Journal Notes

Enter now to win a copy of the book According to Kate:

The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder, Doc Holliday’s Love

Along with a Kindle Paperwhite.

The main thoroughfare of Sweetwater, Texas, was so crowded with hunters, trappers, wagons, teams of horses, and soldiers that passing streams of people jostled each other, and some walked shoulder to shoulder.*  The air was charged with excitement.  Rumors that Tom Sherman, Kate Elder, Mollie Brennan, and the other five members of the Seven Jolly Sisters were on their way had caused a mild panic, and lonely men desperate for female companionship had flocked to the burg.

Sweetwater was a trading post along the Jones Plummer Trail.  That trail was connected to the major cattle drive town of Dodge City.  Sweetwater was a destination for bullwhackers, buffalo skinners, and cowhands.  Troops from Fort Elliott, eleven miles from town, enjoyed time at Sweetwater, too.  The fort was established [in 1875] to protect the buffalo traders from being raided by Indians.

For Kate, the busy town provided a fresh crush of people to meet and with whom to do business.  Soiled doves relished a change of scenery from time to time.  They liked the possibility of enticing new patrons in a different location.  It also brought renewed business when sporting girls returned to the town where their house of ill repute was located.

The August 24, 1876, edition of the Dodge City Times described the setting where Kate and the other entertainers arrived as a “thriving hamlet overrun with tradesmen.”  Fourteen wagon loads of buffalo hides for a general outfitter in Dodge City known as Chas. Rath & Co. lined the sides of the dusty roadways.  A report that a band of twenty-one hundred Indians south of Sweetwater had been spotted rattled some of the citizenry, but, as long as the soldiers remained in town, panic was abated.

Tom Sherman and his help erected a canvas tent, set up a makeshift -stage, and the Seven Jolly Sisters went to work.  Among the many individuals who spent time with Sherman’s employees was a twenty-three-year-old buffalo hunter and army scout named Bat Masterson.  In late 1875, Bat had taken a job as a faro dealer at the Lady Gay Saloon.  After Sherman’s outfit arrived, Bat could either be found in the saloon or with Mollie Brennan.

On January 24, 1876, Kate and Mollie concluded their dance routine and set off to explore additional business.  They ventured to the Lady Gay for a drink.  The two ladies met Bat at the bar, and he bought them a drink.  Once their drinks were finished, Bat and Mollie retired to his room.  Kate recalled the couple hadn’t been gone long when Sgt. Melvin A. King, one of the men with whom Bat had been playing cards earlier in the evening, charged toward Bat’s room.  King was furious with Bat over what he perceived as “underhanded dealings.”  With a loaded gun in hand, King pounded on Bat’s room door and waited for an answer.  Assuming it was Kate wanting to join the pair for a nightcap, Bat unlocked the door.  Sgt. King burst into the room and opened fire.  Mollie came between Bat and one of the bullets and was critically wounded.  Bat was shot in the pelvis, but he managed to grab his gun and kill King before collapsing.

Despite his best efforts, the local physician could not save Mollie.  An army surgeon was called to the scene to remove the bullet from Bat’s lower mid-section and stayed with him until he recovered.

To learn more about Kate read

According to Kate:  The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder,

Doc Holliday’s Love

Enter now to win a copy of the book According to Kate:

The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder, Doc Holliday’s Love

Along with a Kindle Paperwhite.

In the winter of 1872, Wendell Phillips, orator, attorney, and the soul of John Brown marching on, delivered a lecture to a large audience of concerned citizens in St. Louis, Missouri, about the social cancer that plagued society.  He pounded the lectern he stood behind while addressing the crowd and advised them to take a stand against intemperance, crime, and prostitution.  Phillips was appalled that city officials had legalized the profession and were issuing licenses to the owners of houses of ill repute and the bawdy women who worked there.  Almond Street, a popular thoroughfare five blocks west of the riverfront, was the location of many of those houses.  It was Phillips’ hope that after the residents of St. Louis heard his fiery speech they would demand the businesses be closed.

