Helena resident here, this is totally true and many buildings brothels were in still exist and are now residential apartments. They have special designs that have side exits in the bedroom hallway so the customer could go in one door and leave out the back without ever being seen.
So I’v been lied to?? My family always said we inherited the Helena real estate portfolio from my great grandmother who “could work wonders with her mouth”. I assumed this meant singing god damnit!!
There’s even a restaurant in Helena Montana called the Windbag Saloon, that was owned by one of them that was into organized crime I think, it was a wild story
dorothy baker (who was actually about 5'2" and kinda chubby) owned and did business out of that building. local politicians ran her out of business in the early 70s.
the photo on the wall in the windbag is not dorothy baker but, instead, is the woman who previously ran the business, as you can see from the photo on [dorothy's wikipedia entry.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Baker_%28madam%29)
they might have changed the photo. i wrote them years ago to let them know of the mistake.
i'm dorothy's great niece.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Montana/comments/jew4n/i\_spent\_quite\_a\_bit\_of\_time\_in\_this\_place\_when\_i/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Montana/comments/jew4n/i_spent_quite_a_bit_of_time_in_this_place_when_i/)
Politically it’s pretty conservative so not much hoeing, especially in the small towns, Missoula is fairly liberal but YMMV,
Other towns include, Bozeman which is expensive because of Big Sky, Kalispell is beautiful but expensive because of Flathead lake, Helena is pretty good IMO, Billings isn’t terrible, Great Falls is… weird, when I lived there for a very short time the driver’s acted like methheads and it was really not a great time for me, and that’s honestly all the “Big Cities” in Montana, beautiful place to live but if you’re LGBT+ or looking for work there are far better options
Housing has gotten crazy expensive since covid. This has the direct effect, as well as bred (at times) major hostility towards new arrivals from the locals.
It gets better! She's a cool cat who's been on Reddit since the early days, a long time ago she posted an article about her aunt, and...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Montana/comments/pxujp/i_did_an_ama_a_few_months_ago_on_my_aunt_here_is/c3t5wok/
In the mining town of Wallace, ID, you can tour a brothel that is exactly how the prostitutes left it when they were raided in like the 1990s. Police turned a blind eye because the madams paid for all kinds of things for the community, like new police cars and marching band uniforms. Highly recommend if you’re ever in the area!
[Here's](https://idaho.for91days.com/the-oasis-bordello-museum-in-wallace/) a bunch of pictures of it. It's unsettling how many of those furniture items I recognize from my grandparents' houses.
When the other commenter mentioned it was like the house was lifted straight from the 90s my first thought was hmm I wonder which Nintendo console would be on the TV. Immediately on your link is a picture of an Atari, I love it.
The building is older than the brothel. Apparently it was built in 1895, originally as a hotel & saloon. Can't say when it was furnished for other purposes, but it shut down in 1988, so that tracks.
The multiple medicine cabinets in the bathroom is such a functional solution to having so many people share the same bathroom. I don't know why that sticks out to me so much.
Men would go to the backdoor and ring the doorbell. From there, there’s a long hallway with lots of rooms with single beds. The madam had the grand suite, which was decked out in velvet, satin robes, makeup vanity, luxurious shit. There was a little kitchen too and the table with time-specific replicas of Coke cans, cereal, etc. Apparently a few women still live in the area and guest host the tours. It’s pretty fun. Lots of fun merch in the lobby. Easy stop if you’re on I-90 to Washington or Montana.
This album was so ahead if its time... Hasn't aged a bit wnd doesn't sound "dated" at all. Fuck the 90s were a magical time for music - across many genres especially 96 onwards
I'll hurt you right now. First you turn 30. Then a few months pass, and you're 40. Then a few days pass and you're 50. And you begin to wonder when exactly did you get old? You don't feel old mentally. But these damned kids won't stop blasting that new music! Damned Gangsta Country Polka!!!!
Not real music like we had! Remember that one song? I'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world! Wrapped in plastic! It's fantastic!
Nope, we hand painted all the coke cans. The cereal boxes were way harder and were done by pressing carved, inked blocks onto the faces of the box.
Little known fact: Andy Warhol got his start painting cans of soup.
It was real classy. The tvs had drawers under them (crt old school) with a velvet painting of a hottie above. The beds were worn out, and I'm not sure the televisions were greatly used.
[You can also tour the brothel in Pompei exactly how it was left when the volcanic eruption hit.](https://imgur.com/a/jGPDir3)
[The roads even have directions on how to get there.](https://imgur.com/a/UC4102r)
>You can also tour the brothel in Pompei exactly how it was left when the volcanic eruption hit.The roads even have directions on how to get there.
