Soiled Doves of the American West, Part I

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In late nineteenth-century America, few jobs were available to women west of the Mississippi. Consequently, many girls who ran away from home during their teens; who were abandoned by, or otherwise lost, their husbands; or who became unwed mothers had to rely on their womanly charms to earn their bread.

Among these so-called soiled doves are a few famous names; others, whose names are not as well known, knew famous men and women. These practitioners of the world's oldest profession include

• Doc Holliday's common-law wife Mary Katherine Horony-Cummings (better known as “Big Nose Kate”) 
• Celia Ann "Mattie" Blaylock, Wyatt Earp's common-law wife 
• Nellie (“Bessie”) (Ketchum) Earp, James Earp's wife
• Martha Jane Canary (“Calamity Jane”), a sometimes-paramour or wannabe-paramour of Wild Bill Hickok
• Laura Bell McDaniel, a madam and brothel owner who employed Bob Ford, Jesse James's killer, as a faro dealer
• Della Moore, the girlfriend of the Wild Bunch's Harvey Logan (“Kid Curry”)
• San Antonio, Texas, madam Fanny Porter, who was acquainted with Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry, and Will (“News”) Carter of the Wild Bunch gang and with William Pinkerton of the Pinkerton's National Detective Agency
• Outlaw queen Belle Starr's daughter Pearl, whose father, Belle claimed, was outlaw Cole Younger
• Libby Thompson, the common-law wife of Ben Thompson's brother Texas Billy Thompson

Judging by photographs of the prostitutes, madams, and brothel owners of the day, some were beautiful, but many were rather plain. In the West, women were few and far between, and men found homely women glamorous, appealing, and desirable. Tastes differed then, as opposed to now, as well, and women who would be considered to be of ordinary appearance to men today might well have been considered attractive, or even beautiful, then.

Della Moore

Men, both past and present, might agree that Della Moore was a good-looking woman, but they might not see eye to eye concerning the opinion that Mattie Silks (aka Martha Ready) was especially beautiful. Nevertheless, Mattie was considered a gorgeous woman by the admirers of her day. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Dora DuFran

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Able, forward-looking, enterprising prostitutes and madams were able to make a good deal of money plying their trade. The madam Dora DuFran, of Deadwood, Dakota Territory, known for coining the euphemism “cathouse,” owned a string of bordellos in present-day South Dakota: Diddlin' Dora's, in Belle Fourche; the Green Front Hotel, in Deadwood; and other brothels in Lead, Miles City, Sturgis, and Deadwood. After her husband's death, she moved to Rapid City, where she opened her final cathouse.

Ah Toy

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According to Gary Y. Okihiro, author of Common Ground: Reimagining American History, Ah Toy became one of the best-known Asian women in the Old West (99). She started out offering peep shows to San Franciscan men who were curious about her because Chinese women were a rarity in the American West (The Madams of San Francisco, 59). For an ounce of gold, which was worth $16, she allowed them a “lookee” at her (The Madams, 59).

Her exhibitionism brought in a lot of money. To open her first brothel, she pooled it with money she'd received from the captain of the ship that had brought her to the United States, whose mistress she'd become after her husband died during their voyage. As a madam and brothel owner, she was also one of the most successful businesswomen of her day, opening bordellos throughout San Francisco, where she employed girls as young as eleven years old, whom she imported from China.

Chinese gangsters known as “tongs” sought to control Ah Toy's bordellos, and, unable to defend herself in court due to a law prohibiting African-American, Native American, and Chinese people from testifying in court (People v. Hall), she retired from the business.

Mattie Silks

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Mattie Silks (aka Martha Ready) owned brothels in Dodge City, Kansas, and in the Colorado cities of Georgetown and Denver, supplying cowboys and gold miners with ladies of the evening. She purchased her first bordello, in Denver, from Nellie French for $13,000.

Stiff competition led to the first Denver duel between two women, when Mattie and rival madam Kate Fulton faced off against one another, fighting over the same man, Cortez Thomson, as much as over business matters. Both women missed their aims, but Mattie did manage to shoot a bystander—the women's common lover, Thomson!—wounding him slightly.

Mattie bought out another competitor's business, The House of Mirrors, owned by madam Jennie Rogers, for $14,000. Upon her death, from a fall, Mattie was buried beside her lover.