at the Nevada County Historical Library and Searls Library helped locate records on Eleanora Dumont and Texas Tommy. The staff members at each of the aforementioned locations were generous with their time and extremely patient. Their assistance is greatly appreciated.
Thanks most especially to my brilliant editor, Erin Turner. I’m much obliged for all you’ve done over the years.
Introduction
The effect of vice upon the destiny of the expanding western frontier was considered by some religious and political leaders in the mid-1850s to be a sign of a rotten and decaying civilization. In 1856 Methodist pastor John M. Chivington told a congregation in Nebraska that “the extravagant development of immorality, particularly the development of immoral women given to gambling, whiskey drinking and prostitution, marks the decadence of a potentially great nation.” Ernest A. Bell, the secretary of the Illinois Vigilance Association, maintained that “from the day the serpent lured the first woman in the garden there have been few days and nights when some daughter of Eve’s has not been deceived into a wicked life by some serpent or other. It has not changed and will not change.”
In 1849 women of easy virtue found wicked lives west of the Mississippi when they followed fortune hunters seeking gold and land in an unsettled territory. Prostitutes and female gamblers hoped to capitalize on the vices of the intrepid pioneers.
According to records at the California State Historical Library, more than half of the working women in the West during the 1870s were prostitutes. At that time madams—those women who owned, managed, and maintained brothels—were generally the only women out west who appeared to be in control of their own destinies. For that reason alone, the prospect of a career in the “oldest profession” must have seemed promising—at least at the outset.
Often referred to as “sporting women” and “soiled doves,” prostitutes generally ranged in age from seventeen to twenty-five, although girls as young as fourteen were sometimes hired. Women over twenty-eight years of age were generally considered too old to be prostitutes.
Rarely, if ever, did working women use their real names. To avoid trouble with the law as they traveled from town to town and to protect their true identities, many of these women adopted colorful new handles like Contrary Mary, Little Gold Dollar, Lazy Kate, and Honolulu Nell. The vicinities in which their businesses were located were also given distinctive names. Bordellos and parlor houses typically thrived in the part of a city known as “the half world,” “the badlands,” “the tenderloin,” “the twilight zone,” or “the red-light district.”
The term “red-light district” originated in Kansas. As a way of discouraging would-be intruders, brazen railroad workers around Dodge City began hanging their red brakemen’s lanterns outside their doors as a signal that they were in the company of a lady of the evening. The colorful custom was quickly adopted by many ladies and their madams.
Generally speaking, a prostitute’s class was determined by her location and her clientele. High-priced prostitutes plied their trade in parlor houses. These immense, beautiful homes were well furnished and lavishly decorated. The women who worked at such posh houses were impeccably dressed, pampered by personal maids, and protected by the ambitious madams who managed the business. In general, parlor houses were very profitable. Madams kept repeat customers interested by importing women from France, Russia, England, and the East Coast of the United States. These ladies could earn more than $25 a night. The madams received a substantial portion of the proceeds, which were often used to improve the parlor house or to purchase similar houses.
The lifestyle was, without a doubt, a dangerous one, and many women despised being a part of the underworld profession. As Nebraska madam and prostitute Josie Washburn noted in 1896: “We are there because we must have bre
ad. The man is there because he must have pleasure; he has no other necessity for being there; true if we were not there the men would not come. But we are not permitted to be anywhere else.”
Entertaining numerous men often resulted in assault, unwanted pregnancies, venereal disease, and even death. Some prostitutes escaped the hell of the trade by committing suicide. Some drank themselves to death; others overdosed on laudanum. Botched abortions, syphilis, and other diseases claimed many of their lives as well.
In the late 1860s a concern for the physical condition of prostitutes—and moreover, for the effect their poor health was having on the community at large—was finally addressed. Government officials, alerted to the spread of infectious illnesses, decided to take action against women of ill repute. At a public meeting in New York City, a bill was introduced that aimed to curtail the activities of prostitutes who did not pass health exams. The goal of the bill was to stop the advance of what morally upright citizens termed the “social evil.”
A March 14, 1867, New York Times article reported on the proceedings:
The committee on public health today reported Mr. Jacob’s bill for further suppression of prostitution. It was amended, at the suggestion of the author, by providing for the medical inspection of all females in registered houses and the detention of those diseased in a retreat under the control of the Board of Health.
During the morning large numbers of persons representing the houses of ill fame congregated in the cloak room, bitterly opposing the bill and attempting to smother it. But Dr. Jacob and his associates on the committee stood firm and reported the bill. It will be pushed forward at the earliest possible moment. It provides a heavy penalty upon all persons who let and keep houses for unlawful purposes, of the description named, the penalties being a lien upon the property. The Police Commissioners are directed to cause a registration to be made of all houses of prostitution and of the inmates in them. The Board of Health is directed to make thorough periodical sanitary inspections of the registered places and to remove all diseased persons in them to a “retreat,” which they are directed to provide.
The bill receives the endorsement of both the police and health authorities. Another bill has been introduced and is now before the committee on state charitable institutions, which proposes to license the houses, and appoint a commission for that purpose. This measure, it is understood, is backed by the parties interested in the business of prostitution and is not likely to be favorably considered.
As time went on, houses of ill repute and the prostitutes who worked in them came under constant attack from outraged citizens who insisted the brothels be shut down. Madams hired police to protect their girls and their businesses from forced closures by private citizens. Having such safety measures in place cost madams an initiation fee of $300 to $500. The monthly payment for continued support was $30 to $50. Additionally, expensive fines—ranging from $750 to $900 an offense—were levied against madams who operated houses without a license.