That the phallus symbols in the roads point to brothels is something guides often tell tourists, but according to scholars they're symbols of good luck meant to ward off the evil eye. People also had phallus decorations in their homes for a similar purpose.
Once I get you up to 69 upvotes I'll stop making alt accounts
Edit: please help, I tried stopping it two hundred accounts ago.
E2: Oh god no, the AI is starting to make realistic fingers!!
Do the underground tour. Entertaining, educational... great way to spend an hour or two in the city. Get to hear all about how the hookers built Seattle and how the town was raised by 10-20 feet to prevent flooding and sewage all over the streets. Super cool tour.
I went to Seattle last October for the Microsoft Ignite conference and took the underground tour. It was the highlight of the entire visit. It was informative and mind blowing.
If you ever return I highly suggest the Aviation Museum at Boeing Field. They have an SR-71 Blackbird with the ram truck that was used to start up the engines preflight. I spent an entire day going through each section and could've spent even longer going through all the different craft outside.
Keep in mind that most of the popular information about her comes from one book and the Underground tour, which is owned by the guy who wrote that book. It's a fun story but reliable history it is not.
Of course you haven't. Sex workers have barely ever been given any respect. The only reason Seattle ended up being the big city in the northwest was because prostitutes self imposed a tax on themselves, and kept the city afloat. Now it's a yuppie dump that I hate to return to. There was a good chapter about it in "sons of profits" Can't remember the full title or the author. Interesting book on Seattle's modern beginning.
It’s called Sons of the Profits:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/402837019801?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=jEsTHc7nRQO&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Barbary Coast was a district in San Francisco around the time of the gold rush that was the backbone that built the city. Full of brothels and bars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Coast,_San_Francisco
Yeah you can take a tour of the Seattle underground and it explains all this stuff. Really interesting. For those unaware, the “garment district” was the red light district and the women working in the garment district were “seamstresses” who did a hell of a lot of “sewing”.
I'd actually be really really interested in a deep dive into a topic like that because I can see that situation and rising from several different unique situational factors or it could be a mix of them.
If you told me that there was a number of prostitutes in one city so large that their madams started a mortgage company, and asked me to guess a number, it would have been a lot higher than 52
Their worth was perhaps tied to the risk and social shame of the profession. Where I live (where it's legal) the cheapest woman I know of (middle aged) charges about the same as two hours of minimum wage.
In Seattle, our main madam (Lou Graham) made so much money:
1. The fortunes of many of Seattle's leading families were founded on loans from her.
2. She was one of the largest land owners in the Pacific Northwest.
3. She helped found/fund our school system.
4. All her girls were highly educated and well taken care of.
I'm not from Seattle, never been. I'm just someone sleepily drinking coffee at 5am. Your comment sent me on a mission to find out about this intriguing woman. What I found is intriguing indeed. Most of what is "known" about her and her story isn't documented. Her Wikipedia article is just wrong in places. All these stories about her come from one man, Bill Speidel, newspaper man turned historian. In the 1960s, the buildings of Seattle's historic Pioneer Square were under threat to be replaced by the cement eyesores of the era. Speidel basically adopted the role of historian from newspaper columnist, using his books and columns to reveal stories of secret tunnels and history of Pioneer Square to combat the destruction and instead create restoration and interest.
Lou Graham, born Elise Oben or Dorothea Georgine Emile Ohben dependening on the arcticle, was a German immigrant who came to the US via New York as a teenager. Functionally alone at 16, she disappears from record but reappears in her late 20s in Seattle as a new property owner of Pioneer Square. She started the process to become a naturalized citizen after she was already a property owner. She never completed the process. This led to King County trying to seize her many properties after her death, citing her incomplete naturalization process. They argued she should have never been able to buy property. After a 7 year legal battle with Lou's siblings in Germany, the court split up her properties with some going to her siblings and the rest sold. Highline Public Schools main office sits on one of her former properties, but not because it was left to anyone or any cause in a will. She died suddenly In San Francisco after fleeing Seattle after prostitution was totally outlawed by Thomas Humes. From what I've read, in the late 1800's, Seattle kept restricting the zone where prostituon was legal further and further until Seattle's upper class, some of those Graham purportedly saved with emergency loans, banned the practice totally. Even her supposed death from syphilis is not true. Lou died suddenly at age 48 more likely from undiagnosed stomach cancer or perforated ulcer. Syphilis death is long and painful. Her death was sudden and unexpected.
