Journal Notes

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A tall, hump-shouldered man with gray, bushy hair and a hangdog look on his long, lumpy face pulled a stack of chips from the middle of the poker table toward him. Minnie Smith, the gambler who had dealt the winning hand, scowled at the player as he collected his earnings. “You’re sure packin’ a heavy load of luck, friend,” Minnie said in a low, clipped tone.

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” the man replied. “You may be right at that,” Minnie snapped back. She pushed back from the table a bit and eyed the bullwhip curled in her lap. The man gave her a sly grin, “You’re not sore about losing?” he asked. “No,” Minnie responded calmly. “I get mighty sore about cheating though.” A tense silence filled the air as Minnie and the gambler stared down each other.

In the split second it took the man to jump up and reach for his gun, Minnie had snapped her whip and disarmed him. In the process of jerking the weapon out of his hand, a breastplate holdout that had been tucked inside his jacket sleeve dropped onto the floor. The man looked on in horror as the face cards attached to the hidden pocket scattered around him.

“I hate a cheat,” Minnie snarled. All eyes were on the dealer as she reared back and let the whip fly. After a few painful strikes, the man dropped to his knees and desperately tried to find cover from the continued beating. Minnie was relentless and finally had to be subdued by the other card players around her. The gambler was helped off the floor and escorted to the town doctor.

That kind of violent exchange wasn’t unusual in the rowdy railroad town of Colorado City, Colorado, in 1887. What made the event unique, however, was that a woman was the aggressor. The public display further enhanced the quick-tempered reputation of the madam and sometimes gambler, Minnie Smith. There were very few in and around the area that hadn’t heard of her.

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The cold, gray January sky above Virginia City, Nevada, in 1867 unleashed a torrent of sleet on a slow-moving funeral procession traveling along the main thoroughfare of town. Several members of the volunteer fire department, Virginia Engine Company Number One, were first in a long line of mourners following a horse drawn carriage transporting the body of soiled dove Julia Bulette. Playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” the Nevada militia band shuffled behind the hearse. Black wreaths and streamers hung from the balconies of the buildings along the route which the remains of the beloved thirty-five-year-old woman were escorted. Miners who knew Julia wept openly. Out of respect for the deceased woman, all the saloons were closed. Plummeting temperatures and icy winds eventually drove most funeral-goers inside their homes and businesses before Julia was lowered into the ground.

Julia Bulette was murdered on January 19, 1867, at 11:30 in the evening in her home on North D Street in Virginia City. The fair but frail prostitute told her neighbor and best friend Gertrude Holmes she was expecting company but did not specify whom the company might be. Twelve hours later Gertrude discovered Julia’s lifeless body in bed. She had been beaten and strangled. Gertrude told the authorities that Julia was lying in the center of the bed with the blankets pulled over her head and that the sheets under her frame were smooth. She told the police that it appeared as though no one had ever been in the bed with Julia.

The authorities believed the scene had been staged. Marks on Julia’s body and tears on the pillow used to smother her indicated she struggled with her attacker. The murderer then set the room to look as though nothing was out of the ordinary. He covered Julia’s body in such a way that, at a passing glance, she would merely appear to be asleep. It had fooled the handyman she had employed to come in and build a fire for her each day. When the gentleman entered Julia’s home at eleven in the morning, he believed she was sleeping. He explained to law enforcement officers that he was quiet as he went about his work and left when the job was done. A search of the modest home Julia rented revealed that many of her possessions were missing. The citizens of Virginia City were outraged by the crime.

