Journal Notes

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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

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

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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.

To learn about Rose May read

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

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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.

To learn more about Maggie McDermott read

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

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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.

To learn more about Madam May Brown read

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

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A steady stream of miners, ranchers, and cowhands filtered in and out of the Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood, (present day) South Dakota. An inexperienced musician playing an out-of-tune accordion squeezed out a familiar melody, ushering the pleasure seekers inside. Burlap curtains were pulled over the dusty windows, and fans that hung down from the ceiling turned lazily.

A distressed mahogany bar stood alongside one wall of the business, and behind it was a surly looking bartender. He was splashing amber liquid into glasses as fast as he could. A row of tables and chairs occupied the area opposite the bar, every seat was filled with a card player. Among the male gamblers was one woman; everyone called her “Poker Alice.”

She was an alarming beauty, fair-skinned and slim. She had one eye on the cards she was dealing and another on the men at the game two tables down.

Warren G. Tubbs was studying the cards in his hand so intently he didn’t notice the hulk of a man next to him get up and walk around behind him. The huge man with massive shoulders and ham-like hands that hung low to his sides peered over Tubbs’ shoulder and scowled down at the mountain of chips before him. Alice’s intensely blue eyes carefully watched the brute’s actions. He casually reached back at his belt and produced a sharp knife from the leather sheath hanging off his waist. Just as he was about to plunge the weapon into Tubbs’ back, a gunshot rang out.

A sick look filled the man’s face, and the frivolity in the saloon came to a halt. He slowly dropped the knife. Before dropping to his knees, he turned in the direction from which the bullet had come. Alice stared back at him, her .38 pistol pointed at his head. The man fell face-first onto the floor. His dead body was quickly removed to make way for another player. In a matter of minutes, the action inside the tavern returned to normal. Tubbs caught Alice’s gaze and grinned. He nodded to her and waggled his fingers in a kind of salute. She smiled slightly and wholly turned her attention back to the poker game in front of her.

Alice Ivers never sat down to play poker without holding at least one gun. She generally carried a pistol in her dress pocket, and often she also had a backup weapon in her purse. The frontier was rough and wild, and wearing a gun, particularly while playing cards, was a matter of survival. It was a habit for Poker Alice.

To learn more about Poker Alice read

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

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Historians believe the scandalous Eleanora Dumont was one of the first madams to arrive in Deadwood Gulch in 1876. Her time in the Black Hills was brief. She was in her late forties, and much of her life as a prostitute and gambler had already been lived by the time she traveled to Deadwood. “Madame Mustache,” as she was also known, stayed in town long enough to fleece a few residents at the faro tables and spend an evening or two with curious men who knew of her reputation. Three years after making her way to the Dakota Territories, Eleanora was living in a gold mining town in California and reminiscing about life in Deadwood.

In 1854, Eleanora Dumont became the first woman to open a saloon in Nevada City, California. Every night she invited thrill seekers to take her on in a game of twenty-one or blackjack. Her establishment was tastefully decorated and furnished with expensive chairs and settees, carpets, and gas chandeliers. Her resort was open twenty-four hours a day, and patrons were offered free champagne. Even though customers were required to clean off their boots before entering and were ordered to keep their language clean as well, Dumont’s place soon became the favorite spot for thirsty gold miners and other characters passing through.

To learn more about Madam Dumont read An Open Secret

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Gold, gambling, guzzling booze as well as prostitution are all part of Deadwood, South Dakota’s history. In An Open Secret, Chris Enss and the Deadwood History Inc. folks have gathered stories from the bordellos of madams, soiled doves, and the men who visited them from Deadwood’s beginning in 1876 up until 1980 when Pam’s Purple Door and other houses of ill repute were closed for good. The book describes the poor working girls’ hard lives and some of their tragic ends. It relates how girls were tricked into the profession by evil Gem Theater owner Al Swearingen. Some madams such as Madame Moustache met tragic ends while others were fairly successful such as Poker Alice. An Open Secret reveals a sad facet of Deadwood’s past.

Bill Markley, Will Rogers Medallion Award Winner

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Fearless actress Geri Jewell, from the HBO series Deadwood, graciously provided the foreword for An Open Secret: The Story of Deadwood’s Most Notorious Bordellos. Here’s a bit of what she had to say about the book.

“And after reading Open Secret, I now have become more aware of what life was really like for the soiled doves, whores or prostitutes. Open Secret was an eye opener to what women have gone through just as a means of survival. It gave names and faces to the women, the madams, and the bordellos of ill repute.

It was fascinating to read about the hardships, the abuse, the fines and prison time that was served for the crimes committed and the battles just to survive. This book does not glorify the profession of prostitution, but rather present well documented and researched facts of life, supporting the truth about lives in a society that are generally frowned upon, and judged without really understanding what is actually going on behind the red lights, purple doors or cozy rooms.

Also, it was quite interesting to read about the real Al Swearingen, the man that Ian McShane played so brilliantly in the HBO series, Deadwood. Yes, he was even more ruthless than I previously understood. He was a shrewd businessman, an abusive pimp, and just as complex as McShane portrayed him in the series.”

Thanks, Geri!

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