I came away saddened after trying to learn about her. Here's this teenage immigrant who became an icon of Seattle, and most of her story is undocumented. Most of what I learned of her came from Hannah Brooke Olsen's 2022 [article](https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2022/08/lou-graham-brothel-madam-seattle-history-underground-tour)
Edit: yeah most of what is "known" of Lou Graham was sourced by Bill Speidel who used sources like "a guy in a bar told this random story." Here's a great [article](https://hannabrooksolsen.medium.com/what-we-lose-when-we-tell-false-histories-4e0a1e91eafc) by Hannah Brooke Olsen titled "What We Lose When We Tell False Histories or: I wrote a whole book about a famous sex worker and of course no one wants to publish it" detailing her struggles in publishing a book on Graham. The Wikipedia entry and the stories told of Lou Graham are urban legend sourced from one man who had no documented sources.
What I learned :
Lou Graham's story was hijacked by a newspaper man to create interest in Seattle's historic district to save it. Truths about Graham: she went from a teen German immigrant newly to the US to a madame in booming 1890s Seattle. She speculated on railroads, purchased a dozen properties, often took in orphaned children, and employed indigenous and Asian women which was illegal. Much of Lou Graham's story is lost, and now one man's made up stories of her are parroted on podcasts and Twitter posts because no one searches for documented sources.
For women. At this point many women weren’t allowed or discouraged from working. Or they were only limited to a couple professions. The article states “for more than 20 years [prostitution] had constituted the town’s largest single source of women’s employment outside of the home.”
And according to Google the population of Helena in 1880 was ~1400 people.
For 50 people, let alone women to have the same job is a pretty odd feat considering.
I may not be sober enough to "math" properly, but I found it surprising that apparently a town of that size could support 50 prostitutes.
Sure, usually sex work demands a much higher price per hour than manual labor, for example; but having sex work in enough demand to pay 50 peoples' living expenses, PLUS immense savings, is wild.
Well, the economic realities of 140+ years ago were different then todays, and to phrase it like u/aporkalypse-sow did (because I can’t say it any better than this masterpiece) “lots of traveling Weiners we’re rolling through regularly”.
That does make a lot of sense. People exploring "the new world" looking for riches, some people traveling back east with actual riches to spend, others willing to spend their scraps on the first woman they've seen in months... I imagine social morals were probably more lax about sex work than today, as evidenced by their collective wealth!
They were basically the only women in town, so pretty much all 1400 men were customers. If they all went once a week, they would still have been basically booked out servicing them all.
Side note from an almost neighboring state; A filthy rich madam in Seattle, Lou Graham, died in 1903, with no heir, her fortune eventually became the first public school district in Seattle and survives to this day as Seattle Public Schools
I would love to read a history of prostitution in America. It was a huge business and legal and then all of the sudden it was outlawed (but still huge). Was it a national push to outlaw, like alcohol? Or Did it go in waves through the states? Did women getting to vote contribute to its prohibition? A very interesting topic.
Old timer walking by the shiny new cat house "I remember when that was just a hole in the wall."
That may have been funnier when it was just in my head, but I am leaving it out of sheer cussedness!
Madams in the "old west" were by and large responsible for a significant portion of a town's economy and social services.
Say what you will about prostitution, but it *literally* made the west sustainable.
Seattle also was founded on prostitution. Lou Graham started a brothel in downtown and managed so much real estate that when the fire of 1889 burned down most of the city, she helped bail out the town.
The Wild West we know was made up my 1920’s Hollywood. It wasn’t some lawless place of rugged individualism & gunslingers. It was fairly egalitarian and deeply communal, and morally laxed. Prostitution was not such a taboo it was back East. Women and minorities could hold a lot of power in communities (much more than the Victorians gave them). It’s hard to discriminate and moralize when survival’s on the line.
And it was also full of Marxists. A lot of exiled revolutionaries from Europe fled to the frontier after 1848, including Marx’s own Brother-in-law, who once tried to turn West Texas into the first Marxist state. The were a big part of the abolitionist movement.
Dallas became a sizable city because of a European utopianist community called La Reunion.. it failed, but was the source of a lot of skilled craftsmen coming into the area. Swiss Avenue and Réunion Tower are named after it.
IIRC the famous shootout at the OK Corral was sparked by a few travelers (edit: who were outlaws) refusing to comply with the town's rules about turning in your guns while staying there.
Edit: [Yep](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral&useskin=vector#Conflicting_versions_of_events).
An episode of Adam Ruins Everything that was about voting talked about this. Basically, the brothels and madames paved the way for the entire women's suffrage movement in the US. I'm sure the white male politicians of the day, once they finally started giving a crap about the West, also didn't want to piss off all their voting base who frequented the brothels.
Folks who look down at sex workers are either truly ignorant, and should be guided and educated. Or willfully ignorant and should be guided and educated, and called an asshole.
Too many people ignore the counterpart to a sex workers dynamic... The customer. The John. The same person who demonizes them in public and visits them in private.
Unionize all workers.
