Mile Marker 16: Madam Dora DuFran

Join Drifter & Gypsie as we take you on a ride to Deadwood, South Dakota. We'll spend some time with and tell you all about the Queen of the Cat House, Madam Diddlin Dora DuFran. She was a Madam of the old days having a handful of brothels in Deadwood & the surrounding areas.
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Transcript

Key: Drifter, Male voice. Gypsie, Female voice

Uplifting rock/western tune plays for 15 seconds, music begins to taper down then:

(Drifter) Welcome to the Rebel At Large Adventure Podcast. I’m Drifter

(Gypsie) And I’m  Gypsie

(Drifter) Talking about Ghost towns,

(Gypsie) Graveyards,

(Drifter) Outlaws, Heroes

(Gypsie) And Ladies of the night.

Music tapers to an end

Amy Helen Dorothy Bolshaw Dora DuFran

(Drifter)Welcome to the Rebel at Large Adventure Podcast. I’m Drifter (Gypsie)and I’m Gypsie. (Drifter)Talking about Ghost Towns, (Gypsie)Graveyards, (Drifter)Outlaws, Heroes, (Gypsie)and Ladies of the night.

(Drifter)Howdy folks today we are going to share with you one of Gypsie’s favorite subjects, (Gypsie)the ladies of the night. (Drifter)We are going to tell you the life story of Madam Dora DuFran. (Gypsie)We understand that this may be a sensitive subject to some folks, so we did our best at keeping it clean. (Drifter)information for this episode came from a few different sources which include Madam Dora DuFran Cat House Queen of Deadwood Gulch by Tom Teller, (Gypsie)Boudoirs to Brothels by Michael Rutter, (Drifter)and Mount Moriah ``Kill a Man- Start a Cemetery” The Story of Deadwoods Boot Hill by Helen Rezatto.

(Gypsie)I am so excited to share with you one of my favorite and most colorful Madams of the west! She was born Amy Helen Dorothy Bolshaw, Her family called her Dora for short and that nickname followed her throughout her life.  According to her headstone, she was born on November 16, 1873, but familysearch.org has her birth year listed as 1868. There is a strong possibility that she lied about the year she was born the older she got in order to seem younger.  

(Drifter)Her Fathers name is Joseph John Bolshaw and her Mothers name is Isabella Neal Cummings Bolshaw. (Gypsie)According to the familysearch.org website they had 10 children and Dora was the oldest! (Drifter)We’ve read two different accounts to where the family was living at the time she was born. one was Lancashire England, the other was Liverpool England. (Gypsie)When she was around 3 years old the family migrated to the United States and settled in Bloomfield New Jersey. They stayed there for about ten years before the family moved West to Lincoln Nebraska, her father wanted land to grow crops and raise cattle. The family did fairly well for themselves in Nebraska, but Dora did not want to be like her mother raising children, milking cows, tending to the farm. (Drifter)She wanted money but she didn’t want to work in the crop fields to obtain it.

(Gypsie)As Dora grew up, she became a beautiful woman and she quickly realized she could use this to her advantage. At this time women did not have a lot of opportunities like we do today to make money on their own. At the age of 13 or 14, she started working as a prostitute. She didn’t do this for very long before she started working in the dancehalls, possibly as a waitress. (Drifter)There is not a lot of information about her life around this time, women that entered into this profession tended to run away in an attempt to save the family name or the family did not approve of this lifestyle and they didn’t want them to know. (Gypsie)Around the age of 15 she moved to Deadwood and her life would never be the same after that. 

(Drifter)Gold was discovered in Deadwood in 1875 and by 1876 the town was fairly well established. When Dora arrived around 1883 the town already had dance halls, gambling establishments, saloons, and brothels. They were located along both sides of lower Main Street and are known as the BadLands. Wild Bill Hickok had already been shot in the back of the head while playing cards at the number 10 saloon. The town already had a newspaper company. Seth Bullock and Solomon Star had their hardware store up and running, and Seth was the sheriff. The first telegraph lines had reached Deadwood by 1876. And in 1879 the town was destroyed by a fire burning down roughly 300 buildings. (Gypsie)So this place was not a new up and coming town when Dora got there but that did not stop her from opening up her own brothel. She didn’t want it to be just any brothel, no, she wanted it to be the finest brothel in town. 

