Selling Sex in the Silver Valley

by Dr. Heather Branstetter

  Obsolete doors in Avenue A. Photo by Heather Branstetter.

  Inside the Montana Bar, 615 Cedar Street, during the 1890s. Historic Wallace Preservation Society.

  After Wallace passed the ordinance requiring dance hall licensing in 1895, madams were increasingly subject to arrests and routine fines for failing to obtain a permit for a dance show. Variety shows and disreputable theaters became more popular. Between 1893 and 1904, “Wallace madams arrested for keeping houses of prostitution included Blanche Burnard, who was arrested four times, Effie Rogan who was arrested five times, and Jessie Stuart who had just one arrest.”36 The women arrested were exceptional cases, though; police dealt informally with most sex workers. It would have appeared hypocritical to enforce the rules strictly when the city and so many of its leaders, such as Theodore Jameson, profited from prostitution.37

  City leaders overlooked the licensing requirement for many dance halls and disreputable theaters, despite citizens’ dismay. The Coliseum, for example, featured a carousel stage and enabled men to watch burlesque entertainment from a horseshoe-shaped gallery.38 It was the largest of the theaters in town and could probably hold about one hundred people, with rooms available for prostitution.39 Powell explains how early town leaders allowed sex work even when it crossed lines of acceptability:

  A map of Wallace brothels in 1891, showing where variety shows began to appear. Adapted from Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

  A map of Wallace brothels in 1892. Adapted from Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

  A map of Wallace brothels in 1901. Houses started to consolidate around Pine Street, with a disreputable dance hall and variety theater in the area that would soon become the official restricted district. Adapted from Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

  When the community railed against the reports of “outrageous activities” at Richard Daxon’s “Coliseum Theater,” [Mayor] Rossi appeased the community by appearing “tough” on Daxon. He slyly excused Daxon from the Coliseum’s status of being a combination of a dance hall and theater, while demanding Daxon pay prostitute fines for the women who worked for him. The net result for the city was probably the same amount of money, yet he could maintain that the dance hall portion of Daxon’s business was closed down.40

  The licensing ordinance was thus selectively enforced, depending on the political connections of the dance hall managers and the actions of those who worked in or patronized the establishments. A flexible interpretation of the law was applied in accordance with local customs and preferences.

  Between 1893 and 1904, Powell reported, “four disreputable saloons or dance halls on Sixth Street housed prostitutes on their second floors. ‘The Trilby,’ ‘the Wigwam,’ ‘the Arcade,’ and ‘the Show Shop,’ were the major disreputable theaters during this era.”41 Variety-show life appears to have been difficult, as evidenced by the many suicide attempts among the women who worked in these theaters and dance halls. Edna Ferrell, the Idaho State Tribune reported, “attempted suicide by swallowing a vial of carbolic acid.… While she had a close call, it is believed she will recover.”42 Drinking carbolic acid appears to have been a common method for suicide attempts during this time.43 These attempts were often unsuccessful, however. The Idaho Press reported that variety-theater actress Georgia Ross tried three times to kill herself.44 In 1907, the Times reported that Kitty Gregg, “one of the inmates of the ‘Show Shop’ on Sixth Street drank a vial of carbolic acid early yesterday morning and as a result is lying seriously ill at Providence hospital.”45

  The Arcade, located on the northeast section of Sixth Street near the river, was a combination bawdy theater and dance hall run by Dan McInnis. It was the only dance hall left in Wallace by 1909 and closed in 1911: “With the closing of the bars in the Arcade Theater today,” the Spokesman-Review reported, “one of the last of the west’s notorious dance halls passed into history.… Like the dance halls which have gone before it, the Arcade was a combination of women, wine and song. It consisted of its bars, its dance floor and stage and its curtained boxes.”46 The dance halls were too rowdy to last beyond the widespread calls for reform between 1910 and 1917 that shut down brothel-based prostitution in most cities across the country.

  MIGRATION TO BLOCK 23

  Restricting sex workers to dance halls, variety shows, disreputable saloons and bawdy theaters in an official restricted district would enable the rise of liquor men in the business and political life of the city.47 It appears that President Roosevelt’s visit in 1903 was an important catalyst for the eventual geographical relocation of the houses to a restricted district in the northeastern corner of town. There was also a general movement toward a more grounded and less transient lifestyle in Wallace during this time. A large number of brothels lined Pine Street between Fifth and Sixth, but churches and schools began moving into nearby areas on Pine Street near Fifth Street. As early as November 1900, “a deliberate attempt to alter the location of prostitution was evident in the city council records,” prompted by a petition signed by over one hundred residents and presented by Reverend Brown.48 Powell observed that this petition was likely the result of churches and schools “finding the brothels and cabins frequented by prostitutes intolerable.”49 The council tabled the petition until the residents’ protests lost momentum. Petitions appeared before the city council repeatedly during this time, but it appears that Roosevelt’s visit may have been needed before the leaders finally found the political will to act.

