Wanton West: Madams, Money, Murder, and the Wild Women of Montana's Frontier

Between the 1860s and the early 1900s, Montana's prostitutes could seem genteel when "off-duty," as a young Charlie Chaplin admiringly recalled. They could also be defiantly assertive, like the madam who literally kicked hatchet-wielding radical temperance activist Carrie Nation's posterior out of her establishment. With a well-expressed appreciation for her subject, Morgan (Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush) reveals how the prostitutes who followed the hordes of miners and soldiers paved the way for more traditional female settlers. Beautiful white and black women did extremely well, but unattractive Chinese women were virtually slaves in mining camps staffed by Chinese workers. While briefly referring to the horrific accommodations in underground tunnels for old, diseased sex workers, a dearth of written sources leaves Morgan to focus on the innovative and opportunistic madams who succeeded in the red light districts in addition to legitimate Western enterprises such as brick manufacturing. In spite of prostitution's detractors and harsh conditions, the irony throughout this frank exploration is that these law-breaking women enjoyed property rights and high wages not available to respectable married women of the American West. 8 pages of b&w photos. (June)