Although prostitution was far from being socially acceptable, it was viewed by many as a necessary evil. The profession was tolerated for two important reasons. First, the public believed it prevented randy cowboys and miners from raping decent women. Second, given that new mothers were expected to refrain from having sex while breastfeeding—and those children were not completely weaned until they were two years old—it was commonly accepted that husbands in such situations often sought satisfaction in the arms of ladies of easy virtue.
Still, prostitutes and madams were criticized and looked down upon by “God-fearing” men and women who were infiltrating the West in ever-increasing numbers. A few brave souls dared to defend the “fallen angels,” chastising those who passed judgment on them. Some even had poems published in local newspapers expressing their thoughts on the matter. One such defender was miner John Brantingham, whose verses appeared in a 1901 Colorado newspaper. His words expressed the feelings of many citizens who benefited from the benevolence of the women of ill fame: “There is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us. That it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.”
Despite the moral objections to prostitution, madams and their entourages were often greeted with shouts of joy when they first arrived in mining camps. Their presence in the sparsely populated West was cause for celebration among many pioneer men. “Public women” performed a variety of services for lonely men, and, in the absence of the men’s wives, they offered much-needed comfort and companionship. It was not unusual for these shady ladies to be treated as friends and confidants by their customers.
Fallen women learned to live with the negative social stigma associated with their trade. They survived the rough, lawless men in their company and the gossip of “God-fearing” women, and strongly defended themselves whenever the occasion arose.
Washburn chose to stand up to critics of her profession in a series of published articles. She blasted the hypocrisy of politicians who sought to eliminate prostitution while continuing to patronize parlor houses. Dodge City’s Squirrel Tooth Alice used a revolver instead of a pen to ward off violent, hotheaded patrons. Madam Rose Ellis of Grass Valley, California, was always armed but decided to battle the residents who thought she was evil incarnate by giving generously to the poor in the community.
The picture of the early American West would not be complete without the image of a fashionably dressed madam standing at the top of saloon stairs and surveying the activity below. All eyes watched as she stepped down into her domain to make sure the women in her care were showing clients a good time. Some madams would entertain customers by dealing a hand of poker, but that job was often reserved for those ladies who were professional cardsharps.
The life of a professional gambler was unsettling and speculative. Most gamblers rode the circuit with the seasons. In the summer the big play was in the northern mining camps, and during the winter the southern towns provided the richest activity. Women gamblers were a rarity, and the most successful lady gamblers possessed stunning good looks that helped disarm aggressive opponents and gave them something pretty to admire as they lost their money.
Throughout the history of the early gaming days of the Old West, women proved they were just as capable as men at dealing cards and throwing dice, and they brought both pleasure and heartache to the miners of the gold and silver camps. Lady gamblers such as Eleanora Dumont saw themselves simply as businesswomen with a talent to offer the public. Players flocked to Madame Dumont’s entertainments, their money drawn from their pockets as they indulged in their all-absorbing passion for games of chance. Gertrudis Maria Barceló owned her own gambling house in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she catered to the rich and sophisticated in her pristine establishment. Cardsharps such as Kitty LeRoy flitted from Texas to California and South Dakota, dealing hands at rowdy saloons from El Paso to Deadwood. The gambling den LeRoy eventually owned was well known for the violence of its patrons, one of whom shot and killed her.
The lives and careers of a number of lady gamblers were cut short either at the mercy of a cowboy who resented losing to a woman or by their own hand. Legendary Belle Starr was gunned down by an unknown assailant some historians speculate was a riverboat gambler she humiliated at the poker table. Colorado cardsharp Minnie Smith found life dealing blackjack to be unbearably lonely and killed herself at the age of forty-five.
Cardsharps were looked down upon by polite, upstanding citizens, as was gambling as a whole. The women who specifically ran gambling parlors were accused of being many things, including thieves, home wreckers, and prostitutes. Along with roulette, craps, and poker, their activities were noted as the chief reason for the downfall of morality. By 1860 the games of faro and roulette were banned in California. Gamblers, both male and female, were being forced out of the “profession.”
At one time or another, all the women included in this volume were living on the fringes of the la
w. Civic groups opposing gambling on moral grounds fought to make it illegal. Those high rollers in ball gowns who refused to comply with the law found creative ways to keep the bets alive. Belle Siddons conducted business from inside an oversize wagon that could be moved whenever the authorities came near. Belle Cora disguised her illegal activities to look like simple neighborhood parities. Alice Ivers, better known as Poker Alice, took up the profession in 1865 and continued in the business for more than sixty years. Government mandates against gambling did not stop the notorious faro dealer from playing the game. She died broke at the age of seventy-nine. “I gambled away fortunes,” she once told a friend, “but I had a ball doing it.”
Whether they were throwing dice or shuffling cards, enterprising women bet on their own gambling talents and secured a place for themselves in Old West history. Notable female gamblers were few in number, but they left an indelible mark on the history of the Old West. Soiled doves left their mark as well. Wicked Women: Notorious, Mischievous, and Wayward Ladies from the Old West examines the stories of these resourceful but much-maligned women whose combined adventures offer a colorful and often-overlooked portrait of the early days of the West.
Libby Thompson
Squirrel Tooth Alice
“She wasn’t a coward; she wasn’t a weakling; and she sure wasn’t average.”
Thelma Thompson Wilson, Squirrel Tooth Alice’s great-granddaughter, 1999
Libby Thompson twirled gracefully around the dance floor of the Sweetwater Saloon in Sweetwater, Texas. A banjo and piano player performed a clumsy rendition of the house favorite, “Sweet Betsy from Pike.” Libby made a valiant effort to match her talent with the musician’s limited skills. The rough crowd around her was not interested in the out-of-tune playing; their eyes were fixed on the billowing folds of her flaming-red costume. The rowdy men hoped to catch a peek at Libby’s shapely, bare legs underneath the yards of fabric on her skirt. Libby was careful to let them see only enough to keep them interested.