  “President Theodore Roosevelt Leaves Depot in 1903.” His visit was part of the reason why the houses moved to an official red-light district. Barnard-Stockbridge Collection, University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives.

  Wallace showed off its prosperity by “cleaning up” the town in preparation for President Roosevelt’s 1903 visit. Here, flags line Sixth Street. Barnard-Stockbridge Collection, University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives.

  The Spokesman-Review reveals movement toward reform in May 1903. Around the beginning of the month, Mayor Connor gave “orders to run out of the city all the women of questionable character.”50 This announcement garnered praise from a woman “of a refined character” in Missoula, who named the mayor alongside Carrie Nation (called “the smasher” in the sub-headline) as the two people in the world with whom she’d most like to shake hands. The newspaper’s tone here seems to be amusement. The following day, the paper announced a “moral wave which is sweeping over Wallace” and declared one of Wallace’s dance halls closed, adding that the “girls” would “no longer have the privilege of the license scheme” they previously enjoyed. According to Hart and Nelson, however, the mayor’s example of “turning the slot machine at his cigar store to the wall” was only meant to put on a good show because “off the record,” he “accused various officials of attempting to make a Sunday school out of Wallace.”51 Several days later, the paper implied that Wallace was cracking down on vice because of the president’s visit, featuring an article about a Wallace man found guilty for playing blackjack alongside an article about the city cleaning up for Roosevelt’s stay.52

  By the following week, an article in the Spokesman melodramatically proclaimed:

  The “fairies” of scarlet color and deep shame have but one day more to reside in Wallace. Then Pine Street redlight district will be no more. The danger signal lights which hang out in front of the houses will be turned off; red curtains will be torn down; carousing, drunken men will be no longer heard in this portion of the town, which has long been filled with the lowest kind of life. All will be silence and darkness.53

  The headline and opening paragraph of this article suggest the complete eradication of prostitution from the city, but a careful reader from those days would likely have noticed the emphasis on the particular section of town. The final paragraph added, “The latest rumor, and it is believed to be true, is that the city officials wish to only change the redlight district to another section of the city,” mentioning Block 23 as the future location. The
article ends by saying that because the city leaders don’t want to be in the business of determining who is allowed to live in Wallace and who isn’t, “it is generally believed they are willing to allow these women who ply their trade to establish in a new district.” The paper appears to be making a “live and let live” argument to the reading public.

  Finally, a May 22 article more explicitly connects vice district reformation to Roosevelt’s visit, giving the impression that the houses would shut down temporarily. Most of the girls were apparently instructed to leave town with the understanding that construction for housing would begin along the river east of Sixth Street, “immediately after the reception of the president next Tuesday,” adding that the “landladies say they will willingly move to another section if lodging apartments are provided.” Confinement within Block 23 would not be complete for at least another year, however. Even though there was movement toward establishing the new red-light district along the river and in “Avenue A,” the alley just north of Cedar Street, there were still stragglers in other parts of the city. When Herman J. Rossi was elected mayor in 1904, he mandated that “all lewd women” would be confined “absolutely” to Avenue A, and he began to enforce the kind of segregation that some had wanted.54

  A map of Wallace brothels in 1905 after the women were forced to move to Block 23, along the northeast of Sixth and Cedar Streets. Adapted from Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

  By 1905, Mayor Rossi declared to the city council that prostitution was “a necessary evil and productive of holding virtue in the highest esteem” but must be limited “to its present quarters with a strong hand.”55 He meant that it was important to permit prostitution while limiting its spatial boundaries—rather than outlaw it altogether—because regulated sex work would prevent “respectable” women from being raped. This Victorian-era understanding of male sexuality as an uncontrollable, explosive appetite reverberated through the years. The commercial sex industry was seen as necessary to protect women from the abundance of single “tramp miners” (referring to transient production miners who specialized in a particular kind of work and traveled from town to town based on where their skills were valued more). In 1982, a Seattle Times reporter quoted a madam: “Running a house of prostitution in Wallace, she said, keeps young girls from being raped.”56 Wallace mayor Dick Vester told me in 2010, “I’m positive it’s already been said that there were no sex crimes when we had the houses.” He was correct, although I have not been able to verify whether or not prostitution in Wallace actually prevented rape.

  The belief that prostitution prevented rape was common in mining communities. Marion Goldman’s study of the Comstock Lode in Nevada puts it this way: the miners “had money to spend and tensions to dissipate, but the release patrons found with prostitutes” was “socially defined.”57 Local scholar Ron Roizen has offered his insight along similar lines: the presence of regulated sex work probably made rape less socially acceptable than it otherwise might have been.58 Contemporary research supports the idea that the availability of commercial sex may correlate with lower rates of rape. Two recent studies, for example, show a statistically significant decrease in sexual assault and sexually transmitted infections in areas where prostitution has been decriminalized. A 2014 paper found that when lawmakers decriminalized indoor prostitution in Rhode Island from 2003 to 2009, rates of gonorrhea and rape dropped significantly.59 In 2015, researchers looking at the effects of decriminalization in the Netherlands also found dramatic decreases in rates of sexual assault.60 In Wallace, the written record is ambivalent on this point—there is not enough evidence to draw conclusions either way.