Julia Bulette was born in London, England, in 1832. She arrived in Virginia City, Nevada, in 1863. Men in the bustling, silver mining community supported several sporting women, and Julia was no exception. She was an independent contractor. She did not work as a madam of a house of ill repute managing other women in the trade. She had a few regular customers including Thomas Peasley. Peasley owned a local saloon and was known to be Julia’s favorite paramour. In addition to running a business, Peasley was a volunteer firefighter. Julia’s interest in the Virginia Engine Company Number One began with him. She supported them monetarily when she could and cheered them on whenever they were called to a job. In recognition of her service, she was presented with a handsome feminine rendition of a fireman’s uniform. It consisted of a fireman’s shield, front shirt, belt, and helmet embossed with the insignia of Virginia Engine Company Number One. Julia was the only woman who was an honorary member of the volunteer force.

To learn more about soiled doves like Julia Bulette read

An Open Secret: The Story of Deadwood’s Most Notorious Bordellos

An Open Secret: The Story of Deadwood’s Most Notorious Bordellos is a top recommendation for American history library collections interested in 19th century events in general and South Dakota history in particular.

It narrows the focus to South Dakota’s bordellos and the madams who operated them, using the historical novel format to capture real-life events that shaped the culture and nature of the small town of Deadwood, South Dakota. This town was burned to the ground, yet its survivors persisted against all odds, facing hardships and abuse during battles the town’s women fought.

An Open Secret‘s candid look at the profession of prostitution during these times and the impact it held on men and women’s lives embraces historical fact without glorifying it. This choice brings the motivations, struggles, and people of the town to life through the eyes and experiences of madams who fostered reputations as tough but fair managers. Readers will be surprised to note their efforts didn’t ruin young girls, but actually supported them in different ways.

Rowdy patrons, murders, and gamblers all come to life as Chris Enss and Deadwood History, Inc. explores the world of Deadwood and its people, adding vintage photos that bring this milieu to life.

The choice of pairing historical fiction’s action and vivid descriptions with facts embracing Deadwood’s history and culture results in a special brand of regional history that will prove surprisingly accessible to a wide audience, from history readers to those who enjoy 19th century settings and rollicking good stories based on vivid characters and events.

Libraries strong in historical novels that center on 19th century American history will find An Open Secret‘s powerfully compelling examination of prostitution, bordellos, and the madams who ran them to be an involving, enlightening experience that is highly recommended for book club discussion groups, as well.

Midwest Book Review

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Prostitutes, by nature of their profession, often find themselves in trouble with the law. It was not uncommon for a nineteenth-century harlot to be accused of blackmail, theft, or even murder. Such was the case of a soiled dove in northern California. The curious criminal proceedings were held before Justice John Anderson in 1852, and an article in an August edition of the Union Times attempted to unravel the mystery for its readers:

 “A public woman, popularly known as “Old Harriet,” kept a saloon on Broad Street in Nevada City, overlooking Deer Creek. She had a man who kept bar for her and did any necessary fighting. Opposite her establishment was a dance house. A man named Pat Berry was mining on the opposite side of Deer Creek at Gold Run. Owing to a recent freshet there were no bridges at the foot of the town, but a tree had been cleared of limbs and felled across it, over which foot passengers made their way. The stream was still high and raged among the naked boulders and logs which were then innocent of tailings.

“On Saturday Berry came over to town, having made some money during the week, and rigged himself out with a new outfit. He spent the evening until late at the dance house and then went over to Old Harriet’s place, which was the last ever seen of him alive.

“In the course of the night a man in the neighborhood heard what he took to be a cry of “murder,” but he may have been mistaken. Two or three days after, about six miles below Nevada City, in an eddy in the creek, Berry’s body was found, completely naked. On the forehead was a large, extravagated wound, the blood discoloration proving that this wound was given while the person was alive. Finding him in this condition led to a search for previous traces of him; and it was discovered that he had spent the evening at the dance house, and then gone to Old Harriet’s, where all further traces of him were lost.”

Harriet and her fighting man were arrested and charged before the justice with murder. Other victims were discovered when authorities further investigated the incident. But was Madam Harriet guilty?

