August 17, 2011 • 22 mins
Madams who ran brothels in the West were some of the wealthiest in the U.S., and running a brothel gave Victorian era women financial independence and social clout. Join Caroline and Cristen to learn more about notable madams.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House top Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Christine. I have
(00:20):
a couple of questions for you. Okay, do you wear
makeup and fashionable clothes? I wear makeup. The fashionability I
think I made up board of my clothes might be
called into question, but I try. Well. How about walking
around outside unaccompanied and talking freely to men um? Well,
(00:41):
yes I do that, but not necessarily like strangers on
the street. But yeah I do. Yeah, gentlemen, gentlemen who
are known to you, gentlemen known to me unaccompanied? Yes,
I do that, speak to them. And do you ever
happen to drink beer or wear perfume? Yes? I prefer
to only drink beer while I am wearing perfume. Well, ding, Ding,
(01:03):
In the mid to late nineteenth century, you would be
called a prostitute. How dare you accuse me? Hey, it's
not me. It's not coming from me, right, it's coming
from Victorian morals, right. Yeah. The Victorian era not exactly
a boom time for women and their independence and going
around were in perfume right. Um. Generally the mores of
(01:26):
the period meant that they were restricted to their homes
unless they were among the few who were actually hired
a stenographers, seamstresses, or store clerks. So you had you
had a couple of jobs open to you as a
woman back then, literally a couple, or you could break
out and either open. You could be an entrepreneur in
(01:49):
one certain unsavory field prostitution brothels. Yeah, and today on
stuff Mom never told you, we are going to focus
in on madam's in the West because we learned that
the opening of the West, especially with things like the
California gold Rush going on, created these boom towns for brothels,
(02:13):
and the women who ran them were some of the
savvayest and wealthiest entrepreneurs of the day. And while we
could go we I mean, Caroline, we could we could
have like years worth of podcast based just on a
on all the different aspects of prostitution. But today we're
going to narrowly focus in on these early madam's. Yeah,
(02:36):
they just like the men went out to strike it
rich with gold and mining and you know, cattle ranching.
The women followed and they struck it rich do in
their own way. Yeah, And to give you a little
bit of historical context, the California Gold Rush happened from
eighteen forty five to eighteen forty eight. And Ruth Rosen,
(02:58):
who wrote The Lost Sisterhood pros Stitution in America from
nineteen hundred to nineteen eighteen, pinpoints the peak of women's
engagement and prostitution between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred. And
that's when, um, around when we have these I mean,
just incredibly successful women who were in such a tiny,
(03:24):
tiny minority in the West, right, they really took advantage
of supply and demand. Um, because, according to Thaddeus Russell,
who wrote a renegade History of the United States, California
in particular, the non Native American population out there in
eighteen fifty was male. Women typically in this time made
(03:46):
up only about let's see, one out of every fifty
people who showed up in the West. Yeah, And there
there was a study and that came out actually in
the eighteen sixties that characterized women who who opened up
brothels in the West as professional women intent on economic success.
(04:08):
And I mean, if you think about how much money
they were making compared to things like being a stenographer
or a seamstress, which would pay about six bucks a week.
That was totally right. Because let's see the average prostitute.
