Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush (1998)
That Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush (1998, Epicenter Press) by Lael Miller is a somewhat lightweight contribution to the scholarship is perhaps best exemplified by the moment Miller dismisses a question as "better not researched." (I speculate that this is to protect still-living children or grandchildren.)
However, the book features appropriately noted information from invaluable interviews the author conducted over thirty years with surviving pioneers and their children, as well as photographs and archival information that's been languishing untouched in Alaskan university collections (perhaps, again, politely waiting for elderly citizens to pass on), and a resonant take on the sociology of a genuine frontier from which travel was completely cut off for a large portion of the year. It's highly readable, and historians and history buffs in a number of fields will find Good Time Girls worth their time. (I also commend it to the attention of Firefly fans as research for that fantasy frontier.)
The book offers interesting vocabulary tidbits. The most common term for "sex worker" in polite publications and correspondence was, we're told, "sporting woman" (watch for it in your North American Victorian-Edwardian reading!). "Sporting man" might mean "pimp," or it might mean a man who enjoys baseball and so on. "Fairy" was the only one-word synonym for "prostitute" acceptable in period newspapers. "Girls of the line" seemed typical where restricted districts were established. "Women of the restricted district" was used in Fairbanks, which garnered a unique reputation for respecting and protecting this population (and in turn a unique reputation for honesty and dependability in this population). "Cribs" were a specific kind of work-from-home dwelling, usually on the "line" (restricted district), usually with three rooms, one of which had a window on "the line" side, and lifting the shade of which meant "open for business."
Chapters follow the stampedes across the map and across the years from the first Klondike Kings to the final federal intervention putting an end to Fairbanks's special laws. In Dawson, it's all about the gold and the isolation. By the time of Fairbanks, it's about city fathers (and mothers).
One of the first points the book makes is the male:female ratio, existing not only because the first route was so hard (which it was!), but because the Mounties, conscious of just how hard it was, frequently declined to allow women to even attempt the trail. Additionally, wives were expected to file claims in their husbands' names, single women were strongly disapproved from staking claims at all, working claims took sheer brute strength, and women were not allowed to own alcohol-dispensing businesses. In an 1899 Dawson census, decades after the stampede started, the male:female ratio had reached 5:1, and the police estimated the ratio of "respectable women" to "sporting women" to be less than 2:1. Imagine what it was in the early days.
An interesting scenario the book mentions in passing is that American women, during the US Civil War, had been on their own and responsible for many more things than usual, not unlike the "Rosie the Riveter" generation, and many were not thrilled to lose that freedom to the returning soldiers, be they fathers or brothers or husbands. Some of those women became early stampeders.
The typical dance hall establishment had many avenues of profit that don't make it into most fictional presentations. Of course there are the performances on the stage, and yep, indeed miners threw nuggets. And of course there are the expected arrangements for sex. In between, however, were two related but separate revenue flows: pay per dance, and pay per drink. A dance hall employee got a commission for every dance, and a commission for every drink she caused to be purchased for her. The book mentions one Dawson girl who famously drank only lemonade, but of course her commissions were smaller than her coworkers who drank alcohol, and who thus regularly ended up badly drunk. The dance hall employees might or might not be sporting women. There were typically "boxes" (booths?) around the edge of a dance floor, and any man who took a dance hall employee into a booth was required to buy her a drink, regardless of other arrangements.
George Akimoto -- who disappears from history and was probably murdered -- owned many buildings rented by the demimonde and wanted to entice a criminal syndicate to expand north and back his expansion. He decided that what he needed was a sort of "press packet" of photos, and he hired a photographer to come up and photograph the women and their environment, to prove to the syndicate that this was a good investment. The syndicate did not invest in Akimoto's plan, but the photographs are a gift to historians. (One of the things that I could not help noticing was that many of the women who, according to the text, were particularly famous for their beauty, were, in their photos, frankly unattractive by twenty-first century standards, being not only plump, but with broad or long faces.)
