Inside a Wild West Brothel

Summary

Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

Episode: Inside a Wild West Brothel

Host: Kate Lister
Guest: Holly Marquis
Date: October 14, 2025

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, sex historian Kate Lister hosts Holly Marquis, an expert on sex work in the American Wild West, for a deep dive into the lives of brothel madams and sex workers along the 19th-century frontier. The conversation explores who these women were, their motivations, their living conditions, and their integration (and stigma) in rapidly developing boomtowns like Hays City, Kansas. Expect a blend of academic rigor, personal stories unearthed from challenging research, dark realities, and moments of irreverent humor as the hosts dispel Hollywood stereotypes and shed light on an often-hidden part of American history.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Setting the Scene: The Wild West Frontier

• Frontier Defined: The “frontier” refers to post–Civil War migration to “new” settlements west of the Missouri River—places like Kansas, Colorado, and Texas.
• Manifest Destiny: Settlers believed it was their God-given right (specifically for white Americans) to expand westward (06:43).
• Boomtowns: Towns like Hays City exploded almost overnight due to the railroad, military forts, and passing cattle drives, creating a highly transient, male-dominated society (07:43).

Quote
"It seemed like a perpetual Fourth of July... constant pistol shots."
—Holly Marquis (07:43), explaining contemporary accounts of Hays City

Who Came to the Frontier and Why?

• Men: Drawn by railroad work, cattle drives, military, saloons, or a chance at fortune. Many left their families “back East” (09:49).
• Women: Few paid roles—laundress (if married to a soldier), or, more commonly, sex work. Many sought independence, quick money, or were escaping poverty, abandonment, or widowhood post–Civil War (10:35-12:17).
• Agency: While many chose sex work for lack of alternatives, some sought autonomy outlawed by marriage norms of the time (11:02).

Quote
"Another quarter [of women] said inclination... I like to think of them as having agency, right? Maybe they wanted to be independent."
—Holly Marquis (11:02)

The Reality of Sex Work on the Frontier

• Limited Choices: Only a narrow range of livelihoods for women; sex work offered relatively lucrative earnings and some independence (12:17-12:51).
• Myth vs. Reality: While some were adventure-seekers, many were pushed by circumstance, and their stories are rarely preserved firsthand (14:14).
• Research Challenges: Evidence comes from incomplete census data, court dockets (often lost in courthouse fires), and fragmentary newspapers—most written from an outside, sometimes mocking perspective (15:34).

Standout Stories Among Sex Workers

• Nettie Baldwin: A sex worker tracked across multiple Kansas towns, known for fancy census entries (18:15) and surviving a violent attack. Provided a rich source of court and newspaper records.
• Brothel Humor: Some brothels, when asked their “occupation” by census takers, played along with fictional titles like “Does horizontal work” and “Squirms in the Dark” (17:07-18:15).

Quote
"Occupation: Squirms in the dark."
—Holly Marquis (18:15), reading the census on Nettie Baldwin

The Spectrum of Sex Work and Living Conditions

• Types of Sex Work:
  1. Brothels: The highest rung. Sometimes high-class, with a madam, musicians, gambling, and liquor—but could also be shabby.
  2. Dance hall/Saloons: Women worked as entertainers and would sometimes take customers upstairs for sex.
  3. Cribs: Tiny, flimsy rooms for high-volume “business”—sometimes up to 75 men per night (24:24).
  4. Street Walkers: The lowest rung—completely vulnerable to violence and disease.

Quote
"Sometimes upwards of 75 people a night."
—Holly Marquis (24:24), on the extreme demand in cribs

• Living Conditions: Squalid, often dangerous, with volatile income and constant threat of venereal disease and violence. Basic disease precautions included washing clients' genitals with toxic chemical mixtures (25:26).

Numbers and Social Attitudes

• Exaggeration: Actual numbers in Hays City hovered around 8–10 sex workers at a time, within a total population of 300–1300 (27:24).
• Economics and Acceptance: Sex workers were vital to the economy—drawing men to town, frequenting businesses, and essentially funding law enforcement through regular fines (28:59).
• Tacit Tolerance: Regular monthly fines served as a de facto license to operate. However, sex workers, while essential, did not enjoy full social respectability (29:36–36:53).

Quote
"They would pay their fine and be set free—a kind of license to operate."
—Holly Marquis (29:36)

Legal Entanglements and Community Ties

• Sex Workers and the Law: Brothel workers both suffered from and participated in the justice system. Notably, Nettie Baldwin successfully brought charges against an undersheriff for beating her—he was sentenced to jail when he couldn’t pay the fine (30:34–31:17).
• Property and Status: Some women owned property (e.g., The Sporting Palace brothel), supporting themselves and sometimes partners (32:09).
• Public Fascination: Town newspapers avidly reported brothel disputes and drama as a source of community entertainment.
• Integration and Stigma: Sex workers were never “respectable” women but were undeniably integral to the community’s social and economic life.

Memorable Moment
A druggist arms himself to bust nine sex workers out of jail because “what are we going to do on a Friday night if the girls are in jail?” (38:10–39:48)

Mental Health, Aging, and Endings

• Retirement Realities: “Retirement” was rare and often tragic. Older or ill sex workers usually ended up destitute or died by suicide, frequently through laudanum overdose (39:48).
• Brutal Endings: The story of Lou Sherwood—who stabbed herself in a bar as patrons, mistaking her agony for theater, applauded—underscores the rough reality beneath the myth (40:43).

Decline and Change on the Frontier

• Moral Shift: In the late 1870s and early 1880s, moral attitudes shifted, especially as Volga German family settlers arrived. Fines for sex work skyrocketed, and editorials began to “other” sex workers (42:07).
• Family Farming Supplants Saloons: As the economy shifted from saloons to farming, sex workers were increasingly run out or pushed to the margins (44:22).