We're not even talking about the madam. The average prostitute
in Helena, Montana, Helena, Montana made about two hundred and
(04:29):
thirty dollars a month. I'm compared that to the six
dollars a week you could make as a stenographer or
if you are a bank clerk, you'd only pull on
about So why go legit? Yeah, when you can prostitute. Well,
they didn't have many options to true. Yeah. Um. Going
(04:50):
back to the law sisterhood prostitution in America, Ruth Rosen
says that prostitution probably reaches its greatest heights during the
second wave of industrial realization, when heavy industry excludes women
from participation in the labor force, and at the same time,
under Victorian moral codes, women, even if they might have
been part of a wealthier household, they didn't have any
(05:13):
control over their own finances. Yeah. So out there in
the wild West there were there were a couple more
options to make money and be independent. Um. People like
Diamond Jesse Hayman. We're pretty successful. She opened a three
story brothel in San Francisco and was able to provide
her workers with wardrobes worth six thousand dollars. They had
(05:36):
twelve pairs of shoes, evening gowns, all sorts of lazy
negligent that she could afford to give them. And but
she didn't just stop there. She actually earned enough to
buy several parcels of land throughout the city. Yeah. We
see this a lot actually, um with the more successful
madam's in the West, where they would amass these fortunes
(05:57):
and they would reinvest them back into the land. For instance,
we have Lou Graham, who became one of the largest
landholders in the Pacific Northwest by investing the stock market
and real estate. And this former madam even contributed to
Seattle's public school system. And similarly, we have Jenny Rogers,
the Queen of the Colorado Underworld, who owned several brothels
(06:21):
in Denver and also brought up large parcels of land
and bought shares of an irrigation and reservoir project that
paid off big time. Yeah. Another queen of the Underworld
is Anna Wilson, who was the queen of the Omaha Underworld,
and she ended up when she died, she bequeathed her
giant mansion to the city and it became Omaha's first
(06:43):
emergency hospital. What do you know? And I think that
one quote that really gets at the heart of this
entrepreneurial spirit, as questionable as it might seem, since these
were Madam's comes from Mattie Silks, who was a prostitute
her who worked her way up uh to owning three brothels,
(07:05):
and she said, I went into the sporting life for
business reasons and for no other. It was a way
for a woman in those days to make money, and
I made it. I considered myself then and I do
now a businesswoman. Yeah, and that was the goal. I mean,
these women who came a lot of them came from
impoverished backgrounds, and so when they saw an opportunity, they
(07:27):
took it. A lot of them weren't getting into this
business because they liked what they did so much. It
was more about, well, I can make so much more
money to support my family, right, And you'll see that
same argument come up in favor of sex workers these days,
who were able to have that kind of agency. Again,
that's a whole another debate, um, that we can get
(07:47):
into in another podcast. But I think it's really interesting
to see how this kind of similar to that Cowgirl
podcast that we did a few weeks ago about how
sort of the gender roles in the wild West or
far less rigid than they were out east. So were
the laws, Well, yes, this is true, this is very true. Um.
(08:09):
But let's talk a little bit about a couple of
of black madam's who also were renegades in their own right, right, Yeah,
they were able to use their money that they earned
to gain freedom. Mary Ellen Mammy Pleasant was born a
slave and she eventually operated several boarding houses in San Francisco,
(08:29):
but she used her position to actually sue to desegregate
the city street cars. So some people call her the
mother of civil rights down in California. Yeah. And then
we also have Sarah Babe Connors, who ran two brothels
in St. Louis. So obviously very successful and she was
easily recognizable because of the diamonds she embedded in her teeth.
(08:50):
I like it, um, But as you can imagine, brothel
owners did not always get along, especially if you were
say at a clerk at petite and fiery madam from
Georgia and Alice Abbott, who was this huge, six ft
tall woman who opened up They both opened up brothels
(09:11):
across the street from each other in El Paso. Intentions
ran pretty high, they did. Uh. They they started off
just as rivals and became enemies. And although the stories
kind of sketchy is how they became enemies, it certainly
ended up that way. Because one of Alice's girls went
across the street to try to work for Eda. Alice
(09:33):
didn't like it. She she followed in a huff, was
banging on at his door. And remember Alice, Alice is
six ft tall, pounds yeah, two hundred pounds on woman,
and so she's banging on that door. Give me my
girl back, Edda, a little little petite Southern Eda opens
the door and gets punched right in the face, right
(09:55):
in the kisser. Um. Yeah, you would think that it
would be over right right then in the big woman
punching a little woman, it's done, give me my girl back,
let's go. No, it was not done. Did not give up. No,
Alice got her punch in Etta whit and grabbed her
gun because a lot of madam owners unlike. This was
another kind of stereotype. They were breaking a lot of
(10:15):
these madam's. You know, in the wild West, they could
wield some guns. Yeah. Well you have to be able
to protect yourself, not only as somebody out in the
Wild West by yourself, but you know, in your line
of work, you need to be able to protect your Yeah. Yeah,
you can imagine they running a brothel could probably get
a little dicey, sometimes a little bit shady. Um. Yeah,
she didn't just she just shoot her any old place
(10:37):
where she shoot her at a shot Alice in the crotch. Yes,
and this is I think the best part of the story.
This became known as and we're not lying to you.