First-hand accounts from the women themselves are unfortunately rare. One letter quoted in the book says -- in elegant, eloquent Victorian; forgive me for coarsening it to modern brevity -- that in Chicago, most of this woman's customers were jaded, kinky and rude, while she was delighted to discover that most of her far-northern clients wanted vanilla and were polite and grateful. She doesn't reflect on the reasons for the difference. I would suggest not only that the Chicago men had access to wives for vanilla behaviors, but that supply and demand tilted on the frontier.
One woman was reputed to have the largest library in the far north, and she had a certain clientele that paid to come read and discuss her books.
The book does not deliberately disguise that there were many murders, suicides, diseases, addictions, beatings and unhappy endings all around. But the lightness does underplay that fact in favor of other stories.
Fairbanks earned a unique reputation in the "sporting" business in its gold-rush days. Even though the days of the wild stampedes were closing and civilization was coming ever closer, the "respectable" citizens declared the business a necessary evil and took the steps that seemed best to them. They harshly outlawed pimping, but essentially legalized self-employed prostitution (with a "fine" that was more like a tax or fee, and twice-monthly medical check-ups). This was apparently a charmed innovation. The restricted district became one of the safest places in town, and, famously, not only did miners have no fear of being "rolled" for their poke, they preferred to leave their gold with trusted prostitutes rather than put it in the bank. Several times, agents of the federal government came in and forced Fairbanks to change its system. Each time -- until the last -- some horrific incident followed the federal intervention, and the citizens of Fairbanks consequently quietly put things back the way they had been. In that time and place, at least, events seemed to prove that the "line" was safer than dispersion throughout town, and eliminating pimping was the key to law and order.
Throughout the era and region, but most especially in Fairbanks, a significant percentage of "sporting women" eventually married into the community, and did not perhaps tell their children the whole truth about their past. (Biological children were not as common as adopted and step children for former "fairies," the book says, noting the long-term consequences of certain medical procedures of the day.) Indeed, some interviewed in later years still sidestepped questions, pointing out that one of the reasons to love the last frontier was that people just did not ask those questions.
The book's core is rollicking anecdotes of pioneering cleverness, stupidity, greed, murders, love, and movement ever onward to the next gold strike. The tone is very Alaskan (perhaps also very Yukonian; I don't know). The underlying assumption -- supported by the tales told -- is that independence is next to godliness, and no one can order their own business better or look out for one another more thoroughly than the individuals of a community.
However, the book features appropriately noted information from invaluable interviews the author conducted over thirty years with surviving pioneers and their children, as well as photographs and archival information that's been languishing untouched in Alaskan university collections (perhaps, again, politely waiting for elderly citizens to pass on), and a resonant take on the sociology of a genuine frontier from which travel was completely cut off for a large portion of the year. It's highly readable, and historians and history buffs in a number of fields will find Good Time Girls worth their time. (I also commend it to the attention of Firefly fans as research for that fantasy frontier.)
The book offers interesting vocabulary tidbits. The most common term for "sex worker" in polite publications and correspondence was, we're told, "sporting woman" (watch for it in your North American Victorian-Edwardian reading!). "Sporting man" might mean "pimp," or it might mean a man who enjoys baseball and so on. "Fairy" was the only one-word synonym for "prostitute" acceptable in period newspapers. "Girls of the line" seemed typical where restricted districts were established. "Women of the restricted district" was used in Fairbanks, which garnered a unique reputation for respecting and protecting this population (and in turn a unique reputation for honesty and dependability in this population). "Cribs" were a specific kind of work-from-home dwelling, usually on the "line" (restricted district), usually with three rooms, one of which had a window on "the line" side, and lifting the shade of which meant "open for business."
Chapters follow the stampedes across the map and across the years from the first Klondike Kings to the final federal intervention putting an end to Fairbanks's special laws. In Dawson, it's all about the gold and the isolation. By the time of Fairbanks, it's about city fathers (and mothers).
One of the first points the book makes is the male:female ratio, existing not only because the first route was so hard (which it was!), but because the Mounties, conscious of just how hard it was, frequently declined to allow women to even attempt the trail. Additionally, wives were expected to file claims in their husbands' names, single women were strongly disapproved from staking claims at all, working claims took sheer brute strength, and women were not allowed to own alcohol-dispensing businesses. In an 1899 Dawson census, decades after the stampede started, the male:female ratio had reached 5:1, and the police estimated the ratio of "respectable women" to "sporting women" to be less than 2:1. Imagine what it was in the early days.