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A grim-faced bartender led a pair of sheriff’s deputies up the stairs of Deadwood’s Lone Star Saloon to the two lifeless bodies sprawled on the floor. One of the deceased individuals was a gambler named Kitty LeRoy, and the other was her estranged husband, Sam Curley.

The quiet expression on Kitty’s face gave no indication that her death had been a violent one. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed and, if not for the bullet hole in her chest, would simply have looked as though she were sleeping. Sam’s dead form was a mass of blood and tissue. He was lying face first with pieces of his skull protruding from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In his right hand he still held the pistol that brought about the tragic scene.

For those townspeople who knew the flamboyant twenty-eight-year-old Leroy, her furious demise did not come as a surprise. She was voluptuous beauty who used her striking good looks to take advantage of infatuated men who believed her charm and talent surpassed any they’d ever known.

Nothing is known of her early years: where and when she was born, who her parents and siblings were, or what she was like as a child. The earliest historical account of the entertainer, card player and sometime soiled dove lists her as a dancer in Dallas, Texas, in 1875. She was a regular performer at Johnny Thompson’s Variety Theatre. She had dark, striking features, brown, curly hair, and a trim, shapely figure. She dressed in elaborate gypsy-style garments and always wore a pair of spectacular diamond earrings.

Kitty’s nightly performances attracted many cowboys and trail hands. She received standing ovations after every jig and shouts from the audience for an encore. The one thing Kitty was better at than dancing was gambling. She was a savvy faro dealer and poker player. Men fought one another—sometimes to death—for a chance to sit opposite her and play a game or two.

In early 1876, after becoming romantically involved with a persistent saloon keeper, Kitty decided to leave Texas and travel with her lover to San Francisco. Their stay in Northern California was brief. Kitty did not find the area to be as exciting as she had heard it had been during the Gold Rush. To earn the thousands she hoped as an entertainer and gambler she needed to be in a place where new gold was being pulled out of the streams and hills. California’s findings were old and nearly played out. Kitty boarded a stage alone and headed for a new gold boom town in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

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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 only let them see enough to keep them interested.

Many of the cowboy customers were spattered with alkali dust, grease, or plain dirt. They stretched their eager unkempt hands out to touch Libby as she pranced by, but she managed to avoid all contact. At the end of the performance, she was showered with applause, cheers, and requests to see more. Libby was not in an obliging mood. She smiled, bowed, and hurried past the enthusiastic audience as she made her way to the bar for a drink.

A surly bartender served her a glass of apple whiskey, and she headed off to the back of the room with her beverage. When she wasn’t entertaining patrons, Libby could be found at her usual corner spot by the stairs. A large, purple, velvet chair waited for her there along with her pets, a pair of prairie dogs. As Libby walked through the mass of people to her spot, she saw three grimy, bearded men surrounding her seat. One of the inebriated cowhands was poking at her animals with a long stick.

“Boys, I’d thank you kindly to stop that,” she warned the unruly trio. The men turned to see who was speaking, then broke into a hearty laugh once they saw her. Ignoring the dancer, they resumed their harassment of the small dogs. The animals batted the stick back as it neared them, and each time the men would erupt with laughter.

Libby watched the three men for a few moments then slowly reached into her drawstring purse and removed a pistol. Pointing the gun at the men, she said, “Don’t make me ask you again.” The drunken cowhands turned to face Libby, and she aimed her pistol at the head of the man with the stick. Laughing, the man told her to “go to hell.” “I’m on my way,” she responded, pulling the hammer back on the gun. “But I don’t mind sending you there first so you can warn them,” she added. The cowboy dropped the stick, and he and his friends backed away from Libby’s chair. One by one they staggered out of the saloon. Libby put the gun back into her purse, scooped up her frightened pets, scratched their heads, and kissed them repeatedly.