Quote
"Maybe they should set up further out of town... those fines became untenable."
—Holly Marquis (42:07–43:19)

• Legacy and Memory: Today, places like Hays, Kansas, both glamorize their Wild West past in markers and tourist sites but are only now learning to openly acknowledge the importance of sex workers in that history (44:56).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Sex workers are funny. They are funny, funny people."
  —Kate Lister (18:29)
• "If you don't have the money to pay [the fine], sometimes they would let them leave, go work for the money, and then bring it back the next day."
  —Holly Marquis (29:36–30:31)
• "He [the undersheriff] couldn't afford to pay the $5 fine, so he had to sit in jail for months, but she [Nettie Baldwin] was flush with cash."
  —Kate Lister (31:14–31:17)
• "She stabbed herself nine times. The patrons thought it was a show and applauded as she died."
  —Holly Marquis (40:43)
• "This is like a soap opera... and it was for readers of the newspaper as well."
  —Kate Lister & Holly Marquis (38:10–39:48)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Frontier defined and Hollywood myth-busting: 05:18–07:40
• Who came west and why? Male & female motivations: 08:48–12:17
• Agency and the limitations of choice: 12:17–14:14
• Research methods and challenging sources: 15:15–16:56
• Nettie Baldwin & census hijinks: 17:04–18:29
• Types of sex work, dangers, and health: 23:38–26:55
• Population numbers and town dynamics: 27:24–28:10
• Legal system, fines, and property ownership: 29:36–32:34
• Newspaper fascination and social attitudes: 37:16–39:48
• Decline with family settlement & changing morals: 42:07–44:22
• Modern remembrance and legacy: 44:56–45:52

---

Final Thoughts

This episode offers a vibrant, unsanitized look at the reality of sex work on America’s 19th-century frontier, pushing beneath the “saloon girl” stereotype. Marquis and Lister blend empathy and humor, emphasizing both the agency and the hardship of these women. The episode is a powerful case study in reconstructing hidden history from fragmentary records—and in challenging listeners to reevaluate whose stories are included in the American narrative.

---

Further Reading & Links

• To read more of Holly Marquis’s research, visit the Fort Hays State University website.
• Interested listeners can connect with her on Blue Sky by searching her name, "Holly Marquis."

Transcript

[Kate Lister]

Hi, I'm your host Kate Lister. If you would like Betwixt the sheets ad free and get early access. Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every single week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

[Lowe's Advertiser]

Member Week is here at Lowe's. That means it's time for my Lowe's Rewards members to save big with up to 40% off hundreds of items like appliances, tools, home essentials and more. Plus get FREE Standard Shipping Shop these exclusive member only savings now through October 15th. Not a rewards member. Join for free today. Free Standard Shipping not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Exclusions and more Terms Apply Loyalty Programs subject to terms and conditions. [e-mail] Terms subject to change.

[NetCredit Advertiser]

Netcredit is here to say yes to a personal loan or line of credit when other lenders say no. Apply in minutes and get a decision as soon as the same day. Loans offered by Netcredit or lending partner banks and serviced by Netcredit Application subject to review and approval. Learn [e-mail] partners netcredit credit to the.

[Avocado Mattress Advertiser]

People what is comfort? Comfort is a mattress that feels soft and supportive, made without harmful chemicals. Comfort is being able to invest in your well being and still having money left for the things you love. That's the Eco Organic Mattress from Avocado. Thoughtfully made, surpr affordable and trusted by families and with flexible financing from a firm, Organic Comfort is more accessible than ever. Shop the Eco Organic mattress [e-mail] and save 10% avocado dream of better.

[Kate Lister]

Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister and you are listening to Betwixt the Sheets and just in case you are new here or in case you are old school but recent world political events have knocked out your frontal cortex and now your mem is suffering. I have to tell you that this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. We call this the fair dues warning because if we tell you these things then fair dues you can't actually get angry with us if you keep listening and happen to get offended. But on a serious note, as if that wasn't serious enough, we are actually dealing with some pretty difficult subjects today, including suicide. So you might not want to listen to this one today. In which case give this one a skip and and we'll see you Next time for everyone else on with the show. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Hello. Welcome back. Nice to see you. Take a seat and keep it down in the back, right? Before we can go any further, I do have to tell you, though, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adultery things in an adulty way, covering racial subjects. And you should be an adult, too. The swinging doors of the saloon cre freak as dusty cowboys saunter in and out, their boots scraping on the rough wooden floor. The room is filled with smoke and you can smell the moonshine before you even get in here. There's a man playing piano in the corner and a barmaid serving the guests. At the top of the stairs stands a woman dressed in black lace and crimson satin. Behind her, a small crowd of similarly dressed girls lounge provocatively waiting to be called up for work. These women are the main event for many of the men coming here tonight. They are the sex workers of the frontier.

[NetCredit Advertiser]

What do you call a man?

[Holly Marquis]

Oh, money, of course.

[NetCredit Advertiser]

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

[Holly Marquis]

I make perfect copies of whatever my.

[Avocado Mattress Advertiser]

Boss needs by just turning a knob.

[Holly Marquis]

And pushing the button.

[Kate Lister]

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

[Holly Marquis]

Goodness.

[Kate Lister]

What a beautiful diamond. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, a history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. The Wild west brothel madam is a figure filmmakers have known and loved for years. But what do we really know about the women who were so selling sex to the cowboys? Today I'm joined by Holly Marquis to find out when and why sex workers came to the frontier and what would life have really been like for them. Let's do this. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Holly Marquis. How are you doing?

[Holly Marquis]

I'm doing quite well. Thank you for having me.

[Kate Lister]

I'm thrilled to have you here because one thing that we haven't covered so far in our little history of sex work, well, there's loads we haven't covered yet, but the frontier, the American Wild West. Because if there's one thing that I definitely don't know about the American Wild west, but the image is cowboys, saloon bars, that's absolutely in the public consciousness. But you've actually researched this subject, haven't you?