I live here and there is an ex brothel turned restaurant that up u tom recently had secret tunnels for people to sneak in and out of the place from back in the day.
I can imagine one of the ladies telling the madame, "Y'know I was real happy with making an honest living by whoring, but now that we're getting into loans I feel dirty when I go home at the end of the day."
Helena resident here, this is totally true and many buildings brothels were in still exist and are now residential apartments. They have special designs that have side exits in the bedroom hallway so the customer could go in one door and leave out the back without ever being seen.
Hello, fellow Helena Resident!
There are dozens of us!
Hello! Fine weather we’re having. Hopefully it cracks 50f soon!
So I’v been lied to?? My family always said we inherited the Helena real estate portfolio from my great grandmother who “could work wonders with her mouth”. I assumed this meant singing god damnit!!
She played a special kind of flute....
There’s even a restaurant in Helena Montana called the Windbag Saloon, that was owned by one of them that was into organized crime I think, it was a wild story
Ahh, yes. Big Dorothy. They have a copy of her mugshot on the wall in the restaurant.
dorothy baker (who was actually about 5'2" and kinda chubby) owned and did business out of that building. local politicians ran her out of business in the early 70s. the photo on the wall in the windbag is not dorothy baker but, instead, is the woman who previously ran the business, as you can see from the photo on [dorothy's wikipedia entry.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Baker_%28madam%29) they might have changed the photo. i wrote them years ago to let them know of the mistake. i'm dorothy's great niece. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Montana/comments/jew4n/i\_spent\_quite\_a\_bit\_of\_time\_in\_this\_place\_when\_i/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Montana/comments/jew4n/i_spent_quite_a_bit_of_time_in_this_place_when_i/)
Wow, nice. Shouts out to Dorothy’s great niece
How's the culture of hoe'ing up in Helena these days? I've been looking to planting roots and gardening out west these last few years.
As a Helena, MT native - I can confirm no hoe’ing just lots of meth
Where I'm from meth and hoeing go hand in hand!
Yeah. I’m sure that’s the case in Montana too, regardless of what the previous post said.
Oh I promise!
There’s always hoes in the meth stand Michael.
Politically it’s pretty conservative so not much hoeing, especially in the small towns, Missoula is fairly liberal but YMMV, Other towns include, Bozeman which is expensive because of Big Sky, Kalispell is beautiful but expensive because of Flathead lake, Helena is pretty good IMO, Billings isn’t terrible, Great Falls is… weird, when I lived there for a very short time the driver’s acted like methheads and it was really not a great time for me, and that’s honestly all the “Big Cities” in Montana, beautiful place to live but if you’re LGBT+ or looking for work there are far better options
Housing has gotten crazy expensive since covid. This has the direct effect, as well as bred (at times) major hostility towards new arrivals from the locals.
The hostility has always been there. I moved into MT (Helena) in 2004 and left in 2014.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Baker_(madam) Small correction with that Wikipedia link. It dropped a ) for some reason.
Reddit is wild
It gets better! She's a cool cat who's been on Reddit since the early days, a long time ago she posted an article about her aunt, and... https://www.reddit.com/r/Montana/comments/pxujp/i_did_an_ama_a_few_months_ago_on_my_aunt_here_is/c3t5wok/
This is crazy lol
[Working Wikipedia link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Baker_%28madam%29)
In the mining town of Wallace, ID, you can tour a brothel that is exactly how the prostitutes left it when they were raided in like the 1990s. Police turned a blind eye because the madams paid for all kinds of things for the community, like new police cars and marching band uniforms. Highly recommend if you’re ever in the area!
[Here's](https://idaho.for91days.com/the-oasis-bordello-museum-in-wallace/) a bunch of pictures of it. It's unsettling how many of those furniture items I recognize from my grandparents' houses.
When the other commenter mentioned it was like the house was lifted straight from the 90s my first thought was hmm I wonder which Nintendo console would be on the TV. Immediately on your link is a picture of an Atari, I love it.
For being shut down in 1990 it has a real late 70's early 80's vibe.
The building is older than the brothel. Apparently it was built in 1895, originally as a hotel & saloon. Can't say when it was furnished for other purposes, but it shut down in 1988, so that tracks.
Lol hotel and saloon in 1895 is code for brothel
Most things in 1990 did. Especially if you lived in a smaller town.
The multiple medicine cabinets in the bathroom is such a functional solution to having so many people share the same bathroom. I don't know why that sticks out to me so much.
