The Gamblers and Pimps

Sorry, but these two groups really fit together. Not every gambler was a pimp... or vice-versa, but many of the West's famous gamblers were strongly associated with prostitutes and even ran brothels... the Earp brothers being the most famous of this type. ******* There was a type of Westerner, rarely acknowledged, of an all-purpose businessman... who might run a brothel, or gambling house, or a saloon, or all three... while acting as city marshal...******* the Earps were devoted to the gambling trade, especially Wyatt, who came to Tombstone to set up a gambling house. His brother Jim had been in the trade for years. Both had run brothels. And several of these "sporting men" also married prostitutes- who seemed to continue to practice their trade after they said their "vows." ******* To say it was all grown up and quite complicated is charitable...******* It was just plain low life. ******* Wyatt Earp left one former prostitute to consort with Josie, a lewd dancer... who was dating the County Sheriff, who hated him and tried to arrest him... Wyatt eventually gave up his gambling to be a Deputy U. S. Marshal so he could put the whoop-ass on his enemies. He supposedly killed a half-dozen of them... without due process. And Hollywood made him out to be a good guy who just lost his patience with the system... Wyatt Earp was never part of any system. More on him in the Lawmen page.*******

Doc Holliday traveled with his Kate, knowing full well she had sex with anyone whom she wanted for money. They would set up in a town, like Hidetown or Las Vegas, New Mexico, and get all the miner's or buffalo hunter's money, one way or the other. That was the understanding. When they went to Tombstone, and Doc got tired of her, and found a younger girl, she allied herself with his enemies and tried heroically to get him thrown into prison for stage robbery. That was probably not true, but it illustrates the fierceness of ownership many prostitutes felt for their men. It was probably not love... but a kind of belonging. Today we call fatal attraction. They were known to beat, stab, strangle, any woman who posed a threat.*******

After he was released from the Huntsville prison, John Wesley Hardin's wife had died, and after a failed marriage to a teen-ager, he went to El Paso to gamble and practice law, (Really! You can't make this stuff up!) where he took up with a prostitute named Beulah M'rose, who was married to a cattle rustler hiding in Mexico, and soon helped to conspire his assassination. So he got the girl... so to speak... when she wasn't selling herself. Again, the Gambler/Pimp routine, in a wild place where there were daily new normals.