[Holly Marquis]

I sure have, yes. Sex work on the frontier is very important, right?

[Kate Lister]

I think so. And it's got to be about more than just cartoon saloon girls and you know, somebody on the piano and before somebody comes in the swinging saloon doors and all that stuff. But what brought you to this area of study in the first place?

[Holly Marquis]

I've always been drawn to the types of history that just don't make the curriculum right. History of sex, sex work. It seems so important and yet it's hardly written about. And I live in Hays, so my research is on Hays City sex work. And I realized that there was quite a lot on Hays as a Wild west place. It was very kind of famous for a while for being wild and woolly, but nothing academic on the sex workers. So somebody had to write about it.

[Kate Lister]

Somebody had to. Just for anyone that's unsure, where is Hayes?

[Holly Marquis]

Literally the middle of America. Middle bit, yes. Very rural Kansas. So out on what would have been the frontier in the 19th century.

[Kate Lister]

I should probably ask you that, what is the frontier? Because to my mind, gleaned only from Hollywood legends, it's all cowboys and saloons and western gunfights. And then suddenly it was the 1950s and jazz came in. That's kind of. And I know that's not right, but what is the frontier?

[Holly Marquis]

You're missing some bits, some gaps need.

[Kate Lister]

To be filled in. What is the frontier? Where was it? And what time period are we talking here?

[Holly Marquis]

So in the mid 19th century, there was this idea of manifest destiny that the United States should spread coast to coast. And it was our God given right. And what they mean by that is like white people should go coast to coast. But after the Civil War, what we're talking about is migration to places like Kansas, Colorado, Missouri, Texas. This is beyond the Missouri River. There had been movement through those places to get to like gold speculation, silver mining. But this is an effort to settle those areas. So you've got a lot of single men coming out to these areas. You also have a lot of sporadic military forts, so there to deal with what they call the Indian problem. Fort Hays is about a mile from Hays City. And if you've seen the Kevin Costner film Dances with Wolves, he's at Fort Hays at the beginning of this film. Right. So that is the setting for this time period. It's, you know, right after the Civil War and that's the setting.

[Kate Lister]

And it was pretty wild. Wasn't?

[Holly Marquis]

Certainly was. So George Custer, the famed, like 7th Cavalry General, he and his wife are here at Fort Hays and she writes that it seemed like a perpetual fourth of July just because she could constantly pistol shafts. So it's quite wild. For a while. Hays City had the eastern terminus of the railroad, so much of the nation's east to west passenger traffic is going through Hays. So this, like, brief boom of population and then it's going to shrink in population, but not in reputation. It's going to be very rough and ready here.

[Kate Lister]

And it wasn't rough and ready for the native peoples that lived there. I think we can recognize that one. But I'm always quite astounded by. Is it confidence or arrogance? I don't know what it is. But these early settlers just put into side the fact that we had no business being there in the first place, but like, trying to get inside the mindset of them packing up the wagons and just heading out and they didn't know where they were going and they didn't know what was going to be there. Like they had no information at all. It's extraordinary that people did that.

[Holly Marquis]

Yeah. I think that is a very modern mindset that we would never. Right. Just pack up. But back then, there's not really the same sort of sense of upward mobility. There's kind of this hope that there'll be new opportunities out west. So some of them are there to try to strike it rich, but they're coming out for a lot of different reasons. So men who work on the railroads, men who are there for military action, men who are just trying to get elsewhere for whatever reason, outlaws, and of course, women are gonna play a big role in these early towns as sex workers.

[Kate Lister]

I suppose you did say earlier that they believed that God wanted them to do this. If you genuinely think that he's on your side and that this is his idea, that probably makes a difference to what you're doing.

[Holly Marquis]

Probably.

[Kate Lister]

Maybe. Maybe I'm just being a bit too generous. But what are the men going out there for? So there's like, posts, military posts. You said that there's railways out there. What are they going out there to do?

[Holly Marquis]

So a lot of cattle drives are going to be very lucrative. So moving cattle from places like Texas up into Kansas to be sold, and that is going to bring sex work. Of course. It's really interesting. During cattle drive seasons, the names of sex workers will be like, cattle Annie, cattle Mary, cattle Susie. They're trying to attract the cattle drivers because they're flush with cash and they've just been with other men for several weeks. So some of it is farming, Some of it is just trying to set up a saloon, set up a gambling den, try to make money wherever you can.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, so we've got these men that are heading out there. We've Got to talk about the women that are joining them, the sex workers who are often left out of this push across America, but they were there at the frontier of this.

[Holly Marquis]

Yes, they're very important to early settlement. It is important to keep in mind that jobs are largely closed to women on the frontier. So jobs that we think of as women occupying in the 20th century, like working in a shop or being someone's secretary, those jobs are going to men. So there's little to no employment opportunity for women on the fort. You could be a laundress if you were married to a soldier, but that's pretty much it. That's. You could do laundry or you can be a sex worker.

[Kate Lister]

Not going to make good money without doing the laundry.

[Holly Marquis]

No. And so they're coming to the frontier for a lot of different reasons, just like the men do. So some of them for opportunity, some of them because their husbands bring them out there and then just leave them. There had been a recent uptick in sex work because of the Civil War. Right. So you've got a lot of money to be made near military encampments, but also a lot of abandonment, a lot of widows who need to survive and need to feed their children. So William Sanger did a pretty famous survey of sex workers in New York, and about a quarter of them said that they got into the work for destitution reasons. Another quarter said inclination. And of course he doesn't believe them. He said, well, that, that can't be. They can't just want to be sex workers. And he goes on this whole moral tirade. But I like to think of them as having agency, right? That maybe they wanted to be independent right inside of marriage. At this time in the 19th century America, women are essentially property of their husbands. They don't have access to their own money. They don't have a lot of choice. And so this is a way out of marriage. You can make money and be independent through sex work.

