wicked women

On the afternoon of August 18, 1895, United States Marshal Bill Tilghman and Deputy Marshal Steve Burke led their horses toward a small farm outside Pawnee, Oklahoma.  The lawmen had tracked a pair of outlaws to the location and were proceeding cautiously when several gunshots were fired.   Marshall Tilghman caught sight of a Winchester...

Wild Bill Hickok had many female admirers in his lifetime, but Agnes Lake Thatcher was the only woman who completely captured his heart.  The man known as the “deadliest pistolero in the Old West” often declared to his friends that he preferred being a bachelor.  It was a surprise to many when he married a...

On a summer day in the early 1880s an article called “What Girls Are Good For” appeared in the Pittsburg Dispatch.  It took a firm stand against the new fad of hiring women to work in offices and shops.  “A respectable woman,” the article noted with authority, “remained at home until she married.”  If a...

A pair of large, mean steers burst out of the gate and raced onto the parade field.  Eighteen-year-old Lucille Mulhall bolted after the beasts atop her trained horse, Governor.  The beautiful blond with petite features and blue-gray eyes quickly tossed the lasso she was twirling and snagged one of the animals around its neck.  The...

It was almost eight in the morning on June 3, 1895, when Jennie Freeman and Belle Black rode into the quiet, unassuming town of Fairview, Oklahoma.  The women, who would later be described by the people they robbed as “neither young, fair, nor dashing”, steered their rides toward a large, brick building that was a...

Every bed in the hospital at the military prison in Louisville, Kentucky was filled with wounded and dying men.  The Civil War had officially ended on April 9, 1865, but Rebels still fighting for their lost cause refused to surrender.  Union soldiers pursued renegade Confederates until they were captured or shot.  Guerilla leader William Quantrill...

Ohio native Victoria Claflin Woodhull was one of the most controversial outlaws in the Midwest.  Her arrest in early November 1872 on federal obscenity charges attracted the attention of political pundits and social reformers from Washington, D.C., to the Wyoming Territory.  Labeled by the press as “a most immoral woman,” hundreds of newspaper reporters were...

There seems to be no end to the Wicked Women in the West. Today it’s Barbary Coast Madam Tessie Wall’s turn at the spotlight. She knew many men, but in the end it was a bothersome tooth at claimed her life. Read on… A parade of horse drawn carriages deposited fashionably dressed San Francisco citizens...