This became known as the Pubic Arch shooting, named for
the region in which she was shot. Yes, but the
(10:57):
El Paso Newspaper, in a copy edit, wrote it up
as the public Arch Shooting. And as a former copy editor,
I can tell you that this is the reverse of
a copy editor's worst nightmare. You're constantly doing a search
and replace for pubic unfortunately, because you've got to worry
about public meetings, public schools, public this and that, And
(11:19):
it's very easy to type pubic instead of public. So
I love that this is a reverse copy editing air. Um.
But I think the two queens of the brothels at
the time would be the Everly Sisters in Chicago. I mean,
these ladies knew how to run a brothel. Yeah, they
were sort of the queens of Chicago and they were
(11:41):
determined to rise to that rank. To Um. Depending on
when you knew them, they might have been the Lester
Sisters or the Sims Sisters. But when they moved to
Chicago from Omaha, they decided to change their name to
Everly based on their grandmother's the way their grandmother would
sign letters, she would sign them Everly yours, So they
just took the name. They claimed to be about ten
(12:04):
years younger than they really were. Um. They said they
were I think like twenty three, early twenties, mid twenties,
and they were actually in their early to mid thirties. Um. Yeah.
And if this might sound familiar if you've ever read
Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott, which is
all about their empire that they built. I mean, just
(12:27):
may I may I read you the menu from a
typical meal plea ever house ice clam juice, caviar, pheasants, duck, geese, artichokes, lobster,
fried oysters, deviled crabs, pecans, and let's not forget champagne
in a shoe, which is what Prince Henry of Prussia
(12:47):
drank when he visited, probably because he would not He
was only allowed to either order champagne or wine because
Everly Sisters said, no liquor, no liquetor in there. And
their opulent brothel that made them a fortune, Yeah, they well,
it helped that they were in a city full of millionaires.
They kind of how they got their start in Chicago.
(13:10):
They they bought a former brothel, a huge mansion in Chicago,
in the Levee District, which is the vice den of Chicago. Um, yeah,
they bought a former brothel, took a look at all
the the current residents, pretty haggard, well hardened, fired all
of them, gutted the place, hired new girls, gave them
(13:33):
a great education. They you know, the Everly Sisters taught
their girls to read poetry, keep up with the news
of the day, basically anything to keep them on par
with their rich customers. Right, And I thought, I like
to how they encouraged their UM employees to try to
to sort of delay sex as much as possible and
(13:55):
get the men to, you know, engage them in conversation
so that they would be ordering drinks and food. And
they were like, let's I mean, let's let's have them
pay for I can't remember what what There was some
great quote from from one of the sisters, but but
she was essentially like, you know, we have plenty to
offer here besides just sex. And there was actually a
(14:15):
waiting list to become what they called every butterflies, who
made about a hundred dollars a week UM. And again
compare that to the six dollar week stenographer fee, that's
not too bad. And in addition, they offered their employees
free healthcare, they had a doctor who would come and
regularly check up on them, clothing allowances, things like that.
(14:37):
But the Everly Club in Chicago did come to an end.
It was shut down in nineteen eleven, which is not
all that surprising because a year before, in nineteen ten,
the US government passed the Man Act, or the White
Slave Traffic Act as it's also known, which basically UM
(14:58):
shut down a lot of brothels and the newfound FBI
shifted a lot of its attention to these prostitution rings
to shut down these these all these vice operations. Right
there was a big panic over white slavery that girls
were being you know, girls fresh off the farm, they
just stepped off the train, and they were being snatched
(15:18):
by these shady characters and you know, taken and forcibly
raped and sold into basically flavors. And many of them
and many of them were I mean, we've we've been
going on and on about these you know, early entrepreneurs
because there were so few opportunities for women to break
into professional fields and earn their own fortunes at the time.
(15:39):
It's worth noting that the reason why these women that
we've been talking about were so successful because they were
using good business practices in terms of treating their employees
well and providing meals, providing healthcare, the same types of
benefits that we look for in our jobs, and making
sure that their employees were taking arab basically, and that
(16:00):
their customers were not going to suffer as a result
of anything they did. Whereas if you were a prostitute
on the street, I mean, you would turn a trick
for a quarter, you know, far, a far cry from
the hundred dollars a week that you might get if
you were working at the Everley Club. So it might
seem questionable to praise these women who were running brothels, because,
(16:23):
like you said earlier, Caroline, being a prostitute probably was
not a lot of these girls, you know, number one
ambition in life. They probably didn't dream as a child
of working in a bordello. But going back to Ruth Rosen,
who wrote The Last Sisterhood, it's important to note that
once clerical and the service sector opened up greater employment
(16:48):
opportunities for women, and more women started going to college,
educational opportunities opened up, then you see the demise of prostitution. Right.