(Gypsie)Dora prided herself on having the cleanest and most beautiful women in Deadwood. She required her women to bathe every day, saying that today seems normal but back then it was not. They would also be in the finest clothing available to them.(Drifter) In a town of roughly 5,000 residents, the man-to-woman ratio was around 100 to1.(Gypsie) there were not a lot of women in town to work at Dora’s brothel therefore she had them brought in from all over. (Drifter)We read one account that her brothel in Deadwood was the Green Front Hotel and Brothel but we have yet to be able to prove if this is correct or not. (Gypsie)In the book by Helen Rezatto she said that according to Dora, the girls received .10 cents for every dance, .25 cents for every bottle of beer sold, and one dollar for every bottle of wine. But she did not reveal how much a girl earned from turning a trick or what percentage the madams received from the house take.

(Drifter)Dora’s biggest competition when she arrived in town was Al Swearingen who owned and ran the famous and well-known Gem Theater. (Gypsie)Dora did not like Al and disapproved of the way he treated his women. The Gem Theater was known to be the worst den of iniquity in Sin City. Historian John McClintock described The Gem Theater as a “Vicious institution,” both he and Dora described how Al would lure innocent girls from the East out to Deadwood with promises of acting jobs on his stage. Instead, he forced them into “White Slavery”. An article published in the Deadwood Pioneer Times gives an example of the way Al would trick the women to come out west. The article reads, quote, (Drifter)“A man named Johnnie Moore felt sorry for a girl who had come from Milwaukee in response to an ad: “Actresses, dancers wanted. Good pay.” It nearly broke her heart when she found what kind of den of iniquity she was supposed to sing and dance in. Moore went into the gambling dens and appealed to the faro players for a contribution to send this innocent young girl back home again. He collected a total of $442 dollars and presented it to the girl with a speech, saying “You are not obligated to the donors- and remember that although this is called a tough town our people as a rule have the largest and most generous hearts to be found on earth.”

(Gypsie)We have read several stories about Dora’s house in Deadwood being known as a “cat house” and that she actually coined the term. (Drifter) Mining camps were dirty, they didn’t have paved roads and sidewalks like we do today, and Deadwood was no different, there was no running water, and people did not understand how to properly store food, plus Deadwood is located in the Black Hills mountain range. (Gypsie)Rats were everywhere throughout the camp, including inside Dora’s house. The girls and customers would complain about the rats, with the help of her attorney they came up with the idea to have cats brought into town and live at the brothel. Charlie Utter bought up a wagon full of cats for Dora and this helped get rid of the rat problem! The story continues that after Dora was arrested for running a house of ill repute, her attorney argued in court that Dora was running a house for cats and that Dora loved her cats so much that she provided them a live-in female companion to watch over them. He then points out that the judge was seen there the day before and that he must have been there to share Dora’s love of cats!  After they walked out of the courtroom with all charges dropped, Dora and her attorney started selling the cats to other madams at 50.00 a cat. ( that 50.00 dollars would 1,407 dollars in today's money )

(Drifter)Another story goes that a man by the name of Phatty Thompson paid young boys in Cheyenne Wyoming .25 cents for each stray cat they could round up. Thompson then brought a wagon load of cats up to Deadwood and sold them to Dora.

(Gypsie)There is strong evidence that this story about Charlie Utter is probably not true. Charlie Utter and his brother Steven brought supplies up to Deadwood from Colorado in 1876 when Deadwood was first becoming a town. If we go off the date on Dora’s headstone she would have been 3 at this time, if we go off the date of 1868 she would have been 8 at that time and though women who entered into this profession were sometimes young 8 is a little too young and not at all realistic for her to be a brothel owner at that age. The only possible way for this to be true is if she was actually born in the early 1860’s that would have made her older than 15 when she got to Deadwood, but she still did not get to Deadwood until 1883 so she missed Charlie bringing up supplies, regardless it’s still a really fun story. 