[Kate Lister]

It's a very complex thing, isn't it? Because I agree with you, I think that the agency needs to be respected. But it's a very constrained type of agency. It's like, what are the options here? Because you're not going to go out to the American wild West and make your money as a dressmaker or make your money as a babysitter, or it's just not there. And even back in the cities, a woman with children is really, really gonna struggle. So the options are incredibly limited. It's really get married, isn't it? That's the option.

[Holly Marquis]

Or do sex work.

[Kate Lister]

Or do sex work, which you can earn a lot of money in a very short space of time. I'm not suggesting anybody turns to it. I'm just saying that the history of it, and still today, it allows people to make a lot of money in a very short space of time with no particular skill set.

[Holly Marquis]

It's a lot safer these days, though.

[Kate Lister]

Yes. I will say that I want to be more hygienic. Yeah, you want to be very careful. I don't want to be saying that everyone in the Wild west was having a great time. These are very rough lives and difficult choices to be made. But recognizing the motivations behind those choices I think is really important. So they weren't bringing their wives out then. Were some of them married, that they were going out there and their wives were at home?

[Holly Marquis]

Oh, yes. Yes. A lot of the clientele of the sex workers were married. So their wives are back east and they're not coming out. Occasionally a family would come out. So it's not only men, but, you know, by and large, the sex workers are going to be visited by a lot of merry men. I just said that as merry men, not married.

[Kate Lister]

Let's say both merry and married men. Do you get a sense that the women going into this world that, like, they've left to go out west to go and resettle these places with the sole intention, I'm gonna get there and I'm gonna become a saloon girl. Or do they? They're thinking, I'm gonna make my way, and then they get there and realize there's nothing for them to do, that this is the only way to make money.

[Holly Marquis]

I think there's a little bit of both. I think that it's hard to parse that out sometimes, because it's not like these women are leaving diaries for us. Right. They don't have the time. The ones who I researched in Hays City all indicated on the census that they could read and write, which makes them a little bit unusual. But there's a big difference in I can sign my own name and I regularly read Shakespeare. Right. So literacy is a thing. This is before compulsory education in the 19th century. So I get the sense that some of them are looking for adventure. Many of them are young women. They may not expect to do this work for the rest of time, although they're going to find out that there's really not a whole lot else that they can do, especially once they've begun. But some of them are forced into that situation. They get out to the frontier and their husband dies or runs off with someone else and what are they going to do? There's no, like, welfare system set up. There's some charitable organizations, but those are going to be mostly in the cities. Frontier really doesn't have that infrastructure yet.

[Kate Lister]

So the women coming out, they're coming from all over the place. But how did you research this? Because one thing that I do know is that trying to find their voices and trying to find evidence that's not tainted because it's been written by a moralist or it's been written by a lawyer or something like that. How did you go about research in this?

[Holly Marquis]

This was quite the task, right? Because I couldn't find any diaries. So, like, where are their voices? I really wanted their voices. So one of the first things that I did was look through newspapers and I, of course, that is tainted with the sex workers are looked at as kind of like the entertainment. So they're writing about them as like, look at what these girls are up to this week. But it could give me some names. I looked at census records and I was able to track people down in that way. Typically in Kansas, the occupation field would be blank for sex workers. So if you find a group of women that have different last names, no occupations doesn't necessarily mean they're sex workers. Right. They could be a group of nuns, I guess, but then you could cross reference. So I had dockets, so court records, although that was a challenge as well. I found a set of court records that I needed and I get up to the courthouse. They finally let me upstairs in the attic to look through their stuff, and there were like 700 documents missing. And they said, oh, I think somebody wants to check them out decades ago and never brought them back, or I find a testimony. But then that got transferred to another courthouse and there was a courthouse fire. There's so many courthouse fires. So I was very persistent. I had to just really keep at it because I really wanted to get some sense of their voice. So I'm not just writing about this as this, like, observer from up top.

[Kate Lister]

And what did the voices tell you that you found?

[Holly Marquis]

Well, I ended up getting quite attached to one. I don't know if you're allowed to have a favorite 19th century sex worker.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, I think you are, definitely.

[Holly Marquis]

So Nettie Baldwin was someone who I found, I think the most on. And before I kind of tell you about her, I will tell you that the census record for her was my favorite find of this whole project. So before she comes to Hays City, she's in actually three different census records for the same year. So these women are transient. Sometimes they're moving so fast that the census doesn't capture them. And in her case, she was moving quickly enough that she sort of beat the census enumerator to the next town. So she's on multiple records. And I find her in Ellsworth. She was living in a house of George and Elizabeth Palmer. And out to the side of that entry the enumerator writes house of Ill fame. So brothel. And he did that on several records that day for Ellsworth. But they are the only ones with occupations. So the occupations for that house, 18 year old Libby Thompson's occupation was listed as diddles. What? Harriet Parmenter. Yeah, she wrote diddles for her job. Yeah. Harriet Parmenter wrote Does Horizontal Work. Lizzie Harris wrote Ogle's Fools. And for Nettie Baldwin, it lists her occupation as Squirms in the Dark.

[Kate Lister]

Oh my God.

[Holly Marquis]

That's incredible. Yes. I was so excited to find this. And I have to think that they were just having a little bit of a go at him because the same census enumerator visited other brothels and did not write occupations.

[Kate Lister]

See, sex workers are funny. They are funny, funny people.

[Holly Marquis]

So while she's in Ellsworth, she was with this loser boyfriend, Bill McClellan, William McClellan. And they're in bed one night and someone comes into their house to try to shoot him. Ends up shooting a couple of other men dead. Another sex worker is dead and Nettie gets a bullet to her chest and survives. He gets off scot free, like. Yeah, she's fine. They end up moving to Junction City and then Newton and then finally to hayes by early 1871 or 1872. And so I was able to track her kind of before. She spends quite a lot of time in Hayes and she and the boyfriend are like in front of the court quite a lot. So I have a lot of records on them. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything on her after she leaves Hays. So look through your addicts. If anybody has a diary or something.