As long as there are other opportunities where you can
legitimately money and not catch a disease, I think women
would take those better opportunities. However, if you had a
family to support, maybe you weren't from a great background,
(17:09):
maybe you'd been a prostitute for years, and something like
the Everly Club came along, you know, it's only natural
that these women would want to get on the waiting
list to work there. Yeah, and if you are also
I mean this was in Chicago. This could be your
way out of this tiny town to the big city.
Um And I think that this, this whole conversation about
these these early madam's and the early brothels in the
(17:30):
United States is you know, the themes are the same
if you talk about sex work today in terms of
sort of the double edged sort of like, well, you know,
it can be an empowering way to be a female entrepreneur,
but at the same time, is sex work, you know,
a healthy thing? Right? How many actually how many women
actually choose to participate or our cond into it or
(17:53):
feel that they have no other choice? Right? And I
think that it's it's a totally a mixed bag, which
is why we could go on and on and on
about this. But pretty fascinating because those women who opened
up that we were talking about, who opened up those
brothels in the West, were some of the wealthiest women
in the US of the time. They had some of
the biggest parcels of land, they had some of the
biggest bank accounts, They were able to put diamonds in
(18:15):
their teeth, and they reinvested it into public works projects.
So I don't know, I mean, I think that um,
I think there's something to be said for for these
early entrepreneurs United States. But I'd like to hear from
what other people think about about these early Madams and
Madams today, because we haven't even talked about Heidi Flies
(18:36):
and the Bunny Ranch. The Bunny Ranch, I mean, yeah,
there's not We could do a whole series, yes, so
we could. I mean, let us know if you want
a whole series, we can keep going. Flies has a
thing with parrots now on some some reality show. She's
raising parrots, just kind of like Mike Tyson and the pigeons,
like the parents and the parents who knew. Um. Well,
(19:00):
if you would like to send us your thoughts on
Madam's prostitution, sex work, anything under the sun. Mom stuff
at how stuffworks dot com is the email address, and
let's read a couple of letters right now. Okay. Kristin
Terry writes us in response to the Rebounding podcast we did.
(19:21):
She said, I know several widowers that rebound really quickly
after their wives died. My own dad remarried two and
a half years after my mom died. My parents were
happily married for forty one years when she died. I
made my dad promise that he would not date anyone
for a year so that he could be clearheaded when
he started dating. I also made him promise that he
wouldn't make any big decisions about his life. In that year.
(19:42):
He married a nice woman, so I'm not worried about him.
But I've seen this go bad several times. It seems
that men who have been married a long time need
to be married or with someone. But the widows I
know are not so quick to jump back in. My
grandma said that she would never want to be another
man's slave again. Thanks terr Oh, spicy Grandma. I like it. Well.
(20:03):
I've got an email here from Ellen. I hope I'm
saying that right, ellen Um, and we we don't give
requests like this very often, so I had to take
her up on it. She writes, I have met men
that is like no other man. His name is Christopher,
and she is asking for our help to read this
(20:23):
letter to wish this amazing man a happy birthday. On
the third of September, you will be twenty five years old,
and I want to spoil him. He loves to listen
to your podcast, and you've kept him company when I've
been bedridden and he's had to do the housework all
by himself, head to the grocery store in the middle
of the night or when he's now heading to work.