(Drifter)Sometime during her first years in Deadwood, she met a man named Joseph DuFran. Several sources say the two were married yet we could not find a marriage license, so it may have been just a common-law marriage. (Gypsie)Their marriage was one of the most unique unions to take place with a tainted lady. Most women in this profession at this time would get hitched and it just would not last long, either the men would beat them, take all their money and leave them, or in some cases kill the woman. Dora and Joseph stayed married until the day he passed away and she would never marry again. 

(Drifter) is not a lot of information about Mr. DuFran, but from what has been gathered we know that he was born on June 16, 1862, in Iowa, his father’s name was Jon Du Fran, his Mother’s name was Lenore Caron Du Fran and they are from Canada. According to familysearch.org, his parents had 13 children and he was the 11th child. Joseph was known as a gambler in Deadwood when they met. He supported Dora in her business by helping her run her books, oversee the purchases, and act as a bouncer. He never wanted her to stop working as a madam; he wanted her to achieve her goals in life and stood by her side as she did so.

(Gypsie)The most well-known person that Dora ever had the chance to get to know was Martha Jane Canary, but most people know her as Calamity Jane. Jane would work at Dora’s location off and on to earn some extra money. Dora was one of the few people who knew and understood Jane, she took pity on her and the situation that she was in. In 1903 Jane was worn out and sick. Also, her excessive alcohol use did not help, she came to Dora’s brothel in Belle Fourche in search of work. Dora allowed Jane to cook for the girls and do the laundry in exchange for a place to stay and food to eat. (Drifter)After a while, Jane left and she didn’t live long after that. Once Jane passed away the press started to slander her name and make up stories about her life. In an attempt to clear Jane’s name, Dora wrote a book called Low Down on Calamity Jane. In her book, she says quote (Gypsie) “She was not brought up with every protection from the evils of the world and with good associates, she was a product of the wild and wooly west. She was not immoral; but unmoral. She took more on her shoulders than most women could. She performed many hundred of deeds of kindness and received very little pay”.

(Gypsie)Dora began to expand her operations and she soon opened another brothel in Lead, just three miles away from Deadwood. According to the book Madam Dora DuFran- Cat House Queen of Deadwood Gulch, The Homestake Mining Company discovered gold there and the company brought in miners from all over to work the claim. (Drifter)George Hearst was the new owner of the mine and he supported Dora’s plans to open a saloon and brothel in town. He knew the men would get rowdy if they were not entertained and he also knew Dora’s reputation of having clean women. Other madams wanted to open brothels in Lead but when they discovered that Dora had the backing of George Hearst, they opted out. (Gypsie)It's alleged that George liked to spend time with Dora’s girls, so that may have played into him supporting her new endeavors. Not everything at this location was glorious, in July 1913, the Deadwood Daily Telegram wrote that, quote, (Gypsie)“Thomas Jones was shot by a young woman whose name is given as Jess Taylor, better known as “Big Jess'', an inmate of Dora DuFran’s bagnio in West Bleeker Street in Lead.” (Drifter)Side note, Bagnio, spelled B A G N I O, is another term for a brothel. Not the Spanish term for bathroom. (Gypsie)Or is it?

(Gypsie)Dora was very successful, and she became a prominent figure throughout the area. (Drifter)Men would travel from all over just to spend time with Dora’s girls because they knew they would be treated well while there. (Gypsie)Dora was not only known for her girls, but she also took care of the people in her community. She was known to help struggling families by giving them money, and though she was happy to take money from the men in exchange for services, she would never let a starving miner go without a meal. Dora not only took care of the community, but she also cared for her girls by providing them with nursing services, acted as a midwife delivering babies and she would also find a good home for the unwanted infants.