“The root of this vice is poverty,” Phillips proclaimed.  “It is because the poverty of a certain class makes them the victims of the wealth and leisure of another.  Give one hundred men anywhere an honest career and a chance at the grand opportunities of life, and ninety out of the hundred will distain to steal.  Give one hundred women a fair chance at the grand opportunities that their brothers have and ninety out of the hundred will disdain to barter virtue for gold.”  Mary Katherine Horony, now known as Kate Fisher, was one of those near Almond Street who bartered virtue for gold.  Poverty had played a part in her decision to become a sporting woman, but she was satisfied the work possessed possibilities beyond money.  Kate was a business woman — nothing more, nothing less.

St. Louis had given Kate and other sporting women the opportunity to do their job without fear that law enforcement would interfere.  The “social evil ordinance” the city had passed in March 1870 not only required prostitutes to obtain licenses but also mandated business women to submit to medical exams testing for venereal diseases.  Civic leaders hoped the controversial ordinance would ultimately reduce the spread of disease.  Many opposed the idea, arguing that it “encouraged the very vice which all good men and women destined to see suppressed.”  Many soiled doves never bothered to register.  Kate was one of those women.

The spirited, Hungarian woman must have been able to take care of herself against intoxicated and belligerent clients.  Prostitutes sometimes found themselves in the company of men who resented their services.  They hated themselves for hiring sporting women and blamed those women for the ills of society.  A listing of arrests in daily, St. Louis papers showed how many acts of violence against prostitutes occurred nightly.  The August 29, 1872, edition of The Macon Republican contained information about the circumstances surrounding the beating deaths of more than ten, bawdy ladies in the area of Popular Street in St. Louis.

“Eleven wretched criminals victimized prostitutes overnight,” The Macon Republican article began.  “A man named Burklin shot a sinful woman when crazed with drink and jealousy; another killed a woman with a grubbing hoe; a third tossed the prostitute out a third story window; three were stabbed to death; the seventh prostitute was beaten to death with a soda water bottle; two were strangled; two were hanged by the neck with a rope.”

To learn more about Kate read

According to Kate:  The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder,

Doc Holliday’s Love

Enter now to win a copy of the book According to Kate:  The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder, Doc Holliday’s Love and a Kindle Paperwhite.

Kate Elder sat on the balcony of the Dodge House hotel in Dodge City, Kansas cradling a rifle in her lap.  It was a warm night in mid-June 1878.  She was wearing a white, cotton and lace slip dress that accentuated her curves and did little to cover her other assets.  The sound of an inexperienced according player squeezing out a tune mixed with the laughter from the patrons in the billiard hall next door filled the night air.

Kate studied a pair of drunken soldiers as they exited the billiard hall, climbed aboard their horses waiting for them, and rode off in the direction of Fort Dodge, the military post five miles east of town.  Once the soldiers were out of sight, she relaxed the hold she had on the gun and rubbed her tired eyes.  Kate had too much character in her face to be outright pretty, but she attracted men like flies.  At that moment, the only man’s affections she cared to attract were John Henry Holliday’s, a Georgia dentist and gambler prone to settle disagreements in a violent manner.

An unfortunate incident with the law had made it necessary for Kate and Doc to leave Fort Griffin, Texas, in a hurry and seek refuge in Dodge City.  Their abrupt exit from the southwestern cavalry fort had Kate worried the authorities would be searching for them and, when they were found, Doc would be made to return to answer for his wrongdoings.  Kate wasn’t going to let that happen.

Since arriving in Dodge City in late May 1878, Kate had reacquainted herself with the cow town where she’d lived and worked in 1875.  Dodge City was a wild burg that straddled the Santa Fe rails.  Cowpunchers found it to be the best place to end a drive.  The saloons were endless and always open.  Gamblers found numerous individuals to challenge, sporting women swarmed like bees, and bad men frequently sharpened their aim on citizens.  The men behind the badges in Dodge City were well-known Western figures.  Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Bill Tilghman all took a turn at maintaining law and order in the trigger-happy town.  How Kate Elder, from Pest, Hungary, came to be a fixture in a wide-open town primed with free-flowing money from the cattle trade and inundated by hordes of gunmen, outlaws, rustlers, and ladies of easy virtue was a question Kate pondered on a regular basis.

She shifted the gun in her lap and stared out at the massive, night sky and the stars that riddled the great expanse, contemplating a similar sky that hung over the steamer that brought her parents, brothers and sisters, and her from Bremen, Germany, to America when she was ten years old.  Kate remembered her life before when she was filled with hope and the promise of prosperity and success.