It would make him so happy if you could mention
(20:44):
him and give him a big hurrah. Well, Christopher, you
sound like a class a dude, and I think this
should be before September. So happy pre birthday, Happy Birthday,
and Fay Birthday and her rah. Way to be an
awesome dude, and keep on keeping on with your awesomeness. Yeah,
(21:07):
that's so again. If you have any, uh, any requests
or thoughts you'd like to send our way. Our email
addresses mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You
can also head over to Facebook and leave a comment
there and like us, and you can follow us on
Twitter as well at Mom's Stuff Podcasts. And finally, during
(21:30):
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(21:51):
on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve cameras. It's Reddy, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House top Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin Christine. I have
(00:20):
a couple of questions for you. Okay, do you wear
makeup and fashionable clothes? I wear makeup. The fashionability I
think I made up board of my clothes might be
called into question, but I try. Well. How about walking
around outside unaccompanied and talking freely to men um? Well,
(00:41):
yes I do that, but not necessarily like strangers on
the street. But yeah I do. Yeah, gentlemen, gentlemen who
are known to you, gentlemen known to me unaccompanied? Yes,
I do that, speak to them. And do you ever
happen to drink beer or wear perfume? Yes? I prefer
to only drink beer while I am wearing perfume. Well, ding, Ding,
(01:03):
In the mid to late nineteenth century, you would be
called a prostitute. How dare you accuse me? Hey, it's
not me. It's not coming from me, right, it's coming
from Victorian morals, right. Yeah. The Victorian era not exactly
a boom time for women and their independence and going
around were in perfume right. Um. Generally the mores of
(01:26):
the period meant that they were restricted to their homes
unless they were among the few who were actually hired
a stenographers, seamstresses, or store clerks. So you had you
had a couple of jobs open to you as a
woman back then, literally a couple, or you could break
out and either open. You could be an entrepreneur in
(01:49):
one certain unsavory field prostitution brothels. Yeah, and today on
stuff Mom never told you, we are going to focus
in on madam's in the West because we learned that
the opening of the West, especially with things like the
California gold Rush going on, created these boom towns for brothels,
(02:13):
and the women who ran them were some of the
savvayest and wealthiest entrepreneurs of the day. And while we
could go we I mean, Caroline, we could we could
have like years worth of podcast based just on a
on all the different aspects of prostitution. But today we're
going to narrowly focus in on these early madam's. Yeah,
(02:36):
they just like the men went out to strike it
rich with gold and mining and you know, cattle ranching.
The women followed and they struck it rich do in
their own way. Yeah, And to give you a little
bit of historical context, the California Gold Rush happened from
eighteen forty five to eighteen forty eight. And Ruth Rosen,
(02:58):
who wrote The Lost Sisterhood pros Stitution in America from
nineteen hundred to nineteen eighteen, pinpoints the peak of women's
engagement and prostitution between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred. And
that's when, um, around when we have these I mean,
just incredibly successful women who were in such a tiny,
(03:24):
tiny minority in the West, right, they really took advantage
of supply and demand. Um, because, according to Thaddeus Russell,
who wrote a renegade History of the United States, California
in particular, the non Native American population out there in
eighteen fifty was male. Women typically in this time made
(03:46):
up only about let's see, one out of every fifty
people who showed up in the West. Yeah, And there
there was a study and that came out actually in
the eighteen sixties that characterized women who who opened up
brothels in the West as professional women intent on economic success.
(04:08):
And I mean, if you think about how much money
they were making compared to things like being a stenographer
or a seamstress, which would pay about six bucks a week.
That was totally right. Because let's see the average prostitute.