(Drifter)About 31 miles to the north of Deadwood is a cattle town called Belle Fourche. (Gypsie)For the longest time we pronounced the name incorrectly, we were later corrected by locals that it's pronounced Belle Fourche so if we say it incorrectly, we are very sorry and are not trying to come off as offensive. (Drifter)Seth Bullock owned a ranch in the Belle Fourche area, and he was able to persuade the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri River Railroad to build tracks across his ranch free of charge. He then put in a stagecoach way station for the cattle barons in the area to bring their cattle into town and load up to be shipped across the country. Belle Fourche grew overnight with saloons and brothels opening up along Fifth Avenue, sometimes referred to as Saloon Street, for the local cowboys. Cattle was a far steadier income than mining was because people always need meat and unlike the mines that would eventually dry up there will always be cattle. (Gypsie)We are betting that Seth Bullock understood this, that is why he helped with getting the town established!

(Drifter)Dora got word that this was happening and quickly jumped on the opportunity to expand her business once again. (Gypsie)She opened Diddlin’ Dora’s right there on Fifth Avenue. This has to be the best name ever chosen for a brothel, I think it shows she had a bit of a fun side to her. We tried to find where the exact location of the brothel was but were unable to obtain anything more than it was located on Fifth Avenue. We pulled up the Sanborn Maps to see if there was anything labeled as female boarding, but everything was labeled as a saloon. When we were in Belle Fourche, we found a location that we thought might be it only because it was labeled as a saloon and was right next to the weigh station, with her being as business savvy as she was, we thought she might have put it there so that the men would see it first thing getting off the train!

(Drifter)It is said that Diddlin’ Dora’s was the most popular brothel in town, and possibly her most famous brothel that she owned. (Gypsie)She would advertise in the papers that her brothel is a place for the three D’s Dining Drinking and ……… What do you think the third one was…… Dancing! She promoted it as a restaurant where you could bring your mother, but I am sure the men patronizing the establishment would not want their mothers to know they went there! Diddlin’ Dora’s is said to be the last place Calamity Jane worked at before she passed away on August 2, 1903. Jane was laid to rest at the Mount Moriah cemetery in Deadwood right next to Wild Bill. Dora paid to have an urn on a pedestal placed on her gravesite but years later it was destroyed by vandals and there is nothing left of it today.

(Drifter)In Belle Fourche, the cowboys would drive the cattle down Fifth Ave towards the train depot and the girls knew this. (Gypsie)They would stand out front on the second-floor balcony yelling down to the men trying to get their attention, then proceed to throw down their garters, bits of clothing, and sometimes even their undies. (Drifter)In return, if the cowboys saw a girl that they liked he would throw his hat  up to her. After his business transactions were finished the cowboy would wash up, have some dinner and find the girl with his hat.(Gypsie) I can just picture the whole thing in my mind, beautiful women attracting the attention of these dirty, stinky, lonely cowboys for a night of enjoyment, all agreed upon by a hat being thrown! How fun would it have been to see this bustling cow town in action? (Drifter)Now Belle Fourche is just a quiet sleepy town. (Gypsie)Maybe we will do a podcast on the town one day!

(Drifter)Dora’s husband Joseph passed away in Hot Springs South Dakota on August 3, 1909, at the age of 47. She laid him to rest at the Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood. (Gypsie)I found a newspaper article on the findagrave.com website, it doesn't list what newspaper it came from, but the article says quote, (Drifter)“Impressive ceremonies conducted according to the ritual of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, marked the burial of late Joseph Du Fran yesterday afternoon.” (Gypsie)It continues on saying, (Drifter)the eagles went as a group to the undertaking parlors for the ceremony. There were people from Lead, Sturgis, Belle Fourche, Hot Springs, Rapid City, and other Black Hills towns in attendance. There were so many flowers for him that it required a special conveyance to take them to the cemetery, (Gypsie)meaning he literally had his own flower car! -----It's interesting that so many people knew him and yet today we know nothing about him. ---