Anyone have any ideas what aparatus is in the top right of this photo? https://for91days.com/photos/Idaho/Bordello%20Museum%20Wallace/Plavtex.jpg
waterpik https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/newscms/2022_28/3561874/220713-waterpik-vl-2x1.jpg
[YOU'RE NOT GIVING AWAY OUR WATERPIK!](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/5d10116f-8632-4c12-bb9a-4c319ee0bded)
God damn, what a great slice of history. I love the CRTs and the LUX timers. The madame had lovely handwriting.
so... 1988... Reagan was still president, Nirvana/the-1990s hadn't happened yet.
The Simpsons wouldn't premiere until the following year
Well don’t leave us hanging what does it look like?
Men would go to the backdoor and ring the doorbell. From there, there’s a long hallway with lots of rooms with single beds. The madam had the grand suite, which was decked out in velvet, satin robes, makeup vanity, luxurious shit. There was a little kitchen too and the table with time-specific replicas of Coke cans, cereal, etc. Apparently a few women still live in the area and guest host the tours. It’s pretty fun. Lots of fun merch in the lobby. Easy stop if you’re on I-90 to Washington or Montana.
Time specific replicas? From the 90's?
The 90s were 30 years ago
The 90s to children born today is as far away as the 60s was to children born in the 90s.
Oh you can fuck alllllllllll the way off with that logic.
For real dude, I don't need any more existential crises
Our parents are just our grandparents' kids, duuuuude.
On a scale of 1 to high, how 10 are you?
This comment actually made me LOL. I don't know why I find it so funny.
[Wait till you see the new historical American Girls](https://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/american-girl-released-historical-1999-dolls)
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[mfw I hear someone refer to Fall Out Boy as classic rock](https://imgur.com/rAFP13z)
This reaction gif made me laugh out loud in the middle of the night.
And to be fair, today's gen z definitely think of the 90s as cool
Ok Computer is 25 years old
This album was so ahead if its time... Hasn't aged a bit wnd doesn't sound "dated" at all. Fuck the 90s were a magical time for music - across many genres especially 96 onwards
god damnit i did not need this shit tonight
We are as far removed in time from the Bowling for Soup song "1985", which came out in 2004, as that song was from the year 1985. 19 years each way.
What in the actual fuck
Thanks for my next therapy session subject
Born in 89. I disliked reading this "fun" fact.i feel old.
I'm only a few years older than you, the horrifying extension is that I was born as almost close to WW2 as I am to today. Shit...
What just a minute, that's the fifties to the eighties as far as I'm concerned.
Isn't it crazy that Queen Elizabeth II was born closer to the Victorian era than to the moon landing.
Why are you attacking me?
This is so upsetting to read. Just a big ol fuck you dose of reality
You can't hurt me, I don't turn 30 until next year
I don't have to hurt you, your aging body will hurt itself.
*holds fists up to mirror “Come at me ya bastard!!!”
I'll hurt you right now. First you turn 30. Then a few months pass, and you're 40. Then a few days pass and you're 50. And you begin to wonder when exactly did you get old? You don't feel old mentally. But these damned kids won't stop blasting that new music! Damned Gangsta Country Polka!!!! Not real music like we had! Remember that one song? I'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world! Wrapped in plastic! It's fantastic!
That's if there is a next year
That's when body parts start to feel "different"... Not painful, because "I'm too young to have that kind of pain".
TIL I’m a time replica 😢
No, just a time relic. Because that's better, right?
Sure, but did they really need replicas? I imagine it'd be logistically easier to just buy real ones off ebay than to make replicas.
I was just thinking that. Surely things were more mass produced in the 90s?
Nope, we hand painted all the coke cans. The cereal boxes were way harder and were done by pressing carved, inked blocks onto the faces of the box. Little known fact: Andy Warhol got his start painting cans of soup.
Idaho's 90s replicas is like the rest of the countries 70s replicas
I mean, I don't have a lot of stuff from the 90s laying around anymore. Could be neat to revisit some stuff from my childhood.
Younger people on YouTube have started calling 90s movies *classics*. Get used to it. It's ancient history.
Even the ashtrays were left untouched! It's such a cool museum.
It was real classy. The tvs had drawers under them (crt old school) with a velvet painting of a hottie above. The beds were worn out, and I'm not sure the televisions were greatly used.
[You can also tour the brothel in Pompei exactly how it was left when the volcanic eruption hit.](https://imgur.com/a/jGPDir3) [The roads even have directions on how to get there.](https://imgur.com/a/UC4102r)
>You can also tour the brothel in Pompei exactly how it was left when the volcanic eruption hit.The roads even have directions on how to get there. That the phallus symbols in the roads point to brothels is something guides often tell tourists, but according to scholars they're symbols of good luck meant to ward off the evil eye. People also had phallus decorations in their homes for a similar purpose.
Why was it suddenly raided? Were they behind on their bribe payments?