We're not even talking about the madam. The average prostitute
in Helena, Montana, Helena, Montana made about two hundred and
(04:29):
thirty dollars a month. I'm compared that to the six
dollars a week you could make as a stenographer or
if you are a bank clerk, you'd only pull on
about So why go legit? Yeah, when you can prostitute. Well,
they didn't have many options to true. Yeah. Um. Going
(04:50):
back to the law sisterhood prostitution in America, Ruth Rosen
says that prostitution probably reaches its greatest heights during the
second wave of industrial realization, when heavy industry excludes women
from participation in the labor force, and at the same time,
under Victorian moral codes, women, even if they might have
been part of a wealthier household, they didn't have any
(05:13):
control over their own finances. Yeah. So out there in
the wild West there were there were a couple more
options to make money and be independent. Um. People like
Diamond Jesse Hayman. We're pretty successful. She opened a three
story brothel in San Francisco and was able to provide
her workers with wardrobes worth six thousand dollars. They had
(05:36):
twelve pairs of shoes, evening gowns, all sorts of lazy
negligent that she could afford to give them. And but
she didn't just stop there. She actually earned enough to
buy several parcels of land throughout the city. Yeah. We
see this a lot actually, um with the more successful
madam's in the West, where they would amass these fortunes
(05:57):
and they would reinvest them back into the land. For instance,
we have Lou Graham, who became one of the largest
landholders in the Pacific Northwest by investing the stock market
and real estate. And this former madam even contributed to
Seattle's public school system. And similarly, we have Jenny Rogers,
the Queen of the Colorado Underworld, who owned several brothels
(06:21):
in Denver and also brought up large parcels of land
and bought shares of an irrigation and reservoir project that
paid off big time. Yeah. Another queen of the Underworld
is Anna Wilson, who was the queen of the Omaha Underworld,
and she ended up when she died, she bequeathed her
giant mansion to the city and it became Omaha's first
(06:43):
emergency hospital. What do you know? And I think that
one quote that really gets at the heart of this
entrepreneurial spirit, as questionable as it might seem, since these
were Madam's comes from Mattie Silks, who was a prostitute
her who worked her way up uh to owning three brothels,
(07:05):
and she said, I went into the sporting life for
business reasons and for no other. It was a way
for a woman in those days to make money, and
I made it. I considered myself then and I do
now a businesswoman. Yeah, and that was the goal. I mean,
these women who came a lot of them came from
impoverished backgrounds, and so when they saw an opportunity, they
(07:27):
took it. A lot of them weren't getting into this
business because they liked what they did so much. It
was more about, well, I can make so much more
money to support my family, right, And you'll see that
same argument come up in favor of sex workers these days,
who were able to have that kind of agency. Again,
that's a whole another debate, um, that we can get
(07:47):
into in another podcast. But I think it's really interesting
to see how this kind of similar to that Cowgirl
podcast that we did a few weeks ago about how
sort of the gender roles in the wild West or
far less rigid than they were out east. So were
the laws, Well, yes, this is true, this is very true. Um.
(08:09):
But let's talk a little bit about a couple of
of black madam's who also were renegades in their own right, right, Yeah,
they were able to use their money that they earned
to gain freedom. Mary Ellen Mammy Pleasant was born a
slave and she eventually operated several boarding houses in San Francisco,
(08:29):
but she used her position to actually sue to desegregate
the city street cars. So some people call her the
mother of civil rights down in California. Yeah. And then
we also have Sarah Babe Connors, who ran two brothels
in St. Louis. So obviously very successful and she was
easily recognizable because of the diamonds she embedded in her teeth.
(08:50):
I like it, um, But as you can imagine, brothel
owners did not always get along, especially if you were
say at a clerk at petite and fiery madam from
Georgia and Alice Abbott, who was this huge, six ft
tall woman who opened up They both opened up brothels
(09:11):
across the street from each other in El Paso. Intentions
ran pretty high, they did. Uh. They they started off
just as rivals and became enemies. And although the stories
kind of sketchy is how they became enemies, it certainly
ended up that way. Because one of Alice's girls went
across the street to try to work for Eda. Alice
(09:33):
didn't like it. She she followed in a huff, was
banging on at his door. And remember Alice, Alice is
six ft tall, pounds yeah, two hundred pounds on woman,
and so she's banging on that door. Give me my
girl back, Edda, a little little petite Southern Eda opens
the door and gets punched right in the face, right
(09:55):
in the kisser. Um. Yeah, you would think that it
would be over right right then in the big woman
punching a little woman, it's done, give me my girl back,
let's go. No, it was not done. Did not give up. No,
Alice got her punch in Etta whit and grabbed her
gun because a lot of madam owners unlike. This was
another kind of stereotype. They were breaking a lot of
(10:15):
these madam's. You know, in the wild West, they could
wield some guns. Yeah. Well you have to be able
to protect yourself, not only as somebody out in the
Wild West by yourself, but you know, in your line
of work, you need to be able to protect your Yeah. Yeah,
you can imagine they running a brothel could probably get
a little dicey, sometimes a little bit shady. Um. Yeah,
she didn't just she just shoot her any old place
(10:37):
where she shoot her at a shot Alice in the crotch. Yes,
and this is I think the best part of the story.
This became known as and we're not lying to you.