An interesting scenario the book mentions in passing is that American women, during the US Civil War, had been on their own and responsible for many more things than usual, not unlike the "Rosie the Riveter" generation, and many were not thrilled to lose that freedom to the returning soldiers, be they fathers or brothers or husbands. Some of those women became early stampeders.
The typical dance hall establishment had many avenues of profit that don't make it into most fictional presentations. Of course there are the performances on the stage, and yep, indeed miners threw nuggets. And of course there are the expected arrangements for sex. In between, however, were two related but separate revenue flows: pay per dance, and pay per drink. A dance hall employee got a commission for every dance, and a commission for every drink she caused to be purchased for her. The book mentions one Dawson girl who famously drank only lemonade, but of course her commissions were smaller than her coworkers who drank alcohol, and who thus regularly ended up badly drunk. The dance hall employees might or might not be sporting women. There were typically "boxes" (booths?) around the edge of a dance floor, and any man who took a dance hall employee into a booth was required to buy her a drink, regardless of other arrangements.
George Akimoto -- who disappears from history and was probably murdered -- owned many buildings rented by the demimonde and wanted to entice a criminal syndicate to expand north and back his expansion. He decided that what he needed was a sort of "press packet" of photos, and he hired a photographer to come up and photograph the women and their environment, to prove to the syndicate that this was a good investment. The syndicate did not invest in Akimoto's plan, but the photographs are a gift to historians. (One of the things that I could not help noticing was that many of the women who, according to the text, were particularly famous for their beauty, were, in their photos, frankly unattractive by twenty-first century standards, being not only plump, but with broad or long faces.)
First-hand accounts from the women themselves are unfortunately rare. One letter quoted in the book says -- in elegant, eloquent Victorian; forgive me for coarsening it to modern brevity -- that in Chicago, most of this woman's customers were jaded, kinky and rude, while she was delighted to discover that most of her far-northern clients wanted vanilla and were polite and grateful. She doesn't reflect on the reasons for the difference. I would suggest not only that the Chicago men had access to wives for vanilla behaviors, but that supply and demand tilted on the frontier.
One woman was reputed to have the largest library in the far north, and she had a certain clientele that paid to come read and discuss her books.
The book does not deliberately disguise that there were many murders, suicides, diseases, addictions, beatings and unhappy endings all around. But the lightness does underplay that fact in favor of other stories.
Fairbanks earned a unique reputation in the "sporting" business in its gold-rush days. Even though the days of the wild stampedes were closing and civilization was coming ever closer, the "respectable" citizens declared the business a necessary evil and took the steps that seemed best to them. They harshly outlawed pimping, but essentially legalized self-employed prostitution (with a "fine" that was more like a tax or fee, and twice-monthly medical check-ups). This was apparently a charmed innovation. The restricted district became one of the safest places in town, and, famously, not only did miners have no fear of being "rolled" for their poke, they preferred to leave their gold with trusted prostitutes rather than put it in the bank. Several times, agents of the federal government came in and forced Fairbanks to change its system. Each time -- until the last -- some horrific incident followed the federal intervention, and the citizens of Fairbanks consequently quietly put things back the way they had been. In that time and place, at least, events seemed to prove that the "line" was safer than dispersion throughout town, and eliminating pimping was the key to law and order.
Throughout the era and region, but most especially in Fairbanks, a significant percentage of "sporting women" eventually married into the community, and did not perhaps tell their children the whole truth about their past. (Biological children were not as common as adopted and step children for former "fairies," the book says, noting the long-term consequences of certain medical procedures of the day.) Indeed, some interviewed in later years still sidestepped questions, pointing out that one of the reasons to love the last frontier was that people just did not ask those questions.
The book's core is rollicking anecdotes of pioneering cleverness, stupidity, greed, murders, love, and movement ever onward to the next gold strike. The tone is very Alaskan (perhaps also very Yukonian; I don't know). The underlying assumption -- supported by the tales told -- is that independence is next to godliness, and no one can order their own business better or look out for one another more thoroughly than the individuals of a community.