Captured in Crapper Jack Saloon in Creek, Colorado around 1895, this photograph shows women required to wear aprons over their short skirts.
This rule was strictly enforced – just in case anyone felt uncomfortable at the sight of their ankles.
A group portrait taken inside a parlor house in Miles City, Montana, circa 1905.
The working women are seen wearing Mother Hubbard dresses – loose gowns designed to be worn without corsets.
Belle Breezing in her private parlor in her third and most famous brothel in Lexington, Kentucky.
Breezing occupied the house until she died in 1940.
Breezing was a nationally known madam.
Alice Abbott’s brothel at 19 South Utah Street, El Paso, Texas, circa 1890.
Abbott arrived in El Paso in 1880 and became the first madam to build a brothel on Utah Street.
Utah Street was known as the “Devil’s Playground” in the late 1800s due to its concentration of saloons, gambling halls, and brothels.
A worker at a Storyville, New Orleans brothel in 1912 – the only legalized red light district in North America, until it was shut down in 1917.
Deadwood, Dakota Territory was a harsh town of manual laborers who frequented brothels but held little respect for women.
Pictured in a carriage outside his Gem Saloon and brothel is the notorious Al Swearengen.
On July 12th, 1876, Colorado Charlie Utter and his brother Steve brought the first wagon load of prostitutes to this booming, muddy town.
Traveling with them was Wild Bill Hickok, whose public murder in Deadwood just weeks later highlighted the extreme violence of the era.
Swearengen is seen here mixing drinks at the Gem.
While he sought respectability downstairs with performances like the opera of “The Mikado,” the upstairs reality involved women promised stage roles being forced into a far darker trade.
Though appearing as a proper lady here, Martha Jane “Calamity Jane” Canary led a complex life as a laundress, cook, and occasionally a prostitute.
During hard times, she worked for Dora DuFran, pictured on the right, who managed a successful chain of regional brothels alongside her gambling husband.
Clad in ornate Victorian dresses within a lavish Deadwood brothel, these women could easily be mistaken for proper ladies of the era.
Behind this elegance lay a grim reality of trafficking and extreme violence.
For many trapped in this cycle of contempt and substance abuse, suicide became the only common means of escape from their tragic circumstances.
This rare 1890s Klondike photo captures a “soiled dove” at a billiards table, showing a different side of frontier life.
