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
Click the image to enlarge it.
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
Click the image to enlarge it.
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
Click the image to enlarge it.
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.”