[Kate Lister]

Always where was sex worker history is? You get these little brief moments where they're in the records that they've turned up and you can trace them for a bit and then they just vanish. They just go, it's a name change or it's something. They've just gone.

[Holly Marquis]

Yeah, a name change. They change their birth dates. They want to be like fresh and new and young in each new town. But you could also just die on the side of a road and nobody's going to write that down.

[Kate Lister]

So yeah, I mean, it's brutal, isn't it? I'll be back with Holly after this short break.

[Holly Marquis]

Foreign.

[NetCredit Advertiser]

Hey folks, it's Marc Maron from wtf and today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile. So you're thinking about upgrading to the amazing new iPhone 17 Pro, the most powerful phone yet with 8 times optical zoom. But are you also thinking about the hassle of getting the phone at the store and transferring all your data? Well, good news. When you order a new phone online with Boost Mobile, they'll send an expert to your home or work to deliver your brand new iPhone 17 Pro and get you all set up on Boost Mobile within minutes. Visit boostmobile.com to get started. Delivery available for select devices purchased at boostmobile.com terms apply NetCredit is here to.

Say yes because you're more than a credit score. Apply in minutes and get a decision as soon as the same day. Loans offered by Netcredit are lending partner banks and serviced by Netcredit. Applications subject to renewal you an approval. Learn [e-mail] partners NetCredit credit to the.

[Tide Advertiser]

People did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water. Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream. Sure thing. Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be tied.

[Birch Lane Advertiser]

Hey neighbor. This holiday season, Birch Lane is here to help you celebrate with friends and family. From guest ready dining tables to cozy sofas that fit the whole crew, our classic furniture and decor are crafted to last. And with fast free delivery, you can be ready for holiday hosting in days, not weeks. So you can spend time on what matters most, its classic style for joyful living. Shop Birch Lane, a Wayfair specialty brand@birch lane.com.

[Kate Lister]

You found some incredible names during this research.

[Holly Marquis]

I did. So what makes Hays City a little different is that most of them use regular sounding names. Some historians note that taking on like a fun name would be like an initiation to the sisterhood of sex work. Okay. Or it's a way to keep your family from shame. It's also a way to advertise. Right? I mentioned Cattle Annie, Cattle Mary. But if you have a unique something about you, there's a lot of like Peg Leg Susie and One Eyed Liz. And that's it's. A way to be remembered early on in Hayes there. Stinkfoot Mag.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, right.

[Holly Marquis]

And I can't imagine she would have taken that name for herself.

[Kate Lister]

Why would you want. That's not a good name to go into that line of work with Stinkfoot Mag. It's distinctive, right?

[Holly Marquis]

So I imagine she just had really stinky feet. And there was a Lousy Liz.

[Kate Lister]

Lousy Liz.

[Holly Marquis]

I don't think that's the best business name.

[Kate Lister]

But we're still talking about them like 150 years later. You've got that. It's a distinct name. You'd have to give them that.

[Holly Marquis]

It's true. Maybe she meant like lousy morals instead of like, I'm lousy in bed.

[Kate Lister]

Maybe she did. But what were the living conditions of these women? Because again, it's very easy to overly glamorize it. And we're back to that image of the saloon and all that stuff. But this was a really, really tough life. What kind of living environments were they in?

[Holly Marquis]

There are a number of different types of sex work that happens on the frontier. And this historian, Ann M. Butler, writes that she notes four styles. And the highest would be someone who worked in a brothel. And that category is really broad. So you could have like a really fancy kind of high end music, gambling, fine liquor, and you could have something much smaller. But typically there's a madam who is sort of coordinating the events of the evening. Below that were saloon girls or dance hall workers who engaged in sex work. The next rung would be someone who worked in what was called a crib. So like a really small, flimsy house or shack. And this is all about volume. This is not about, like entertaining anybody in the parlor with a fine drink. This is like sometimes upwards of 75 people a night.

[Kate Lister]

Holy motherfuck.

[Holly Marquis]

Wow.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, Right.

[Holly Marquis]

The lowest would be what would amount to like a street walker, someone who is working from the streets. And newspapers will often use these terms really interchangeably. And also it's not uncommon for people to do multiple types of sex work. So maybe you work in the saloon, but you also work in a crib occasionally or your circumstances change. So it's not like you're a brothel worker. And that's the end of that story.

[Kate Lister]

Do we get any sense that men were selling sex there? I mean, I know that they must have been, but did they turn up in the streets?

[Holly Marquis]

They must have been, but not in Hayst City.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Holly Marquis]

I get the sense that there is less of a need for men to sell sex because men were readily available for sex for free with each other.

[Kate Lister]

Okay, there we go. Just going back to living conditions and sort of 75 people visiting an establishment a night. I mean, I've got to ask about the health of these women. I mean, the health of everybody is pretty bad. But what are we talking about here?

[Holly Marquis]

So the first thing that I always think of is just the hygiene. Like everyone who the students are all like, what would you do if you could go back in time and we wouldn't because everybody would be so smelly. Disease. You're under constant threat of venereal disease and also abuse. Right. There's no real protections for it them. So not only that, their living conditions are, you know, frequently bad, but their cash flow is unstable. They're very transient. So it seems like it's a very chaotic lifestyle. Disease prevention at this time is pretty rudimentary. They would wash their customers genitals before and after. Part of this is so a venereal disease couldn't be blamed on their house. They could say like, well, you didn't get it from me because I washed you. Which we know isn't actually going to prevent anything.

[Kate Lister]

No.