(Drifter)After he passed away Dora focused all her time on her girls and her business. (Gypsie)She took some of her girls with her to Rapid City to open another brothel there. Though she was highly successful in Belle Fourche her brothel in Rapid City turned out to be a wise move. (Drifter)During prohibition it doubled as a speakeasy where she served wealthy businessmen and politicians. One story that we found about her Rapid City Brothel was a flood swept through town and it trapped several of the city’s most prosperous businessmen inside. (Gypsie)The wives of the men trapped inside were worried that their husbands may have been swept away by the flood waters, because they could not find them. However, they soon found out their husbands had been spending time at Dora’s and couldn’t get across the water. (Drifter)The men had to spend several days inside the brothel until the water was safe enough to cross. (Gypsie)After the water had receded the men were greeted by their angry wives carrying weapons of rolling pins, umbrellas, cooking utensils, sticks, or whatever was handy! I wonder if Dora charged them for the nights spent locked upside the brothel!

(Drifter)We found several articles and books stating that Dora had a brothel in Sturgis, South Dakota, but we have not been able to find out any information about it. (Gypsie)So, if anyone knows anything about it or knows where to find more information, we would love it if you could share it with us. (website)

(Drifter)By the time Dora was in her sixties she began to slow down and wasn’t feeling very well. (Gypsie)She passed away in Rapid City on August 5, 1934, at the age of 66. records state that she died of heart failure. She lived 40 years without her husband by her side and remained a single woman. Her body was brought back to Deadwood to be placed next to her husband at the Mount Moriah Cemetery. (Drifter)The two of them are not buried in the cement crib alone (Gypsie)Dora also had her pet parrot Fred buried there when he passed away. The Belle Fourche Bee published an article about Dora on August 10, in it they identified her as a former resident of Belle Fourche and said quote (Drifter)“she nursed the sick, bought food and clothing and paid the rent for the poverty-stricken”. (Gypsie)They continued on saying that she had a heart of gold.

(Drifter)The location of Dora’s gravesite is very close to the resting spot for Wild Bill, (Gypsie)Calamity Jane, (Drifter)and Potato Creek Johnny. We’re looking to do a Patreon episode on Potato Creek Johnny. (Gypsie)Wild Bill and Calamity Jane are next to each other and there is one plot separating Dora from Jane. There is a cement crib around Dora’s that is built into the hillside with a plaque on the front that says DuFran. On each corner is a pedestal with an urn placed on top. It is said that each urn represents her brothels, (Drifter)we have not been able to find anything backing up this claim but if she really did have a brothel in Sturgis then she would have had 5 brothels, not 4.  (Gypsie)if people are incorrect about the Sturgis brothel and she really only had 4 then it is possible that they do represent her brothels. On each one of the pedestal’s there is a grinning gargoyle carved into it, they look a little freaky, we have pictures of them and will put them up on the website. Calamity Jane has a very similar looking pedestal and urn on her gravesite as well.

(Drifter)Joseph and Dora’s headstones are shaped exactly the same. His reads Joseph Du FRAN born June 16, 1862, died Aug 3, 1909, aged 47 yrs and below that it says Not Forgotten, on the top it says DuFran. (Gypsie)Dora’s says; Dora Amy DuFran Born Nov 16, 1873, Died Aug 5, 1934, aged 60 --not 66 because the birth year is not matching up--. Under that, it says not forgotten, just like her husbands. On top of Dora’s it says Mother, we couldn’t find anything saying she had children of her own so that may have been placed there because she was like a mother to her girls that worked for her.

(Gypsie)When we went to visit the cemetery we packed a lunch, and a bottle of champagne and spent almost the entire day walking around exploring. (Drifter)Gypsie bought the book by Helen Rezatto while we were in Deadwood so we would walk to a headstone and then read the information found in the book about them, (Gypsie)it was a great resource and fun for us to read the stories.  (Drifter)At one point we sat down to enjoy our picnic and Gypsie laid down to take a nap, I was laying in the grass then i heard a thud as Gypsie’s hand hit the ground. (Gypsie)I think we might have to do a podcast about the Mount Moriah cemetery because there are several notable people buried there and the town is trying its best to preserve the headstones that in the past have been destroyed by vandals.