To learn more about women like Libby Thompson, better known as Squirrel Tooth Alice, read

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Rosa May sat beside the bed of a dying miner and wiped the sweat off his feverish brow.  She looked around his rustic, one-room cabin, past the sparse furnishings, and fixed her eyes on a tattered photograph of an elderly man and woman.  “Those are my folks,” the man weakly told her.  “They’re in Marshall County, Illinois.  Where are your folks?”

The question stunned Rosa.  No one ever asked about such things.  No one ever asked her much at all.  Conversation wasn’t what men were looking for when they did business with her.  Rosa glanced out the window at a couple of respectable, well-dressed women.  They watched her through the clouded glass, pointed, and whispered.  She knew what they were saying without hearing it.

Rosa was just one of a handful of “sporting women” living in Bodie, California, in 1900 and she knew what people thought of her.  It used to bother her years ago, but not now.  It was an occupational hazard she’d learned to live with.

“Don’t you have people anywhere?” the miner asked.  Rosa dabbed the man’s head with a cloth and smiled.  “I don’t know anymore,” she answered.  “If I did have, they’d be back in Pennsylvania.”

Rosa’s parents were Irish – hard, strict people.  Rosa had dreamed of the day she would be out of their puritanical household.  She had left home in 1871, at the age of sixteen and soon found there weren’t many opportunities for a poor, petite, uneducated girl with brown eyes and dark, curly hair.  She ended up in New York, hungry, homeless, and eager to take any job offered.  The job offered was prostitution and five years later she came west with other women of her trade, hoping to make a fortune off the gold and silver miners.

Prostitution was the single largest occupation for women in the West.  Rosa hoped to secure a position at a posh brothel with crystal chandeliers, velvet curtains, and flowing champagne.  The madams who ran such places were good to their girls.  They paid them a regular salary, taught them about makeup, manners, and how to dress, and they only had to entertain a few men a night.  If a high-class brothel wasn’t available, Rosa could take a job in a second-class house and work for a percentage of the profits, turning as many tricks as she could each night.  If all failed, she could be a street walker or rent a “crib” at a boardinghouse.  Cribs, tiny, windowless chambers, had oilcloths draped across the foot of the bed for customers in too big of a hurry to take off their boots.

Rosa May arrived in Virginia City, Nevada in 1875 and went to work for a madam known as Cad Thompson.  Cad was a widow who ran several parlor houses in town, including a three-story, brick structure called the “Brick House.”  Cad and Rosa became fast friends, confiding in one another and talking about meeting their Prince Charming.  “Whores dream of falling in love, too,” Cad frequently told Rosa.

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It was a warm, mid-July evening in 1913 when twenty-six-year-old Private Fred Koetzle began hurling rocks at Poker Alice Tubb’s brothel in Sturgis, eventually shattering the upstairs windows. Koetzle and several other soldiers with K Company from Fort Meade stood outside the business throwing rocks and cursing at the occupants inside. Moments before the rowdy, intoxicated group had begun pelting the two-story bordello with stones, one of the men had cut the electrical wires leading to the house, casting it into darkness. Owing to their unruly behavior, it was 10:30 at night when Koetzle, Private Joseph C. Miner, and more than fifteen other infantrymen had been evicted from the business by the feisty madam who ran the resort.  Less than two weeks prior, the men had been thrown from the premises for the same reason.

In retaliation, the soldiers had gathered every rock and pebble in sight that July evening and had begun destroying the property. The misguided troops were assaulting the house with another volley of rubble when shots from a Winchester automatic rang out. Koetzle, Miner, and the other men scattered to avoid the spray of bullets.

When the magazine of the gun was empty, all but two of the soldiers emerged unscathed. Private Koetzle had been shot through the head, and Private Miner had been hit in the chest. Both men were transported to the post hospital. Koetzle died shortly after arriving, while Miner was in critical condition and, in time, made a full recovery. Poker Alice was arrested and charged with the shooting death of Private Koetzle. Six prostitutes were also taken into custody. The gun the notorious madam used was found outside the door of her house, and the magazine was found lying on Alice’s bed. A box of shells was found under the bed.

