ABSTRACT
Readers of both fact and fiction dealing with the frontier towns of America are familiar with the “gay ladies” who were to be found in the saloons of every cattle town and mining camp in the West. In those days women of respectability were few where rough men lived, fought and drank. As a result men enormously outnumbered women, and this disproportion of the sexes developed prostitution in a manner and to an extent unknown in other better balanced communities. There was little in the way of regulation, the women practising their trade openly and blatantly.