(Drifter)Our trip to Deadwood, was a long journey, (Gypsie)around ten days it seems. (Drifter)This was Gypsie’s first big trip driving her own Harley. We headed north from Salt Lake City & Meandered around Wyoming. We visited the Old Prison in Rawlings, we stopped in Medicine Bow which was the setting for the book The Virginian, by Owen Wister. (Gypsie)We headed north again, stopping for pictures near the Devils Tower, then cut into South Dakota staying in Belle Fourche for a night. (Drifter)When we made it to Deadwood, we checked into the local KOA campground. Not sure if it was just the season, however, we were not able to have a campfire. I believe it is just a no-fire area as there were no fire pits at the tent sites we stayed at. The host was not the friendliest we have had at a KOA so we didn’t ask any further questions, not wanting to pester him. Anyhow, Gypsie put over 2000 miles on her first big solo driving adventure. (Gypsie)We whittled down through Nebraska, stopped at Carhenge (Drifter)(of which we have an episode on Patreon if you’d like to support the show and listen to us talk a little more). (Gypsie)We went back into Cheyenne where Drifter decided it was time to find the cowboy boots he’s had his eye on for a while. (Drifter)If there’s a place to buy cowboy boots, Cheyenne is it. (Gypsie)Heading south, we stayed the night in Fort Collins, Colorado. They had a pretty fun walking ghost tour. We just looked it up to provide a link and found that due to covid restrictions, the tour has shut down permanently. (Drifter)Heading on I70, which is my favorite way through Colorado, Gypsie had her first experience driving a Harley in the rain. We stopped to let the storm pass, had some awesome Mexican food in Gypsum then drove right back toward the storm. It changed direction & was giving us one hell of a lightning show. We stopped to give it more time to pass & sat outside a gas station in Silt to watch the lightning show. (Gypsie)When Lightning struck the light pole in the parking lot a few feet away, we opted to hang out inside the station for a spell. (Drifter)A final night in Grand Junction & we made it back to the happy valley without incident. (Gypsie)Of course, we’ll be covering a number of these places on future episodes so be sure to keep following along.

(Drifter)Well there you have it, folks, that is part of our adventure that included finding Miss Diddlin Dora DuFran.

(Drifter)Is it time for dad jokes with Gypsie?

(Gypsie)What did the sign say at the Brothel when the pandemic hit?.....Beat it, We’re Closed.

(Drifter)So that joke came by way of our friends at the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery podcast, Jennie put out a call in their pinball stream Pezjohnson. We didn’t get permission to call out the user name, however if you’re listening,(Gypsie) you know who you are, (Drifter)we say thankya. (Gypsie)And thank you Jennie.(Drifter) If you get a chance, check out these gals at the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery Podcast, they put out a new show every thursday covering cemeteries, posthumous profiles & have had some great interesting interviews. We’ll have them on the show eventually, once I can dial in the tech side, (Gypsie)in the meantime Go give em a listen, (Drifter)i’ll put a link to their website in the show notes, and  I’ll link our email in the show notes if any of you would like to help out Gypsie with her jokes. Or, you can find a link to the email on our website (Gypsie)RebelAtLarge.com where you will also find pictures of our adventure and links to all the social media deals. (Drifter)You can find us easily on Instagram (Gypsie)@Rebelatlarge. (Drifter)We would like to thank you again for listening & continuing to support our efforts.(Gypsie) Don't be afraid to share us with a friend, or rate & review us if you're into that sort of thing. (Drifter)We’ll Talk to you all here in a couple weeks.

(Gypsie)Safe Travels, (Drifter)We’ll see ya down the road.

 Begin 30 seconds of the same uplifting Rock/Western tune as the introduction.