Where was this conference? A funny title for the panel: two of my chapters in The Roar and the Silence: A History of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode (1998) were titled “The Moral Options: Sinners” and “The Moral Options: Saints” – now almost a quarter century ago!

I presented a paper at /r/AskHistorian’s first virtual conference (September 2020) dealing with Julia Bulette (ca. 1832-1867). I then published it as an article: “Sex, Murder, and the Myth of the Wild West: How a Soiled Dove Earned a Heart of Gold”. Bulette had to wait for her moment of fame for several decades after she was murdered. Sex workers in the West too often had only fleeting fame – and usually associated with their death. Bulette is unique because a year later her accused killed was arrested and then hanged – giving everyone a chance to revisit the story. Even then, the name of her killer became better known than Bulette, until folklore had completed a process of percolating. Indeed, that process continues to this day (because, as they say, it’s all folklore!).

These women have been and always were magnets for attention and for folklore: from early on, people looked back on the first days of a mining town and insisted that sex workers were the first women in town, even though it can be demonstrated that this was hardly the case. Bulette did not arrive until four years after the first strikes in 1859, and her story was typical for the time.

In her classic work on early Nevada sex workers, Marion Goldman, Gold Diggers and Silver Miners: Prostitution and Social Life on the Comstock Lode (1881), incorrectly asserts that these women were the first in the community and that sex work was the most common occupation for women in the first decades of the mining district. Nothing could be further from true; among the thousands of women documented there, those involved in sex work likely never exceeded 200, while other women were pursuing a variety of tasks including being servants, running boarding/lodging houses, and pursuing other careers – in far greater numbers.

That said, sex work clearly drew attention – as it does to this day. Had you asked about early Nevada seamstresses, I doubt it would have attracted the same attention as bringing up the subject of sex work! Because of the natural attention-attracting nature of sex work, women involved in that business needed to do very little to become known – while a seamstress might very well need to take an advertisement out in the newspaper to attract customers! Communities typically restricted sex workers to a small part of town, so customers and the professionals could easily find one another without the expense or effort to “become known.”

Primary source documents to describe parties hosted by sex workers. I doubt that these were necessary to attract attention, but they would certainly serve in that capacity. Sadly, most of the women involved in this business became most well known when they died – particularly if they died in unfortunate circumstances. Local newspapers regularly published articles on sex workers who died of drug overdoses, committed suicide, or were murdered. Then they were generally forgotten.

Those involved in running larger businesses did gain some distinction. Cad Thompson ran “Bow Windows” – one of the more popular establishments, and when she died in 1897, journalist Alfred Doten made note of her passing in his diary: “Cad Thompson died at Virginia this morning – 66 yrs old, Native of Tyrone, Ireland. Old acquaintance of over 30 yrs on Comstock”. Other “madams” also became well known because they were businessowners who gained some prominence in the communities. Their employees, sadly, too often came and went with a great deal of anonymity.