To learn more about Kate read

According to Kate:  The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder,

Doc Holliday’s Love

Enter now to win a copy of the book According to Kate:  The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder, Doc Holliday’s Love and a Kindle Paperwhite.

Kate Elder was a working girl.  Throughout most of her young life, she was employed as a soiled dove — a woman of ill fame, a sporting gal, a prostitute.  She wasn’t alone in that profession; hundreds of women entered the trade in the 1800s.  Some felt they had no other option but to become a lady of the evening, and others joined the fallen industry believing they could make a fortune capitalizing on the vices of intrepid cowboys and pioneers.

It was Kate’s relationship with John Henry (Doc) Holliday that brought her notoriety and lifted her out of the role as mere courtesan to that of common law wife to the well-known gambler, gunfighter, and dentist.

Kate’s story of her life on the frontier as a soiled dove and her time with one of the West’s most recognizable characters has value.  She was in her eighties when she dared to recall all that had transpired since leaving Hungary where she was born to the events leading up to the historic gunfight at the OK Corral.  There are those who insist that because of her age her recollections are faulty and that little of anything she said occurred the way she reported it.  I maintain it would be wrong not to share all the eighty-four-year-old Kate had to tell about an adventurous time in history merely because she was an octogenarian.  Some of us at fifty-seven can’t remember what day it is even though we’ve checked the calendar upwards of twenty times since starting work.  Yet, I can vividly recall that during seventh grade, music class Pam Green loudly pointed out that I was growing a mustache.  (It’s important to note here that I’m a woman, so this was extremely detrimental to my self-esteem at the time.)

According to Kate is a biography about the life and times of Kate Elder.  She would have written the book herself if a publisher would have been willing to pay her handsomely for her tale.  Kate believed her story was worth a great deal.  No one besides Kate saw it that way.  Throughout the book I’ve used all the information contained in Kate’s journals, personal letters, and interviews to tell of her life from her childhood in Hungary to her waning years at a retirement home for the elderly in Arizona.  Where some of her details were ambiguous, I used newspapers and historical documents to corroborate her story.

To learn more about Kate read

According to Kate:  The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder,

Doc Holliday’s Love

According to Kate is coming to bookstores everywhere on October 1.

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.

Mollie Moses, a disheveled woman in her 40s, sat alone in her rundown Kentucky home, crying.  She wiped her eyes with the hem of her tattered black dress and glanced up at a portrait of William Cody hanging over a cold fireplace.  On the dusty coffee table in front of her lay several letters carefully bound together with a faded ribbon.  The woman’s feeble fingers loosened the tie and slowly unfolded one of the letters.  Tears slid down her cheeks as she read aloud.

My Dear Little Favorite…I know if I had a dear little someone whom you can guess, to play and sing for me it would drive away the blues who knows but what someday I may have her eh!…  I am not very well, have a very bad cold and I have ever so much to do.  With love and a kiss to my little girl – From her big boy, Bill.

William Cody – 1885

Mollie closed her eyes and pressed the letter to her chest, remembering.  From the moment she first saw Buffalo Bill Cody at a Wild West performance, she had been captivated by him.  He was fascinating – a scout, hunter, soldier, showman, and ranchman.  Mollie was swept away by his accomplishments, reputation, and physical stature.

In September of 1885 the enamored young woman from Morganfield, Kentucky, set about to win the heart of the most colorful figure of the era.

Mollie was an attractive widow, intelligent and sophisticated.  The letters she wrote to Cody reflected her maturity and interested Buffalo Bill.  Her correspondence did not read like that of a love-struck girl but of an experienced woman.  The death of her husband and only child many years prior had transformed the once impetuous girl into a driven, determined woman.  Mollie was also educated and well read, and an accomplished artist and seamstress.

Cody found those aspects of her character quite appealing.  He responded to her letters often, forwarding his itinerary to her as well, with hopes the two could meet at some point.  When at last they did, he was pleased to see that she was as lovely as she was intelligent.  On November 11, 1885, the couple began a six-month affair.

Your kind letter received.  Also, the beautiful little flag which I will keep and carry as my mascot, and every day I wave it to my audiences I will think of the fair donor.  I tried to find you after the performances yesterday for I really wished to see you again…It is impossible for me to visit you at your home much as I would like to have done so.  Many thanks for the very kind invitation. 

I really hope we’ll meet again.  Do you anticipate visiting the World’s fair at New Orleans if you do will you please let me know when you are there…Enclosed please find my route.  I remain yours.

