Annette Ranald's Blog: Annette's History Reads - Posts Tagged "american-west"

Miss Kitty of the Long Branch Saloon in the series Gunsmoke has always been an ambiguity. She ran a bar and occasionally allowed guests to go upstairs with women of their choosing, so she must have been. Naww, no way, just because she was a saloon proprietress didn't make her one, did it? The ambiguity between who was or wsn't a respectable woman in the Old West was ambiguous. Many boardinghouse and saloon proprietresses were madams. Others were not. Some dancehall girls and waitresses did work on the side, as did many cooks and laundresses, but some did not. And woe betide the man who mistook whom he was speaking to or about and overstepped the mark. Being called one was offensive, even to women who were and certainly to women were under the protection of a man, even if he wasn't her pimp.

Anne Seagraves' book, Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West, takes us into the world of what was then known as the demi-monde, the domain of women who entertained lonely men on the frontier, from respectable politicians and townsmen, to miners and ranchers, to gamblers, gunmen and outlaws. Some women, such as Madams Mattie Silks and Veronica Baldwin, entered this world by choice for the money, freedom and glamour. Others, such as Doc Holliday's main squeeze, Big Nose Kate Haroney, were at-risk teenagers escaping abusive families or foster homes. And at the bottom end of the scale were exploited children and immigrants, particularly in San Francisco's Chinatown. Keeping track of who was what was difficult back in their day. It can be impossible nowadays when our most vivid image of one, maybe, is Miss Kitty at the Long Branch, the (maybe) lovable madam with the heart of gold. Like her, many of these women aspired to escape this world through marriage and, like her, many were disappointed in that goal.

Seagraves doesn't glamourize the world these women lived and worked in, but she doesn't condemn it entirely. Prostitution served a purpose in the West when women of any type were scarce and men needed an outlet besides booze, cards and getting in trouble. Some of these women truly had hearts of gold, such as Calamity Jane, who nursed her neighbors through an epidemic, or Denver madam Jennie Rodgers, who like her colleague Mattie Silks contributed to charity, made sure her girls dressed respectably in public and attended church, and watched carefully for women who were succumbing to alcohol or laudanum. Many women survived and thrived in this world, and some did go on to respectable marriages or relationships.

Soiled Doves chronicles the hierarchy of Old West prostitution. At the top end were the parlor house girls who lived in a mansion, sometimes in a respectable part of town, wore fine clothes and catered to a city's elite male population. Bordello women and sex workers in dancehalls and saloons were the rank and file of the female underworld. At the bottom were streetwalkers and sex slaves. The book follows a case history format, highlighting biographies of notable women, including Donaldina Cameron, a San Francisco reformer who was not afraid to physically break down the door of a brothel to set exploited Chinese girls free. The book is a quick and entertaining read, but also sobering and informative. This gets a five star rating on Amazon.