Soiled Doves of the American West, Part II

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Two of the Earp brothers' common-law wives were once prostitutes; one returned to the profession after giving it up when she elected to settle down with her man—after he left her for another woman. Nellie Bartlett “Bessie” Catchim was James Earp's wife; Celia Ann "Mattie" Blaylock was Wyatt's spouse. In addition, their friend, Doc Holliday, had a common-law wife known as “Big Nose Kate,” who also worked as a prostitute.

Nellie Earp

Nellie Earp

Born in New York City, Nellie (“Bessie”) Catchim (or Ketchum) (1840-1887) married James (1841-1926) in Illinois on April 18, 1873, and remained wed to him until her death in California, in 1887.

Before marrying James, she'd been a single mother, having had a son named Frank by her first husband, William Calhoun Land (1835-1916). Nellie also had a daughter, Harriet B. Catchim Land (1863-1934). Her son was killed by Apaches, but her daughter married a wealthy and influential cattle baron, William Land, of Douglas Arizona.

As a madam, Nellie operated a brothel in Wichita, Kansas, before she and James relocated to Tombstone, Arizona, where the Earps shot it out with Billy Clanton (1862-1881), Frank McLaury (1849-1881), and Tom McLaury (1853-1881) on October 26, 1881, at the OK Corral.

James Earp

In 1882, she and her sisters-in-law left Tombstone for California, the state in which Nellie lived out the remainder of her days with her husband, whose pet name for her was the “beautiful brunette.”

The wives accompanied their husbands, James and Virgil Earp, as they escorted the body of their slain brother Morgan home to the men's parents for burial after he was assassinated following the shootout in which Morgan, Virgil, Wyatt, and their friend Doc Holliday had participated.

Mattie Earp

Mattie Earp

Wyatt's wife, Celia Ann (“Mattie”) Blaylock (1850-1888), was born in Monroe Township, Iowa. She took up prostitution after she ran away from home at age sixteen with her younger sister Sarah, who returned home before the year was up.

Although Mattie was a seamstress, she soon discovered that the Western frontier didn't offer many opportunities for work for most women. In 1872, in Fort Scott, Kansas, she became a prostitute, a profession she continued later in Dodge City, even after she and Wyatt became a couple in 1873. Later, she and Wyatt moved to Tombstone.

Wyatt Earp

She accompanied the other Earp wives to California, waiting, in Colton, for a telegram from Wyatt, instructing her as to where to meet him, but the message never came. Wyatt had left her for Josephine (“Sadie”) Marcus, Tombstone lawman Johnny Behan's former common-law wife, with whom Wyatt now lived in San Francisco.

Remembering that Pinal City (Globe), Arizona Territory, had been a boom town when she had visited the place with Wyatt (1848-1929) in 1879, Mattie moved there. She took up prostitution again briefly, but died of an overdose of laudanum, and the coroner, Thomas H. Kennaird M.D, ruled her death a “suicide by opium poisoning.”

Big Nose Kate

"Big Nose" Kate Horony
 

Mária Izabella Magdolna Horony (“Big Nose Kate”) (1850-1940) was the common-law wife of Wyatt's friend, John Henry (“Doc”) Holliday (1851-1887).

She was born in Érsekújvár, Hungary, the eldest daughter of a physician and a teacher. In 1860, her father, his children, and his second wife traveled to New York aboard the German ship Bremen.

At age seventeen, Kate ran away from home to start her life anew “as a dance hall girl and a prostitute” after discovering that, for women, opportunities to earn a livelihood on their own were restricted to working at such occupations as the ones she chose or to those of “domestic servant, dressmaker, laundress, milliner . . . seamstress, teacher,” or waitress.

She probably met Holliday in 1877, in Fort Griffin, Texas. According to John Jacobs, one of her acquaintances at the time, Kate was a “notoriously lewd character” who, in a fight with Lottie Deno, a rival for Holliday's affection, pulled a gun on her when Deno first pulled a firearm on her, calling Kate a “low-down, slinkin' slut” and telling her that she would not condescend to wipe her foot on “that bastard” Holliday, should she (Deno) “step in soft cow manure.” According to Jacobs, Holliday saved the day by stepping between the two armed women.

Doc Holliday

Author Ben T. Traywick recounts how Kate rescued Holliday after he'd been arrested for drinking while gambling in a Fort Griffin saloon in which these two activities, performed together, were illegal. After his arrest, Traywick says, Kate lit a fire in town, as a diversion, and she and Holliday escaped together, defying her arrest on a complaint of arson, for which a warrant was issued following the incident.

Dodge City, Kansas

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From there, they traveled to Dodge City, Kansas, where Kate used “a meat cleaver to fend off some bothersome men.” Next, the traveling couple showed up in Tombstone, Arizona.

Tombstone, Arizona

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After she and Holliday separated, toward the end of her days as a prostitute (she remained one, even after becoming Holliday's common-law wife), rather than committing suicide as Mattie had done and as was common among such women when they'd come to the end of their careers, Kate married a blacksmith; as his wife for eleven years, she worked as a cook and a shop owner.

Arizona Pioneers Home, Prescott, Arizona

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Afterward, she earned her keep as a cleaning woman, before petitioning for, and winning, a place as a resident in the newly opened Arizona Pioneers Home, where she “lived out her days “in relative comfort,” “a ward of the state.”

How did she acquire the nickname “Big Nose Kate”? Patrick A. Bowmaster explains, in “A Fresh Look at 'Big Nose Kate,'” an article that appeared in Quarterly of the National Association for Outlaw and Lawmen History, Inc: “Her nose was . . . not that much larger than the norm,” but it “started very high on her face and therefore was enormous in 'height' rather than in length.”