William Cody – November 1885

As the romance between Mollie and Bill grew, she extended numerous invitations for him to come and visit her.  Managing the Wild West Show demanded a lot of his time, and he was unable to get away as often as Mollie wanted.

My Dear…you say you are not my little favorite or I would take the time to come to see you.  My dear don’t you know that it is impossible for me to leave my show.  My expenses are $1,000 a day and I can’t.  I would come if it were possible and I can’t say when I can come either, but I hope to someday.

William Cody – March 1886

Cody could not break free from his business, but Mollie persisted.  She requested that some of his personal mementos be sent instead.

“If you cannot be here, I must have something of you near me,” she wrote him.

My Dear Little Favorite…Don’t fear I will send a locket and picture soon.  Little Pet, it’s impossible for me to write from every place.  I have so much to do.  But will think of you from every place.  Will that do?  With Fond Love…Will.

William Cody – April 1886

Molly worried about Cody’s wife, Louisa, and the hold their twenty-year marriage had on him.  In one of Cody’s letters to Mollie, he tried to ease her troubled mind and heart.

My Dear Little Favorite…Now don’t fear about my better half.  I will tell you a secret.  My better half and I have separated.  Someday I will tell you all about it.  Now do you think any the less if me?  I wish I had time to write you a long letter to answer all your questions and tell you of myself, but I have not the time and perhaps it might not interest you…With love and a kiss to my little girl from her big boy.

William Cody – April 1886

Despite his constant reassuring, Mollie was not convinced that Cody and his wife were destined for divorce.  When it became clear to her that Cody could not or would not fully commit to her, she requested a spot in his show.

She reasoned that this was the only way she would be able to be with him all the time.  Mollie was not without talent.  She was a fine horsewoman, and that, along with her romantic involvement with Cody, helped persuade him to invite her to join his troupe.

Mollie and Buffalo Bill were to meet in St. Louis, a scheduled stop for the show.  Mollie was to come on board as a performer at that time.  To make her feel welcome and show his affections, Cody purchased his lover a horse.  The act endeared him to her even more.

My Dear Mollie…I presume you are getting about ready to come to St. Louis.  Wish you would start from home in time to arrive in St. Louis about the 2^nd or 3^rd of May.  Go to the St. James Hotel if I ain’t there to meet you.  I will be there any how by the 3^rd.  I have got you the white horse and fine silver saddle.  Suppose you have your habit.  Will be glad to see you.  With love, W.F.C.

William Cody – 1886

Mollie’s days with Wild West Show were difficult.  Adapting to the rigorous traveling schedule was hard and riding her horse day after day left her stiff and sore.  Eventually Mollie lost interest in the famous program and tired of trying to win over the heart of its general manager.

Within a few years after parting with Cody, Mollie’s financial situation worsened dramatically.  Mollie Moses returning to her home in Kentucky, where she fell into a life of poverty.  She was forced to sell off many of the mementos Cody gave her and live off the generosity of strangers to keep herself in food.  The two souvenirs she would never part with were the silver saddle and Cody’s picture.

Rodents shared her house with her – rats she called her “pets.”  One evening her pets bit her severely, causing her to become ill.  She eventually died of complications from the bites.  She was forty-three years old.  Historians speculate that the demise of her relationship with Buffalo Bill left her despondent and without the will to live.

According to Kate arrives in book stores on October 1.

Enter to win a copy of Kate’s story now.

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

Blood spattered across the front of the dark-eyed, brunette gambler Belle Siddons, as she peered into the open wound of a bandit stretched in front of her. Biting down hard on a rag, the man winched in pain as she gently probed his abdomen with a wire loop. She mopped up a stream of blood inching its way to the crude wooden table where he was lying.

Two men on either side of the injured patient struggled to keep his arms and legs still as the stern-faced Belle plunged the loop further into his entrails. “How do you know about gunshots,” one of the rough looking assistants asked? “My late husband was a doctor and I worked with him,” Belle replied. “Is he going to die,” the other man inquired? “Not if I can help it,” Belle said as she removed the wire loop. She shifted through the tissue and blood attached to the instrument until she uncovered a bullet. She smiled to herself as she tossed it into a pan sitting next to her and then set about stitching the man’s wound closed.

