Review by Martha Quillen
Prostitution – June 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
Our Ladies of the Tenderloin: Colorado’s Legends in Lace
by Linda R. Wommack
Published in 2005 by Caxton Press
ISBN 0-87004-444-3
OUR LADIES OF THE TENDERLOIN is crammed full of interesting anecdotes, historical information, and tales about Central Colorado’s history. It includes material about frontier prostitution in Buena Vista, Canon City, Creede, Fairplay, Leadville, Mon trose, and Salida, with tales out of Leadville leading the pack and Salida chronicles coming in a surprisingly racy second.
This book is not wholly accurate, but that’s an occupational hazard in histories of this sort. Details about sexual acts, disease, earnings, specific women, and their personal and community relationships have filtered down through legend and word of mouth because official records don’t ordinarily inventory sex acts, or delve into details about them.
Although revisionist historians often castigate their predecessors for concentrating on rich and powerful white males, research into the lives of non-public citizens who were never well-documented in the first place can be problematical. Most Americans are not memorialized by historians; they’re remembered by their families. But western settlers, and particularly prostitutes, had often left their families behind.
Furthermore, many prostitutes never used their real names, which makes it a little hard to rely on birth certificates, census information, deeds, court records and the like for accuracy.
And inaccuracy can also result when you make logical, but undocumented, assumptions about an unregulated, clandestine profession. For example, Wommack wrote:
“The Line is another term meant to distinguish the bawdy area of town. As small towns or mining camps grew into communities, the red light district was systematically moved away from town. In Aspen, the line was moved against a mountainside, in Central City it was crammed against a hillside at the end of a tiny street. In Salida, it was moved near the noisy railroad line….”
Wommack certainly knows the gist of things; prostitutes were often forced to move – unless the downtown itself moved away as churches, wives, and children came and settled a respectable distance from saloons and brothels. But Wommack shows little understanding of Salida. Salida was founded as a major railroad center, and thus the coveted first blocks across the river from the tracks were home to some of the city’s finest hotels. In fact, Salida’s cribs and parlor houses were actually in the area considered most advantageous for attracting railroaders, track workers, and travelers. Eventually, of course, Salida’s “resort district” was mostly relegated to the west side of lower F St., but from the beginning, that location was (and still is) at the heart of the city’s commercial district.
Taken all together, however, such historical inaccuracies probably shed as much (or perhaps even more) light on this particular subject than more authoritative, academic accounts could — because prostitution in the Old West has always been steeped in legend, rumor, gossip, fantasy, and folklore.
WOMMACK’S BOOK is rich in anecdote, fable and conjecture. The author relates tales of love, jealousy, rivalry, murder, passion, suicide, violence, wealth — and even a few of those inspiring stories of women who triumphed over adversity and lived happily ever after.
Our Ladies also offers a treasure trove of old photos.
So what’s not to like?
Well, actually, from the very first paragraph of the prelude, which comes before the introduction, Wommack offends a pet peeve of mine. She contends:
“Historians have long recognized the achievements of men in the old West – the trappers, cowboys, and gunfighters and the males who established the first businesses. The chroniclers however, for the most part, ignored the significant role played by the first businesswomen – members of the “world’s oldest professions” – in the settling of the frontier. Only recently have the ‘delicate’ subjects of women been written about….”
But that’s ridiculous. Books about prostitutes are more common than books about almost any other category of working-class citizen. How many history books do you see about clerks? Masons? Coopers? Maids? Or housewives?
And stories about prostitutes have been popular for ages. In fact, prostitutes have forged a lofty position in tales of the Old West, right up there with cowboys, gunfighters, Indian chiefs, and lawmen. The sagas and names of prostitutes live on in legends, museums, and history books.
But once Wommack starts in about those poor, forgotten prostitutes, she can’t seem to quit. Instead, Wommack actually seems more amenable to the idea of open prostitution in Colorado — than to the idea of reform.
“In reality,” she writes, “the reform movement was actually sensationalized by the fanatics who made national headlines, such as Carrie Nation and Susan B. Anthony. While these women wielded their wrath along with their axes in towns such as Lake City, Leadville, Cripple Creek, and Denver, most reform actions were small in citizen numbers across Colorado.”
And once again, Wommack is partly right. Carry Nation was famous for chopping away at saloons. But Susan B. Anthony was known for wielding a pen, not an axe, and she was a tireless crusader for women’s rights and suffrage — and abolition. Thus it seems unfair to group Anthony with Nation. But Wommack is an equal-opportunity critic, prone to lambasting “good” women; “society” women; piety; women’s clubs; the temperance movement; righteousness; the clergy; frontier lawmen, newspapers, and the very idea of reform.
Wommack’s persistent scorn for reform made me wonder, though: Does she also champion the ladies who walk our streets today? And the women of Mustang Ranch? And Heidi Fleiss? And if not, why not?
Of course, it’s fairly traditional to champion the soiled doves of yesteryear without extending that courtesy to modern prostitutes. But I figure that’s merely because modern citizens can champion yesterday’s prostitutes without having to consort with them. So I couldn’t help but wonder whether Wommack’s support would be nearly as vociferous if it actually required socializing with modern streetwalkers. Or would she be advocating AA, rehab, and radical reformation for prostitutes, instead?
BUT EVEN THOUGH this impassioned defense of long-dead prostitutes seems pointless to me, it’s actually customary in books about the Old West. Wommack, however, takes her protective instincts to new levels of excess by devoting page after page to lambasting reformers. Then she portrays prostitutes as helpless, beleaguered, cheated, exploited, ignored, and abhorred, but also loved, respected, honorable, and necessary to the settling of the West (or in essence, she depicts prostitutes as being considerably more complex than the average respectable citizen).
“In recent years,” Wommack contends, “many works have been published on the social aspects of prostitution. These works tend to focus on the analysis of reasons, motives, mind sets, causes, actions and reactions of prostitutes as a whole, rather than the individual and her circumstances. The psychological approach seems unending, and — well — deep. This book takes a different tack, centering around the lives of the prostitutes. I have focused on the individual woman’s character, experiences, and contribution to frontier society, however great or small each may have been.”
BUT THE AUTHOR doesn’t actually do anything of the sort. Instead Wommack tends to reduce and stereotype a complex societal rift into a cartoonish struggle between axe-wielding, wild women and long-suffering prostitutes. Wommack fails to recognize that political and economic changes compelled reform. Nor does she acknowledge that ordinary women and mothers in that era had very few rights and precious little protection against the consequences of a spouse’s drinking, gambling, philandering, wanton spending, or venereal disease.
In the late 19th century, men controlled the purse strings and the ballot box. “Respectable” women weren’t allowed to drink, carouse, or even go into dance halls. Although “good” women sometimes overindulged in cough syrup, frontier justice tried to shield them from alcohol and tobacco. In those days, prohibition was already a reality for a majority of American women; so it wasn’t real surprising that women often joined male reformers and religious groups to support the growing temperance movement
Of course, divorce, equal employment opportunities for women, and mandatory child support could have offered an even better safety net than prohibition. But divorce tended to be seen as a problem rather than a solution – just as it is today.
Personally, I found Wommack’s excessive editorializing about the horrors of reform quite annoying.
But Our Ladies of the Tenderloin also features stories, anecdotes, and pictures that are well worth perusing. The book is readable, informative, free of academic chloroform, and illustrated, and that puts it a huge cut above many local histories.
Despite the author’s tendency to preach as avidly as any reformer, the Ladies are still fascinating.