This became known as the Pubic Arch shooting, named for
the region in which she was shot. Yes, but the
(10:57):
El Paso Newspaper, in a copy edit, wrote it up
as the public Arch Shooting. And as a former copy editor,
I can tell you that this is the reverse of
a copy editor's worst nightmare. You're constantly doing a search
and replace for pubic unfortunately, because you've got to worry
about public meetings, public schools, public this and that, And
(11:19):
it's very easy to type pubic instead of public. So
I love that this is a reverse copy editing air. Um.
But I think the two queens of the brothels at
the time would be the Everly Sisters in Chicago. I mean,
these ladies knew how to run a brothel. Yeah, they
were sort of the queens of Chicago and they were
(11:41):
determined to rise to that rank. To Um. Depending on
when you knew them, they might have been the Lester
Sisters or the Sims Sisters. But when they moved to
Chicago from Omaha, they decided to change their name to
Everly based on their grandmother's the way their grandmother would
sign letters, she would sign them Everly yours, So they
just took the name. They claimed to be about ten
(12:04):
years younger than they really were. Um. They said they
were I think like twenty three, early twenties, mid twenties,
and they were actually in their early to mid thirties. Um. Yeah.
And if this might sound familiar if you've ever read
Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott, which is
all about their empire that they built. I mean, just
(12:27):
may I may I read you the menu from a
typical meal plea ever house ice clam juice, caviar, pheasants, duck, geese, artichokes, lobster,
fried oysters, deviled crabs, pecans, and let's not forget champagne
in a shoe, which is what Prince Henry of Prussia
(12:47):
drank when he visited, probably because he would not He
was only allowed to either order champagne or wine because
Everly Sisters said, no liquor, no liquetor in there. And
their opulent brothel that made them a fortune, Yeah, they well,
it helped that they were in a city full of millionaires.
They kind of how they got their start in Chicago.
(13:10):
They they bought a former brothel, a huge mansion in Chicago,
in the Levee District, which is the vice den of Chicago. Um, yeah,
they bought a former brothel, took a look at all
the the current residents, pretty haggard, well hardened, fired all
of them, gutted the place, hired new girls, gave them
(13:33):
a great education. They you know, the Everly Sisters taught
their girls to read poetry, keep up with the news
of the day, basically anything to keep them on par
with their rich customers. Right, And I thought, I like
to how they encouraged their UM employees to try to
to sort of delay sex as much as possible and
(13:55):
get the men to, you know, engage them in conversation
so that they would be ordering drinks and food. And
they were like, let's I mean, let's let's have them
pay for I can't remember what what There was some
great quote from from one of the sisters, but but
she was essentially like, you know, we have plenty to
offer here besides just sex. And there was actually a
(14:15):
waiting list to become what they called every butterflies, who
made about a hundred dollars a week UM. And again
compare that to the six dollar week stenographer fee, that's
not too bad. And in addition, they offered their employees
free healthcare, they had a doctor who would come and
regularly check up on them, clothing allowances, things like that.
(14:37):
But the Everly Club in Chicago did come to an end.
It was shut down in nineteen eleven, which is not
all that surprising because a year before, in nineteen ten,
the US government passed the Man Act, or the White
Slave Traffic Act as it's also known, which basically UM
(14:58):
shut down a lot of brothels and the newfound FBI
shifted a lot of its attention to these prostitution rings
to shut down these these all these vice operations. Right
there was a big panic over white slavery that girls
were being you know, girls fresh off the farm, they
just stepped off the train, and they were being snatched
(15:18):
by these shady characters and you know, taken and forcibly
raped and sold into basically flavors. And many of them
and many of them were I mean, we've we've been
going on and on about these you know, early entrepreneurs
because there were so few opportunities for women to break
into professional fields and earn their own fortunes at the time.
(15:39):
It's worth noting that the reason why these women that
we've been talking about were so successful because they were
using good business practices in terms of treating their employees
well and providing meals, providing healthcare, the same types of
benefits that we look for in our jobs, and making
sure that their employees were taking arab basically, and that
(16:00):
their customers were not going to suffer as a result
of anything they did. Whereas if you were a prostitute
on the street, I mean, you would turn a trick
for a quarter, you know, far, a far cry from
the hundred dollars a week that you might get if
you were working at the Everley Club. So it might
seem questionable to praise these women who were running brothels, because,
(16:23):
like you said earlier, Caroline, being a prostitute probably was
not a lot of these girls, you know, number one
ambition in life. They probably didn't dream as a child
of working in a bordello. But going back to Ruth Rosen,
who wrote The Last Sisterhood, it's important to note that
once clerical and the service sector opened up greater employment
(16:48):
opportunities for women, and more women started going to college,
educational opportunities opened up, then you see the demise of prostitution. Right.
