The Most Famous Madam in the American Old West
Mary Elizabeth “Libby” Haley was a popular “soiled dove” in the frontier cow towns of the American West. She was born in 1855 in Belton, Texas. Her family lost nearly everything during the Civil War.
In 1864, she was kidnapped by Comanche Indians, and not freed until 1867. Thereafter, she was looked on as being a 'marked' woman, though only about 13 yrs old. People assumed she was used by the Indians and shunned her.
At age 14, whe ran away from home, ending up in Abilene, Kansas where she turned to prostitution as a means of survival. It was in Abilene she earned the nickname 'Squirrel Tooth Alice,' due to a gap in her two front teeth.
Also in Abilene, she met Billy Thompson, brother of the famed gunman Ben Thompson. She and Billy became a couple, and eventually, after some roaming the west they settled in Sweetwater, Texas where she opened what became the most famous brothel in the west.
Over the years, Libby had 9 children, with at least 3 or 4 being the children of customers. Her several female children followed her mother into prostitution, and all the boys took up outlawry.
Squirrel Tooth Alice retired at the age of 66. Her companion, Billy Thompson, had passed away from what is believed stomach cancer years earlier. Alice moved to California, where she died in 1953, at the age of 98.
Squirrel Tooth Alice