[Holly Marquis]

But in that process of washing, they could sort of see, is there any pus, Is there anything that I can notice and then potentially turn them away if they're in a position to do so. They also used various douches with all kinds of ingredients that they would have gotten from the local druggists, like carbolic acid, mercury chloride, potassium permanganate mixed with a little laudanum. And they're trying to both prevent sexually transmitted infections, but also pregnancies. So usually that's going to be abortifacients, where you're taking something that's so poisonous that abortion is going to be a side effect because they don't have access to safe medical care.

[Kate Lister]

Do you have any sense of how many women in Hays City were selling sex? I only ask that because the history of sex work, especially in the 19th century and in Britain, is they're prone to these insanely, wildly exaggerated numbers of like 250,000 women on the streets of London alone. And when you kind of break that down, it's like that would mean everybody in London is like, that's obviously not true. But what kind of numbers are they talking about in Hays City? Are they similarly prone to exaggeration?

[Holly Marquis]

They are, but you also have to think about the population. So when the railroad was the eastern terminus, we have about 1300 people in the town. Once that leaves, the town shrinks to about 300 people. But in that same year, the county sold 37 liquor licenses. So it's this wild west town. Right. And the sex workers are dependent on both the people who live in the town, but also the nearby fort, any kind of passersby. So in a town of about 300 on the census records, usually about 8.

[Kate Lister]

To 10, that's a lot for town of 300.

[Holly Marquis]

And that's only what's being captured on the census on that one day. A lawyer who had been in Hays City at this time, DC Nellis, he estimated anywhere between 10 and 50 at any given time.

[Kate Lister]

Wow.

[Holly Marquis]

I usually found around 8 to 10, not just in the censuses, but in the arrest records.

[Kate Lister]

So what was the. And it's difficult to get a handle on this one, but the general social attitude to sex work at this time in this space, because zooming out, if you're going to France or Britain or Germany, they have this very complex attitude. In Britain they called it the great social evil. And sort of forward facing, it's all very like, this is terrible and awful and we must not do it. But then you sort of scratch the surface. It's like, yeah, but everybody's doing it. It's a really odd like state of cognitive distance to get themselves in. But what's it like in America on the frontier where really high numbers of women are doing this? Probably that's really the only work that women can do. And also they must have been integral to the economy of that area. What was their attitude to this?

[Holly Marquis]

So it's definitely integral to the economy. And I think if we were in a bigger city with these like moral reform women, they would have had that moral indignation. But on the frontier things are a little different, at least initially. So in these early frontier towns, sex work was really vital to keeping the town going. Right. If the sex workers are who are bringing the men from the fort on payday to come to town, they're not just buying sex, they're also going to the gambling dens and they're going to the saloons or patronizing these businesses. They also ultimately paid for the sheriffs and the justices of the peace through their near monthly fines. So they would be arrested about once a month, they would pay their fine and then they would be set free. The fines were pretty small. So in 1872 there was a new undersheriff and he arrested eight women. And the fines ranged from $1 for people who were sex workers to nettie Baldwin paid $6 for being what amounts to a madam. And Lizzie Goddard paid $9. And if they didn't have the money to pay, someone else could pay for them. Or sometimes they would let them leave if it was the weekend, go work for the money, and then bring it back the next day. So there's this kind of tacit acceptance, Right. That this. It's like a license to operate. I found that. So Frank Shepard, the undersheriff who arrested all of these women, he frequently went to the brothels in 1872. Nettie Baldwin actually brings a charge against him for beating her in her house.

[Kate Lister]

Oh, I don't like him anymore.

[Holly Marquis]

Yeah, I don't like him either.

[Kate Lister]

No.

[Holly Marquis]

She had witnesses. So two other sex workers were called to be witnesses. Lily Thompson and Molly Whitecamp. And the sheriff, Alexander Ramsey was a witness. He doesn't have any witnesses for his side. They find him guilty and they fine him $5. And he couldn't afford to pay. So she had, the month before, been fined $6. And she was flush with Cass. He doesn't have the $5 to pay, so he has to sit in jail for three or four months until they consider his fine worked off. And I find that really interesting on two counts. First, that he didn't have the money and she did. But that she felt comfortable bringing a charge against the undersheriff means that there was some level of acceptance for her.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, the most.

[Holly Marquis]

And that he was found guilty. Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

It's like not only is she confident enough to bring that charge, that she recognizes an injustice has happened, but that the actually they had the legal mechanisms for this person to be punished. I don't know if that would have happened in the uk, to be completely honest.

[Holly Marquis]

And I think that as part of this frontier is a quite different place.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Holly Marquis]

At least initially, early on. And they're also. They're buying houses. So there are mortgage records that I was able to find. And one of them, Nettie Baldwin, takes over a house called the Sporting Palace. It's a bar now, but it was a brothel called the Sporting Palace. And it changed hands between a number of sex workers and sometimes their loser boyfriends. And the deed listed all of the contents of the house. And so looking at the contents of the house, I could gather that this was a brothel, not a crib, because it had enough beds and washstands for seven or eight sex workers just in this one house.

[Kate Lister]

What else did they have in the house?

[Holly Marquis]

They had a bureau with mirrors. They had window curtains and fixtures, mattresses, a water cooler, two ladies trunks and contents, five bedsteads, 35 yards of carpet, two sofas, six glass lamps. I mean, so they're listing everything. It doesn't seem to be a really high class establishment, but certainly a brothel, not a crib.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah. Did you get any sense, this is a bit of a difficult one as well, but of people being coerced, of there being sex trafficking at this time. And I know, again, it's like choices, but they're constrained by circumstance. Like, if Nettie is a madam, is she exploiting people? Was there people being trafficked and forced into this? Do you have records of that?

[Holly Marquis]

I didn't get any of that sent based on the limited records that I had. But if they can bring a charge against the law, they could probably also have gone to the law and say, hey, you know, Nettie's forcing me to do something that I don't want to do. So that doesn't mean that it didn't happen, but it didn't show up in my records.

