Hurdy-gurdy girls are not prostitutes. They are Taxi Dancers in the basements of Hurdy Gurdy music joints. They were paid .25c per dance, besides a treat. If a man became enamored, as often happened after a few drinks, he gave her a bonus of five dollars, or ten or twenty. A saving girl could build a substantial estate out of these takings.
Mrs. Warren was an opulent madam. Highly respected.
D Street girls, whores, smokes cigarettes, as did Mexicans. Men smoked Havana cigars. Germans smoked long pipes. Chinese smoked opium in dens.
A reporter noted “a woman under the influence of liquor…perambulating on C Street … shaking a thousand dollars in gold coin at passersby” or ” a notorious courtezan, Josephine Dodge, also known as Buffalo Joe lying in the street dead drunk, surrounded by a crowd of spectators, her fingers and breast bedecked with diamonds”
Even the prostitutes gained civic renown, of various sorts: the scary “Buffalo Joe” Dodge, because she liked to duke it out with her professional rivals on the street; the British-born madam Julie Bulette, because she drove around in a gleaming carriage, prevailed on the city fathers to build clean cabins on D street for his daughters of desire, and decorated her own cottage, “Julie’s Castle,” with geraniums and roses.
A reporter noted “a woman under the influence of liquor…perambulating on C Street … shaking a thousand dollars in gold coin at passersby” or ” a notorious courtezan, Josephine Dodge, also known as Buffalo Joe lying in the street dead drunk, surrounded by a crowd of spectators, her fingers and breast bedecked with diamonds” Impromptu scuffles were so common as to be almost beneath notice.
Josephine Dodge, alias “Buffalo Jo,” a prominent trollop, was often in the public eye, bandying obscenities with street comer loafers, and being hauled off to jail dead drunk.
Juana Sanchez, known as “Sailor Jack,” was a fiery wench who took a pistol away from Jack Butler and shot him dead with it. Teamsters and others continually traded punches, as if for exercise. In a fist fight about some mail bag arrangement at Silver City yesterday, a stage driver’s little finger was broken by his antagonist’s nose coming in contact with it.