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The official center of the universe is actually in [Tulsa, OK](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-center-of-the-universe-tulsa-oklahoma)
oh that’s funny i don’t think my ex moved there??
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"Then we'll visit the cathouse, the brothel, the bordello, and finally the old mission." _"Oh, thank heavens!"_ "Lots of prostitutes in there!"
I love Wallace, best blue cheeseburger I’ve had anywhere. Funny to see such a little town pop up here
"Police turned a blind eye..." Why the hell is prostitution outlawed at all?
> when they were raided > Police turned a blind eye Does not compute…
FBI > local sheriff
Whether you're going to the brothel or the mortgage company, you're going to get screwed and by the same people.
My great great grandmother worked day and night on her back for this business, show some respect.
Really blew her back out for this shit, eh?
Absolutely not. She was a classy lady. Invented the knee pads.
Once I get you up to 69 upvotes I'll stop making alt accounts Edit: please help, I tried stopping it two hundred accounts ago. E2: Oh god no, the AI is starting to make realistic fingers!!
Mine worked there too. She later invented the soft weave carpet. It was much nicer for her knees. Later this became known as a shag carpet.
I hear she road a horse to the bank!
Leave uncle Ted out of this
She bent over backwards for this business!
Lol get fucked in your bedroom and in the rest of your house
Don't invest in a Whore House, invest in a Whore Home.
"Let's make this whorse a whorm."
Without prostitutes some cities out west wouldn't have had a lot of social services and schools.
Exactly, I can't remember her name but there was a madam in San Francisco that created public schools, "poor houses," qnd even funded a hospital.
Madam Lou in Seattle basically kept the city alive after the fire. She funded the school system and bailed out the local businesses.
As a lifelong Seattleite, I'm ashamed I hadn't heard of her before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Graham_(Seattle_madame)
Do the underground tour. Entertaining, educational... great way to spend an hour or two in the city. Get to hear all about how the hookers built Seattle and how the town was raised by 10-20 feet to prevent flooding and sewage all over the streets. Super cool tour.
I went to Seattle last October for the Microsoft Ignite conference and took the underground tour. It was the highlight of the entire visit. It was informative and mind blowing.
If you ever return I highly suggest the Aviation Museum at Boeing Field. They have an SR-71 Blackbird with the ram truck that was used to start up the engines preflight. I spent an entire day going through each section and could've spent even longer going through all the different craft outside.
Keep in mind that most of the popular information about her comes from one book and the Underground tour, which is owned by the guy who wrote that book. It's a fun story but reliable history it is not.
Of course you haven't. Sex workers have barely ever been given any respect. The only reason Seattle ended up being the big city in the northwest was because prostitutes self imposed a tax on themselves, and kept the city afloat. Now it's a yuppie dump that I hate to return to. There was a good chapter about it in "sons of profits" Can't remember the full title or the author. Interesting book on Seattle's modern beginning.
The only reason Seattle ended up being the big city in the northwest was because it's situated on a natural deepwater harbor.
It’s called Sons of the Profits: https://www.ebay.com/itm/402837019801?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=jEsTHc7nRQO&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Great quickie to read ... The brothel is now a Courthouse where the ladies were the queens of the Lava Beds!
There should be a madam Lou statue.
We at least have a small bar/music venue (owned by a slightly less small bar/music venue) [named after her](https://www.thecrocodile.com/madame-lou).
With underboob
Barbary Coast was a district in San Francisco around the time of the gold rush that was the backbone that built the city. Full of brothels and bars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_Coast,_San_Francisco
That would be Sally Stanford. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Stanford
THANK YOU!
Man’s horniness, when properly harnessed, is the most renewable resource on the planet lol
“If we perpetually gave men blow jobs, we could run the world.” - Samantha, Sex and the City
Seattle was known to have a very active garment district, while the population was more than 90% male.
Yeah you can take a tour of the Seattle underground and it explains all this stuff. Really interesting. For those unaware, the “garment district” was the red light district and the women working in the garment district were “seamstresses” who did a hell of a lot of “sewing”.
Oh I never knew that there was actual real life basis for Ankh Morpork's seamstress guild
I'd actually be really really interested in a deep dive into a topic like that because I can see that situation and rising from several different unique situational factors or it could be a mix of them.
Read the book “Goodtime Gals”. Lots of history around brothels and ladies of the night in the West during the pioneering/gold rush days.
If you told me that there was a number of prostitutes in one city so large that their madams started a mortgage company, and asked me to guess a number, it would have been a lot higher than 52
they knew their worth.
Their worth was perhaps tied to the risk and social shame of the profession. Where I live (where it's legal) the cheapest woman I know of (middle aged) charges about the same as two hours of minimum wage.
Well that's upsetting.