When Belle decided to go west in 1862, she envisioned a comfortable frontier home, a life-long husband and several children. But fate had other plans for the head-strong woman many cowhands admitted was a “startling beauty.”

Belle’s story began in Jefferson City, Missouri where she was born sometime in the late 1830s. Her parents were wealthy land owners who made sure their daughter was well educated. She attended and graduated from the Missouri Female Seminary at Lexingtion, Missouri. Belle’s uncle was the state’s Governor, Claibourne Fox Jackson. She spent a great deal of time with him traveling in elite circles that elevated the charming teenage to the toast of society.

When the war between the states erupted, Missouri residents were divided between support for North and South. Belle and her family were Southern sympathizers, actively seeking ways to crush the Union’s agenda. The attractive, young Ms. Siddons, fraternized with troops training in the area, hoping to glean valuable information from them. They were enamored with her and in their zeal to impress her, shared too much about military plans and the position of soldiers. Belle passed those secrets along to rebel intelligence.

Her deceptive actions were found out by General Newton M. Curtis of the Union Brigade from New York. A warrant was issued for Belle’s arrest in 1862 and she was apprehended 50 miles south of St. Genevieve on the Mississippi. When Belle was captured, she was found with proof of her duplicitous behavior in her possession. She had detailed plans of the stops of the Memphis and Mobile Railroad. The rail line was being used by the Union Army to transport supplies and weapons. When questioned about the crime Belle proudly admitted being a spy. She was tried, found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison. She was released after having only served 4 months.

According to Kate arrives in book stores on October 1.

Enter to win a copy of Kate’s story now.

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

It wasn’t uncommon in the Old West for sporting women to fight with one another over territory or money.  In El Paso, Texas, competition was especially keen between two popular madams, Big Alice Abbott and quick-tempered Etta Clark across the street.  The continuous argument finally erupted in a fight, the mention of which brought uproarious guffaws in the saloons for months to come.  Around 9:30 on the warm spring evening of April 18, 1886, a police squad was sent to investigate a disturbance at one of the houses on Utah Street.  The whole area was in an uproar as a huge woman lay shot and bleeding in the dusty street, while a petite redhead, cruelly beaten, sobbed hysterically in one of the houses.

The officers somehow pieced together the story.  Bessie Colvin, one of Big Alice’s in-residence girls, owed her $125 “back rent,” but refused to pay up.  Bessie, full of whiskey and false courage, stood firm as she and Alice put on a screaming and cursing match which awed all passersby.  Bessie flounced out, dashed across to Etta Clark’s brothel, and offered her services.  Redheaded Etta promptly accepted, so Bessie tore back to her former home, told Big Alice she was leaving, then promptly took off again.  Big Alice, with her girls Nina Ferrall and Josie Connaly at her heels, huffed and puffed across the street.  Alice yelled and pounded on Etta’s door until it was opened a crack.  Big Alice flung herself against the door, ripping it from the hinges and mashing Etta’s face in the process.  At this moment, Alice spied her former girl walking out of Etta’s sitting room.

Enraged, Alice stomped on through the broken door, shoving Etta violently aside.  The redheaded Etta, deciding she needed protection, reached for a brass gas-lighter.  (This was a heavy wick-tipped rod 2 ½ feet long and ½ inch in diameter, used to light the gas burners.)  The tiny Etta drew herself up and shook the lighter in Big Alice’s face.  Bessie was whimpering in the corner.  Now Alice, blind with anger, raised her huge fist and hit Etta in the face as hard as she could.  Bessie ran to help Etta, but was grabbed by Alice, who ran out the door, pulling Bessie along with her.

Etta ran to her room and came back with a Colt .45 in her hand.  She pointed the weapon at Big Alice, who was facing her on the porch.  The gun went off, enveloping both women in a cloud of smoke.  Alice looked down in horror at the blood spreading from a spot between her thighs.  She staggered to the center of the street as Etta fired again and missed.

It took six strong men to carry the big woman to her house.  It made a dramatic scene:  the helpless female, the girls weeping and wailing, and the men straining and stumbling under their mammoth burden.  Doctor A. L. Justice was called and, upon arriving at the scene, reported that Big Alice was seriously wounded.  Etta Clark was put in jail pending a hearing.

By April 27, nine days later, Big Alice was out of danger and the preliminary trial was held in her room.  Justice L. H. Clark bound Etta over to the Grand Jury under $2,000 bond.

