Wanton West

April 18, 2011
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.

May 15, 2011

There weren't many career opportunities open to women in the Wild West: schoolmarm, farm wife, perhaps stenographer. However, writes journalist and popular historian Morgan (Media Writing/Univ. of Texas, Arlington; Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, 1998, etc.) in this entertaining and instructive study, there was always a demand for prostitutes and brothel keepers, and many women naturally drifted into those ancient professions.

Profiling several of these women from the Gold Rush into the early years of the 20th century, the author makes it clear why this wasn't necessarily a bad career move, especially on the management side. In Helena, Mont., the city's 37 "independent, property-owning prostitutes" accounted for 44 percent of the real-estate transfers and sometimes acted as venture capitalists for local businesses; a dozen of them reported that they had bank accounts in excess of $2,500, while "even street whores without capital could expect to earn $223 a month"—this at a time when a skilled carpenter made half that. One hooker-turned-madam even opened a theater that became "a family favorite," while others, mostly immigrants from Asia and Europe, provided financial anchors around which communities of their compatriots formed. Morgan's subject, improperly treated, could easily devolve into a lascivious catalog, but she has an important larger point: The independence of these women inspired the independence of women who did not engage in the sex trade, and it's no accident that women had the right to vote and served in political office in the West well before they did in other parts of the country. The author closes with Montana's own Jeannette Rankin, elected to Congress in 1917, who got plenty done—even if, as Morgan writes, the press of the day "showed less interest in her legislative accomplishments than in whether she was having an affair with Fiorello LaGuardia."

A useful addition to Western Americana and women's studies.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2011
The story of the fight for womens rights in the U.S. is also a story of prostitution. Before women were allowed to vote, or become doctors or lawyers, or run for public office, or a million other things, there werent a lot of options. Prostitution was legal, profitable, and provided a certain measure of security. Beginning in the late 1860s, Montana was an especially attractive place for working girls. Cities like Helena and Butte and Miles City were highly prosperous, growing communities. But with prosperity came a new kind of morality, and by the later 1800s women like Josephine Airey, a Chicago prostitute whod moved to Helena in 1867, were being arrested for violating the citys new legislation to stamp out hurdy-gurdy houses. Montana was changing, and by 1910, the famous prohibitionist Carrie Nation was decrying Butte as a cesspool. But it was this social and political about-face, which turned respectable businesswomen into disreputable pariahs, that started the country on the road to equality between men and women. A fascinating story, well told.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)