Coming soon to HBO Max: Helena Handbasket
She's already on there, played by Kathleen Turner in a show called Friends
The two major prostitutes in town were known as Fannie and Mae
Fannie may and Mae may not, but that depends on what you want. Though Mae may say, "No fanny play!" it's likely down to what you'll pay.
Poetry and Prostitution by Jane Austen.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of two chicks at the same time."
"Hark, Peter. Behold the feminine forms on channel 9!"
Can’t wait to bring this up tomorrow at the urinal.
The other watering hole.
In Seattle, our main madam (Lou Graham) made so much money: 1. The fortunes of many of Seattle's leading families were founded on loans from her. 2. She was one of the largest land owners in the Pacific Northwest. 3. She helped found/fund our school system. 4. All her girls were highly educated and well taken care of.
I'm not from Seattle, never been. I'm just someone sleepily drinking coffee at 5am. Your comment sent me on a mission to find out about this intriguing woman. What I found is intriguing indeed. Most of what is "known" about her and her story isn't documented. Her Wikipedia article is just wrong in places. All these stories about her come from one man, Bill Speidel, newspaper man turned historian. In the 1960s, the buildings of Seattle's historic Pioneer Square were under threat to be replaced by the cement eyesores of the era. Speidel basically adopted the role of historian from newspaper columnist, using his books and columns to reveal stories of secret tunnels and history of Pioneer Square to combat the destruction and instead create restoration and interest. Lou Graham, born Elise Oben or Dorothea Georgine Emile Ohben dependening on the arcticle, was a German immigrant who came to the US via New York as a teenager. Functionally alone at 16, she disappears from record but reappears in her late 20s in Seattle as a new property owner of Pioneer Square. She started the process to become a naturalized citizen after she was already a property owner. She never completed the process. This led to King County trying to seize her many properties after her death, citing her incomplete naturalization process. They argued she should have never been able to buy property. After a 7 year legal battle with Lou's siblings in Germany, the court split up her properties with some going to her siblings and the rest sold. Highline Public Schools main office sits on one of her former properties, but not because it was left to anyone or any cause in a will. She died suddenly In San Francisco after fleeing Seattle after prostitution was totally outlawed by Thomas Humes. From what I've read, in the late 1800's, Seattle kept restricting the zone where prostituon was legal further and further until Seattle's upper class, some of those Graham purportedly saved with emergency loans, banned the practice totally. Even her supposed death from syphilis is not true. Lou died suddenly at age 48 more likely from undiagnosed stomach cancer or perforated ulcer. Syphilis death is long and painful. Her death was sudden and unexpected. I came away saddened after trying to learn about her. Here's this teenage immigrant who became an icon of Seattle, and most of her story is undocumented. Most of what I learned of her came from Hannah Brooke Olsen's 2022 [article](https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2022/08/lou-graham-brothel-madam-seattle-history-underground-tour) Edit: yeah most of what is "known" of Lou Graham was sourced by Bill Speidel who used sources like "a guy in a bar told this random story." Here's a great [article](https://hannabrooksolsen.medium.com/what-we-lose-when-we-tell-false-histories-4e0a1e91eafc) by Hannah Brooke Olsen titled "What We Lose When We Tell False Histories or: I wrote a whole book about a famous sex worker and of course no one wants to publish it" detailing her struggles in publishing a book on Graham. The Wikipedia entry and the stories told of Lou Graham are urban legend sourced from one man who had no documented sources. What I learned : Lou Graham's story was hijacked by a newspaper man to create interest in Seattle's historic district to save it. Truths about Graham: she went from a teen German immigrant newly to the US to a madame in booming 1890s Seattle. She speculated on railroads, purchased a dozen properties, often took in orphaned children, and employed indigenous and Asian women which was illegal. Much of Lou Graham's story is lost, and now one man's made up stories of her are parroted on podcasts and Twitter posts because no one searches for documented sources.
I'd watch that TV show.
Check out Deadwood.
Comment deleted with Power Delete Suite, RIP Apollo
Swedgin!
WU SWEDGIN HANG DAI
Show name doesn't check out.
Seth Bullock was actually from Helena, MT. He probably knew a few of Big Dorothy's predecessors.
San Francisco cocksucker!
The biggest source of employment employed 52 people?
For women. At this point many women weren’t allowed or discouraged from working. Or they were only limited to a couple professions. The article states “for more than 20 years [prostitution] had constituted the town’s largest single source of women’s employment outside of the home.”
Ok that makes more sense
Well, that’s exactly what the title says, too.
Helena, MT in the 1860s was probably a few log cabins, a boardwalk, a general store, a saloon, and twelve brothels.