To find out what happened to Poker Alice after the shooting read An Open Secret

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From the beginning, there was a section of Deadwood into which respectable citizens would seldom venture, and, if they did, it was only under cover of darkness. That area of town was known as the “Bad Lands.” Chinese residents were relegated to that section of Deadwood Gulch, as well as most dance halls, saloons, and brothels. The Bad Lands attracted desperate and ruthless men and women convinced their criminal acts would go unpunished; that is at least until law and order could be firmly established in the unmanaged town. Soiled doves were often at the heart of the illegal activities. Some were thieves who stole from other prostitutes who worked with them at various houses of ill repute, some were perpetrators or victims of assault, and others were victims of murder or murderers themselves. The professional women who ran profitable businesses in the Bad Lands were subject to arrest and violence. Only the most brazen attempted to survive and some of them failed in trying.

Belle Haskell had managed her own house, known as the 400, for more than a decade when one of the women in her employ was brutally killed by another prostitute working at the bordello. The well-known madam had opened the bordello in 1880 and, over the years, had been taken into custody for selling alcohol without a license, been beaten by inebriated customers, had her home vandalized and her possessions stolen.

The news that Belle’s employee, Austie Trevyr, had murdered Maggie McDermott came as a shock to her and the other women at the house. The murder took place at the popular Badland’s tavern known as the Mascotte Saloon. Both Austie and Maggie had been keeping company with a gambler named Frank DeBelloy. According to the December 19, 1893, edition of the Daily Deadwood Pioneer Times, DeBelloy and Maggie became intimate in the spring of 1891, and for a time their relationship seemed unshakable. The trouble between the two began when DeBelloy took up with another woman. Maggie was slain by the insanely jealous rival, and the crime made headlines throughout the territory.

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Ottoman and Johanne Gotsch never knew what led their daughter Anna to a life of prostitution in the Black Hills. Born on December 2, 1859, in Saxony, Germany, she was a precocious child who enjoyed spending time with her five brothers and four sisters and possessed a talent for painting. The Gotsch family moved to America when Anna was four years old, and they settled in Iowa. For a time, Anna considered becoming a teacher, then she met a soldier from Illinois named Edward Piergue and decided to be a wife. The couple traveled from post to post between 1873 and 1879. Their son Lawrence was born in October 1879 in St. Joseph, Missouri, and their daughter Josephine in 1882 in Humboldt, Iowa.

Not long after the birth of their second child, Edward decided to abandon his military career and take up prospecting. Gold had been discovered in Idaho, and Edward believed he could find a fortune. He left Anna and their children behind at her parents’ home. Within weeks of Edward leaving, Anna set off on her own. By the spring of 1884, she was working at a house of ill repute in Deadwood.

Anna Piergue changed her name to May Brown, and, in time, she earned enough working for various madams in town that she went into business for herself. May’s house was small but a favorite of many men in the area. It wasn’t long until she opened a brothel in Rapid City. The local newspapers reported the numerous departures and arrivals via stage May took traveling back and forth between businesses. She often made the journey with fellow courtesans Lottie Bright and May Melville.

Lottie, Mattie Smith, May Melville, Flora Hogan, and May Brown were all members of the same profession and good friends as well. They had a reputation for hosting wild parties where alcohol was in abundance. After an all-night celebration in early May 1886, the women decided to literally paint the town red. They paraded up and down the streets with paint brushes and buckets of red paint and marked various buildings with the scarlet color. When May thought the behavior of the group she was with had gotten too far out of control, she attempted to put a stop to the frivolity by leveling her pistol at them and firing a couple of shots. The police responded to the gunfire and arrested the four. May paid a $10 fine for discharging her weapon in public. The others had to pay a similar amount for drunk and disorderly conduct.

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An Open Secret: The Story of Deadwood’s Most Notorious Bordellos