Nothing funny about this, you say?  True enough-but it was the aftermath of this unfortunate incident that sent El Paso rocking with laughter.  The Herald’s story was printed under a banner headline with all the details in typically turgid prose.  The reporter, trying to be precise in pinpointing Alice’s wound, wrote that Big Alice had been shot in the “public” arch.  In Alice’s case, this anatomical description was precise, indeed.

To learn more about soiled doves of the Old West read

Wicked Women.

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

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 the rest of Rosa May’s story read
Wicked Women:
Notorious, Mischievous, and Wayward Ladies from the Old West

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

The soiled dove with the heart of gold is a stock character in thousands of stories about the Old West, and Idaho had such a character.  “Diamond-tooth Lil” was her name, and she was more famous for her tooth of gold than for her heart of gold.  Like most characters in western lore, Lil devoted her lifetime to perfecting her own legend and image.  Her gold tooth, prominent in the middle of her smile, was set with a large diamond to gain Lil instant recognition in any company.  And Lil loved it.  From childhood she had thirsted for fame.

All we know about Lil’s colorful life comes from her own stories, recounted through the years to just about anyone who would listen.  Whether her stories were true or not does not seem too important, for they make good telling.  Mae West’s characterization of “Diamond Lil” was based on the life of Idaho’s Lil, and in all accounts of her life, the stress lay on Diamond-tooth Lil’s beauty and glamor.  Words like “fabulous and exciting” are regularly used to describe her, although it was not Lil’s looks but her vitality and sense of showmanship which evoked such adjectives.

Evelyn Hildegarde was born Katie Prado near Vienna, Austrian, about 1880.  It appears that she and her parents-an Austrian father and a Bohemian mother-came to America when Katie was six-years-old.  When Katie ran away from home, she was only thirteen, but she was quite mature for her age and looked sixteen.  She had eloped with nineteen-year-old Percy Hildegarde and used his last name the rest of her life.

By her own account, Lil had a total of eight husbands, never worrying about ridding herself of a husband, but just taking another when the mood struck her.

Among the men in her life were some pretty colorful characters:  prizefighter Kid McCoy, Spider Kelly, Diamond-field Jack Davis, Tex Rickard, and Tom Sharkey.  Diamond-tooth Lil’s friendship with Diamond-field Jack was a natural.  The swaggering Jack had plenty of color all his own; although notorious as a gunman, his chief claim to fame was that he was almost hung for a murder he did not commit.  Perhaps Jack was the inspiration for Lil’s famous tooth, for she did not have one when they met in 1907 in the boomtown of Goldfield, Nevada.

Lil had been singing and dancing in music halls and gambling palaces for several years before she ran up against Jack.  She was the “toast of the Barbary Coast,” and a star at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, singing at the Anheuser-Busch Pavilion.  But somewhere along the way she got in on the gold rush to Alaska, then came back south to Silver City, Idaho.  Boise was her home from 1909 until 1943, during which time she ran rooming houses and opened the Depot Inn in 1933.  Diamond-tooth Lil’s experience as a “business woman” began years before, for she claimed she was a madam from the time she was thirteen, and ran large houses in Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and Seattle.

One of her “’bosses” in Chicago was said to be Al Capone, and it is no surprise that Lil was not repelled by the violence of the gangster era.  Lil herself had had a taste of violence years before, when she was shot at by an ex-husband in El Paso, Texas.  Charitable and generous, Lil felt a special sympathy for orphans, and when she left Boise for the warmer climate of California, she promised to will her famous tooth to the Boise Children’s Home.  But she died in California in 1967 at age eighty-nine, and the tooth which made her famous, was buried with her.

 According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

arrives in bookstores everywhere October 1.

According to Kate is coming soon to bookstores everywhere. 

In honor of her imminent arrival this month is dedicated to

Wild Women like Kate Elder.  

The cold, grey 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, was first in a long line of mourners following after a horse drawn carriage transporting the body of soiled dove Julia Bulette. The Nevada militia band shuffled behind the hearse playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” 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 was 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 the majority of 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 who the company might be. Twelve hours later Gertrude discovered Julia’s lifeless body in bed. She had been beaten and strangled. Gertrude told 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 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.

According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate, Love of Doc Holliday

arrives in bookstores everywhere October 1.