As long as there are other opportunities where you can
legitimately money and not catch a disease, I think women
would take those better opportunities. However, if you had a
family to support, maybe you weren't from a great background,
(17:09):
maybe you'd been a prostitute for years, and something like
the Everly Club came along, you know, it's only natural
that these women would want to get on the waiting
list to work there. Yeah, and if you are also
I mean this was in Chicago. This could be your
way out of this tiny town to the big city.
Um And I think that this, this whole conversation about
these these early madam's and the early brothels in the
(17:30):
United States is you know, the themes are the same
if you talk about sex work today in terms of
sort of the double edged sort of like, well, you know,
it can be an empowering way to be a female entrepreneur,
but at the same time, is sex work, you know,
a healthy thing? Right? How many actually how many women
actually choose to participate or our cond into it or
(17:53):
feel that they have no other choice? Right? And I
think that it's it's a totally a mixed bag, which
is why we could go on and on and on
about this. But pretty fascinating because those women who opened
up that we were talking about, who opened up those
brothels in the West, were some of the wealthiest women
in the US of the time. They had some of
the biggest parcels of land, they had some of the
biggest bank accounts, They were able to put diamonds in
(18:15):
their teeth, and they reinvested it into public works projects.
So I don't know, I mean, I think that um,
I think there's something to be said for for these
early entrepreneurs United States. But I'd like to hear from
what other people think about about these early Madams and
Madams today, because we haven't even talked about Heidi Flies
(18:36):
and the Bunny Ranch. The Bunny Ranch, I mean, yeah,
there's not We could do a whole series, yes, so
we could. I mean, let us know if you want
a whole series, we can keep going. Flies has a
thing with parrots now on some some reality show. She's
raising parrots, just kind of like Mike Tyson and the pigeons,
like the parents and the parents who knew. Um. Well,
(19:00):
if you would like to send us your thoughts on
Madam's prostitution, sex work, anything under the sun. Mom stuff
at how stuffworks dot com is the email address, and
let's read a couple of letters right now. Okay. Kristin
Terry writes us in response to the Rebounding podcast we did.
(19:21):
She said, I know several widowers that rebound really quickly
after their wives died. My own dad remarried two and
a half years after my mom died. My parents were
happily married for forty one years when she died. I
made my dad promise that he would not date anyone
for a year so that he could be clearheaded when
he started dating. I also made him promise that he
wouldn't make any big decisions about his life. In that year.
(19:42):
He married a nice woman, so I'm not worried about him.
But I've seen this go bad several times. It seems
that men who have been married a long time need
to be married or with someone. But the widows I
know are not so quick to jump back in. My
grandma said that she would never want to be another
man's slave again. Thanks terr Oh, spicy Grandma. I like it. Well.
(20:03):
I've got an email here from Ellen. I hope I'm
saying that right, ellen Um, and we we don't give
requests like this very often, so I had to take
her up on it. She writes, I have met men
that is like no other man. His name is Christopher,
and she is asking for our help to read this
(20:23):
letter to wish this amazing man a happy birthday. On
the third of September, you will be twenty five years old,
and I want to spoil him. He loves to listen
to your podcast, and you've kept him company when I've
been bedridden and he's had to do the housework all
by himself, head to the grocery store in the middle
of the night or when he's now heading to work.
It would make him so happy if you could mention
(20:44):
him and give him a big hurrah. Well, Christopher, you
sound like a class a dude, and I think this
should be before September. So happy pre birthday, Happy Birthday,
and Fay Birthday and her rah. Way to be an
awesome dude, and keep on keeping on with your awesomeness. Yeah,
(21:07):
that's so again. If you have any, uh, any requests
or thoughts you'd like to send our way. Our email
addresses mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. You
can also head over to Facebook and leave a comment
there and like us, and you can follow us on
Twitter as well at Mom's Stuff Podcasts. And finally, during
(21:30):
the week, you can read our blog It's stuff Mom
Never Told You at how stuff works dot com. Be
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How
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