[Kate Lister]

And what was the law? They were being charged. What were they being charged with?

[Holly Marquis]

It really just depends. So sex workers were part of a number of trials and provided witness testimony. So Nettie Baldwin witnessed a fight, and so she was a witness there. She was also a defendant in a case where another sex worker accused her of hitting her. This woman's name is Alice. She said that he hit her and that her boyfriend, William McClellan, threatened to kill her. So they often would fight with each other. About a month after she bought the sporting palace, she witnessed a fight between her boyfriend, William McClellan, and a man named Jack Wright. Essentially, they get into a fight in the bar, and McClellan shot Jack Wright. He was arrested. He pled not guilty. I'm not sure on what basis because everyone saw him. But she testifies as a witness in the defense at this trial. Tommy Drum, who owned the saloon, said, it looks too damn dry in here. And brings in a decanter of whiskey. And before people would take the stand, they would take a shot, including the judge. So everybody's drinking in the court. He was able to get this case transferred to Ellsworth, and his friend there was the district attorney. So it gets dropped, he gets away with murder, which is not going to be the only time this happens. She serves as a witness in another murder trial about six months later in a different bar. Sy Goddard, Stans Hall. She was there, a guy named Thomas Hine, who was from the 6th Cavalry, and he went to get a drink, and a private, Frank Glisman, was there and sort of bumps into him. And so Thomas Hine Just shoots him in the chest and yeah, he just steps over the body and walks out into the street. So she is a witness for the defense. Another sex worker who was there with Frank Glisman was a witness for the prosecution. So they're violating these city ordinances through their profession, but the law relied on them to provide testimony and that testimony was considered accurate, reliable witness testimony.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Holly after this short break. Mazda.

[Tide Advertiser]

Once you discover the Mazda CX90 Mazda, it doesn't take long to get it. With three row seating and safety features like radar, cruise control and rear cross traffic alert to carry you and your peace of mind, it will have you saying Mazda. The Mazda CX90. It's made to move you.

[Holly Marquis]

Every Mazda SUV offers you an elevated.

[NetCredit Advertiser]

Driving experience and refined performance.

[Holly Marquis]

Discover it at your local Mazda dealer today.

[NetCredit Advertiser]

Netcredit is here to say yes because you're more than a credit score. Apply in minutes and get a decision as soon as the same day. Loans offered by NetCredit or lending partner banks and serviced by NetCredit application subject to review and approval. Learn more at netcredit.com partners netcredit credit to the people.

[Kate Lister]

They're very much a part of this community and this infrastructure quite clearly, and they have access to legal recourse and they have access to money and buying their own places. Were they respected or did it still have that stigma around it, they would.

[Holly Marquis]

Never have been considered like a respectable woman, like what we think of as a woman with class. They would never have been treated in that way, but they were considered pretty essential to the town and not just in the sense of being trial witnesses and providing economically, but for entertainment reasons. And I'm not talking about the sex work here, I'm talking about in the newspapers.

[Kate Lister]

Wow, okay.

[Holly Marquis]

This is before Netflix, right? So people would read the newspaper and say, what did those sex workers get up to over the weekend?

[Kate Lister]

That's incredible.

[Holly Marquis]

There was a lot of really fun commentary in the newspapers and reporting on fights, reporting on, you know, Alice is drunk again and yelling in the streets or they hit each other. There was a really fun newspaper report that actually had to do with Nettie Baldwin and Bill McClellan. He ended up beating her up and she comes to the court as a victim of the crime. He was fined $100 and he jumps up and says, well, that's more than it used to cost to kill a man. Which is not really a thing you should say to a judge, right? Like you're basically saying, like, I could hire a hitman for Less than that. But they ended up. They let him go because they had mixed up the dates and they accidentally tried him on a Sunday. So they just let him out.

[Kate Lister]

This is insane. This is like a soap opera.

[Holly Marquis]

And it was for readers of the newspaper as well. They are looking to not just the sex workers, but people who are considered part of the Vice district as their entertainment. A crowd of drunk people at one point took the sign for the Hays City Sentinel, the newspaper, and they put it out in front of one of the brothels. And so the next morning, these women were incensed, and they marched it back. And they said that their good name of their house was not going to be sullied by this miserable rag. And, you know, so they're playing little pranks on each other. They are really integral to the town. Of course, that doesn't mean that they necessarily always had a good time. But there was a story that I came across, a recollection. So it was from 1926. They were interviewing C.W. miller, who owned a hardware store, about his days in the Wild west past. And he recalled a story where the druggist, Jimmy o', Brien, he comes running into the hardware store and says, I need to borrow a gun. And he's like, well, what do you need a gun for? And he said, they've got nine of our town girls in jail. What are we gonna do? So, meaning 9 of the sex workers had been arrested, and it was Friday night. Like, what are we gonna do if the sex workers are in jail over the weekend? So he borrows the gun, goes to the jail, shoots the hinges off of the door, and out they go. And the interviewer asked, well, did they get rearrested? And he said, certainly not. The sheriff had done his duty the first time and didn't feel that there was a need of inviting further complications. So it does seem like there is a bit of playfulness.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Holly Marquis]

But we also have to remember that their lives were difficult. Women often used drugs and alcohol to kind of numb, you know, the things that are going on in their life. They would take laudanum to retire. So historian noted that the most popular means of retirement from sex work was completing suicide, usually through an overdose of laudanum. So we've talked about how frontier jobs are not available. That's especially true if you have sort of aged out of sex work or if you're experiencing, like, late stage syphilis. Does not look pretty. And we did have one who completed suicide pretty unusually. She walked into a bar. Her name was Lou Sherwood. She walked into One of the bars and starts yelling, it's all for you, Fred. And stabbing herself in the chest.

[Kate Lister]

Holy shit, man.