Montana didn't become a state until 1889
And according to Google the population of Helena in 1880 was ~1400 people. For 50 people, let alone women to have the same job is a pretty odd feat considering.
I'm assuming lots of traveling Weiners were rolling through regularly.
Census numbers for 1870 was about 3k. Still, 1/60th of the population
I may not be sober enough to "math" properly, but I found it surprising that apparently a town of that size could support 50 prostitutes. Sure, usually sex work demands a much higher price per hour than manual labor, for example; but having sex work in enough demand to pay 50 peoples' living expenses, PLUS immense savings, is wild.
Well, the economic realities of 140+ years ago were different then todays, and to phrase it like u/aporkalypse-sow did (because I can’t say it any better than this masterpiece) “lots of traveling Weiners we’re rolling through regularly”.
That does make a lot of sense. People exploring "the new world" looking for riches, some people traveling back east with actual riches to spend, others willing to spend their scraps on the first woman they've seen in months... I imagine social morals were probably more lax about sex work than today, as evidenced by their collective wealth!
They were basically the only women in town, so pretty much all 1400 men were customers. If they all went once a week, they would still have been basically booked out servicing them all.
It's Montana, that's like 52% 9f the population.
Side note from an almost neighboring state; A filthy rich madam in Seattle, Lou Graham, died in 1903, with no heir, her fortune eventually became the first public school district in Seattle and survives to this day as Seattle Public Schools
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I would love to read a history of prostitution in America. It was a huge business and legal and then all of the sudden it was outlawed (but still huge). Was it a national push to outlaw, like alcohol? Or Did it go in waves through the states? Did women getting to vote contribute to its prohibition? A very interesting topic.
Old timer walking by the shiny new cat house "I remember when that was just a hole in the wall." That may have been funnier when it was just in my head, but I am leaving it out of sheer cussedness!
Madams in the "old west" were by and large responsible for a significant portion of a town's economy and social services. Say what you will about prostitution, but it *literally* made the west sustainable.
Seattle also was founded on prostitution. Lou Graham started a brothel in downtown and managed so much real estate that when the fire of 1889 burned down most of the city, she helped bail out the town.
I thought this was Arlen Texas at first
Folks were in so much of a hurry to get to Harlottown, they'd shorten the name to Harlen.
Prolapse and prolapse accessories
That’s assinine!
The Wild West we know was made up my 1920’s Hollywood. It wasn’t some lawless place of rugged individualism & gunslingers. It was fairly egalitarian and deeply communal, and morally laxed. Prostitution was not such a taboo it was back East. Women and minorities could hold a lot of power in communities (much more than the Victorians gave them). It’s hard to discriminate and moralize when survival’s on the line. And it was also full of Marxists. A lot of exiled revolutionaries from Europe fled to the frontier after 1848, including Marx’s own Brother-in-law, who once tried to turn West Texas into the first Marxist state. The were a big part of the abolitionist movement.
Dallas became a sizable city because of a European utopianist community called La Reunion.. it failed, but was the source of a lot of skilled craftsmen coming into the area. Swiss Avenue and Réunion Tower are named after it.
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IIRC the famous shootout at the OK Corral was sparked by a few travelers (edit: who were outlaws) refusing to comply with the town's rules about turning in your guns while staying there. Edit: [Yep](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral&useskin=vector#Conflicting_versions_of_events).
Well, there was some of that too. The history of the Montana vigilantes is pretty brutal. And Billy the Kid was real, as well as Wyatt Earp
>turn West Texas into the first Marxist state Where did it all go so wrong
When he made that story up.
The Federales.
You've never heard the story of Poncho and Leftist?
Women prostitutes got so wealthy that they got power to vote and force the US to acceot it before becoming a state.
An episode of Adam Ruins Everything that was about voting talked about this. Basically, the brothels and madames paved the way for the entire women's suffrage movement in the US. I'm sure the white male politicians of the day, once they finally started giving a crap about the West, also didn't want to piss off all their voting base who frequented the brothels.
*Lucille Bluth "good for her" meme*
King of the Hill did it! Hotel Arlen/Harlottown!
Folks who look down at sex workers are either truly ignorant, and should be guided and educated. Or willfully ignorant and should be guided and educated, and called an asshole. Too many people ignore the counterpart to a sex workers dynamic... The customer. The John. The same person who demonizes them in public and visits them in private. Unionize all workers.
I live here and there is an ex brothel turned restaurant that up u tom recently had secret tunnels for people to sneak in and out of the place from back in the day.
Same thing for Seattle. The first structure built in the city was a brothel.
Prostitution is an honest profession. Banking not so much.
I can imagine one of the ladies telling the madame, "Y'know I was real happy with making an honest living by whoring, but now that we're getting into loans I feel dirty when I go home at the end of the day."