  Reference to spatial restriction is often noted in conjunction with the idea that sex work was required to protect the modest women of Wallace. Henry Kottkey, a local forest service officer featured in a 1979 oral history, argued that the city “deserved a lot of credit for their management of the prostitution set up.… It has been very much controlled…pretty much confined all the way through, to a certain part of town.”61 Many people today echo Kottkey by pointing out that the men “knew where to go” to get their needs met, so young girls in town could walk the streets without fear. For example, one woman explained, “You knew you were safe leaving work at two, three, four in the morning. You didn’t have to worry because these guys had their choice up there.”62 Such words echo Mary Murphy’s findings in nearby Butte, Montana. One woman “expressed the common opinion that Butte streets were safe for women despite the presence of so many rough men” because they “knew where to get their pleasures.”63 Helena, Montana historian Paula Petrik has argued that confining prostitution within a set location “removed the threat of male sexuality” and rewrote gendered social space such that “respectable women profited” from other women’s willingness to provide sexual services.64 Ultimately, though, the relocation of prostitution into an official restricted district in Wallace was not positive for the women who sold sex because it limited their ability to work independently: they would now rent from saloon men instead of owning and managing their own establishments.65 Sex workers’ mobility was reframed socially and spatially as their economic freedom diminished.

  A map of Wallace brothels from 1908 to 1912 after reforms pushed the women farther back from public view. Eventually, a gate or fence would span this alley to solidify the perception of discretion. Adapted from Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

  Madam Connie Foss in 1908. We know little about the life of this woman, who lived on Block 23 with two other women. Barnard-Stockbridge Collection, University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives.

  To emphasize the perception of segregation, Rossi recommended “a sectional high fence permitting the passage of teams, be erected in the alley landing east from Sixth below Cedar Street,” and the overseer of streets was told to “construct said fence at once.”66 Such a fence, obscuring the sex work industry from the rest of the town, would also create the perception of moral distance. Residents who disapproved could find solace in a literal barrier between the morally pure and impure. Impartial Wallace citizens could see the fence as a move to reinforce the idea of discretion: commercial sex, if necessary for a mining community, might at least be out of sight, out of mind. There is no map-based evidence for a fence across the alley, but its existence, possibly as a gate, has been independently asserted by a historian who wrote about the early days of the Silver Valley, a woman who wrote about her experiences growing up in Wallace during this time and two nonagenarian community members.67

  In her history of prostitution in the area, Cynthia Powell develops a grim snapshot of sex work in Wallace at the end of the nineteenth century, especially after the women were made to move to the restricted district, where they lost control of their industry. They would not regain the ability to own and manage their businesses again until around the time of the Second World War. Powell concludes that city leaders and the greater community profited from prostitution even as the sex workers themselves were isolated and “treated as a commodity.”68 There was little to redeem the situation for these women, who endured social stigma and primitive working conditions even as they supposedly “protected community women from the lustful natures of a predominantly male population,” funded the city government and schools, “helped stabilize the region’s economy” and “made the liquor fraternity a powerful player in business and politics.”69 The Silver Valley’s eventual development into the silver capital of the world would have been impossible without the presence of prostitution and a group of women whose significance has gone largely unacknowledged. As long as the complexity and depth of historic sex workers’ “lives, stories, and historical significance” remains overlooked, Powell argues, the history of the region remains incomplete, because these women “established a dynamic social institution which remained an integral part of the region’s economic, political, social and even cultural life for over a century.”70

  2

  Sex Trafficking Panic

  and
the Effect of War

  A prostitution reform movement swept through Wallace between 1905 and 1920. During this time, major waves of reform washed over the rest of the country as well, and most official vice districts shut down as a result. There were two phases of argument against prostitution during this time: the first grew out of religious concern about morality and the worry that most sex workers were actually sex slaves or victims of trafficking; the second was initiated by the War Department, prompted by anxiety about sexually transmitted infections preventing military men from fighting. The rhetoric of both phases aligned with the language of Progressive-era arguments about nationalism, industry efficiency and temperance. City leaders were primarily interested in reforming sex work enough to protect the commercial interests of the town by improving Wallace’s reputation. It had, after all, been declared “about the widest open, most flagrantly and shamelessly wicked city for its size in America.”71 From the early mining camp days through World War I, there were on average between thirty and sixty women working in Wallace’s sex industry at any given time.