[Holly Marquis]

Unfortunately, the patrons of the bar thought that it was a theatrical performance, so they started clapping as she's bleeding out. So she's stabbing herself, like, nine times, which takes a lot of fortitude, I think more than once, and she bleeds out. We don't know who Fred was or what he did, but she ends up being the last woman who was buried at the Boothill Cemetery. She joined the body of another woman. So, yeah, it was not a glamorous lifestyle.

[Kate Lister]

No, no, not at all. Did you get any sense of, like, what happens after for any of the women? Cause that's always the bit that seems to be missing in so many of these stories is, as we were saying earlier, you just lose. Lose track of them. And I always want to know, how did it work out for you? Were you all right after this? Did you go on and get a job? Did you get married? Like, what happened to you? Did you manage to trace anybody?

[Holly Marquis]

I have not. And I would really like to. I would expect that many of them, once the attitudes shift in Hayes, that they move further west to, like, the nearest frontier town. But realistically, most of them probably would have either been the victim of some kind of violence or died from venereal disease.

[Avocado Mattress Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Holly Marquis]

Yeah.

[Kate Lister]

So when do things start to change then? Or is Hayes still a town where sex workers run the roost?

[Holly Marquis]

Not anymore. At least not that. Not that I know of. I know we're so much less fun now. In the late 1870s, Volga Germans started to settle on the plains. So these are Germans who had gone to Russia and then are going to come to the plains, and they're going to settle in Ellis County. They're going to set up little towns like Catherine, named for Catherine the Great, and they are going to, at first, not be welcome in the town either. But eventually, the economy shifts and family farming becomes, like, the main driver of the economy. Not so much the saloons anymore. And once that happens, I started to see a huge shift in tone in the newspaper. So there started to be editorials, like, do we really want to bring our children up in a town where we can see sex workers on the street? Maybe they should set up further out of town. They also started to experience higher fines. So those fines that we talked about that were like, $1 or $6 were now $100 or $250. And so those fines became untenable. So there are records of one person bonding out for $250. Another person, it says that her admirer paid her $100 fine. But that really is going to run a lot of them off. Towards the end of where my study ends, in about 1883, there was a trial for three women, the Heiss women, Susan Heiss and her two daughters. And there was so much negativity in the papers, and I think part of it was this shift had happened, but also because it was a mother and two daughters. Now, these are adult women. These aren't like 12 year olds. These are adult women. But the idea, I think, in the town was that she had corrupted her daughters and we needed to run them off. We've been cursed with them. But I did tell you that my favorite source was the census record. I also found a subpoena for these women, so they must have brought it with them to the court. And it was just tucked in a docket book. I was flipping through it and they said, this docket book smells bad. It survived a fire. And I'm flipping through and this subpoena just is loose in there. The historical society didn't know that it was there, so it was not in any kind of protective sheet. But I could just hold the subpoena for this woman and her two daughters. So that was a really neat find.

[Kate Lister]

I think that's incredible. So as a final question then, where you are in Hayes or just America in general? Do you think that it's coming to terms with its sex worker past? I mean, like, in Australia, it took the Australians an awfully long time. I think it's about to like the 1980s before people started to go, go, hang on a minute. It's pretty cool that we're descended from convicts. And now they. And now they love it. But for the longest time there was like, oh, we're not really talking about that. Is that the case in America? Have they. Have they come to terms with this past? Is it something that they're proud of? Is it something that they still hush up?

[Holly Marquis]

Yes and no. So I had two reactions to this. Mainly I ended up getting a new dentist over this because he's working on my teeth and he's asking me what I'm researching. And he says, well, I hope that you don't find any of my relatives. And I thought, I'll get a different dentist if you're not gonna be proud to have your relatives. Be strong, independent women. But most people were very excited that I was finally talking about these women. And Hays, for a long time has really glamorized its Wild west past. There's a lot of plaques downtown which will tell you this was the Sporting palace or this is Cy Goddard's dance hall, or this was Tommy Drum Saloon. And so we have really latched on to that past with like Wild Bill Hickok and Custer and all of those famous people that you hear of were in Hayes for a time. So that is really important. So most people in town were very excited. I was getting a lot of requests to speak and most people I think are embracing that past.

[Kate Lister]

That's amazing. Holly, you have been incredible. I knew that you would be. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[Holly Marquis]

So if you go to the Fort Haystate University webpage and search up my name, all of my recent publications are there with links.

[Kate Lister]

Links. And are you on social media at all or are you smarter than that?

[Holly Marquis]

Quite frankly, I'm on Blue Sky. I. I can't.

[Kate Lister]

God bless you.

[Holly Marquis]

I can't tell you what my username is. I think it's just my name. I'm not entirely sure. Off the top of the There can't.

[Kate Lister]

Be many Holly Marquises that they.

[Verizon Business Advertiser]

Outdated systems and inefficient communications are bad news for your supply chain. But with Verizon business, everything just clicks. With our advanced connectivity solutions, you can automate your operations, plus you can keep your teams connected and on top of the job, helping you stay ahead of demand and the competition. It's the chain reaction your distribution needs. Learn [e-mail] distribution.

[Avocado Mattress Advertiser]

What is comfort? Comfort is a mattress that feels soft and supportive, made without harmful chemicals. Comfort is being able to invest in your well being and still having money left left with the things you love. That's the Eco Organic Mattress from Avocado. Thoughtfully made, surprisingly affordable and trusted by families and with flexible financing from a firm, organic comfort is more accessible than ever. Shop the Eco Organic Mattress [e-mail] and save 10%. Avocado dream of better.

[Kate Lister]

Must be the.

[Holly Marquis]

Only one that yeah, Natalie with an IE too.

[Kate Lister]

So yeah, go look her up over there. You have been wonderful. Thank you so much for telling us about some of these extraordinary women. Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Holly for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you want us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email [e-mail] this podcast was edited by Tim Arstle and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets History of Sex Scandal in Society, A podcast by History hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.