Etta Place, also known as "Mrs. Sundance Kid"

Etta Place is a mystery to history.  There are very few hard facts about her early or later years.  What we do know is that Etta Place was a beautiful woman who fell in love with an outlaw.  She had ties to prostitutes in the state of Texas, such as Madam Fannie Porter of San Antonio, but it is not known for certain whether Etta was a member of the frail demimonde.  Due to her unusual attractiveness of the times (late 19th century/turn of the century), many historians have conjectured that she must have been a schoolteacher or a maid, rather than a whore.  Although running off with the Wild Bunch Gang (the infamous one run by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) was not the most ladylike of decisions.  Before Paul Newman and Robert Redford immortalized the Wild Bunch on the big screen, they were already legendary.  Even during their heyday, they never robbed or molested the passengers on the trains they robbed, which garnered them a reputation for outlaw chivalry.  A fascinating and unusual aspect of the Wild Bunch Gang is the existence of pictures.  The whole gang posed together for professional pictures and there exist some of Etta and Sundance together too.  These pictures would later lead to their downfall, but they give historians a nice picture into what outlaws looked like (However, I feel these may be unrepresentative, as Etta was very beautiful and most of the gang members handsome, strange to me for such an occupation).

Etta and Sundance lived for a time as husband and wife although there is no proof that they ever legally married.  After things began to heat up stateside, Butch and Sundance decided to head down to South America, with Etta in tow.  Butch referred to them as the "little family of three."  Of course, most people know the legend that Butch and Sundance met their end in a hail of bullets in South America, but nothing is known about the ultimate fate of Etta Place.  Even the fate of Butch and Sundance is called into question by some, but Etta simply disappears.  She was never caught by the Pinkertons or US Marshalls.  What happened to her once they reached South America remains unclear.  Although no one knows the exact relationship she shared with the men, it has been credited to Butch as saying, "She was the best housekeeper on the Pampas, but she was a whore at heart."  Most biographers believe that she returned to the United States around 1907, although this is unsubstantiated.  Some say she returned to New York suffering from a venereal disease, some believe she lived a quiet life as a schoolteacher, but the most absorbing legend is one that says she moved back to Fort Worth and died in a boarding house she owned and operated under the name Eunice Gray.

No matter what the truth of Etta Place's fate, she was a fascinating and mysterious woman who threw her lot in with legendary and notorious men, and found everlasting notoriety herself by doing so. (Picture below is of Etta Place and the Sundance Kid)

Peggy Eaton and the Petticoat Affair

Peggy Eaton's fame was due to sex and involved a President, but it wasn't with a President.  She was the daughter of an innkeeper in Washington DC and through this avenue met and entertained many politicians, including her future husbands John Timberlake and John Eaton (not at the same time of course).  Peggy was attractive, flirtatious and possibly sexually active with a variety of men.  When she was 17, Peggy married 39 year old John Timberlake, a navy man.  They were married for 12 years before Peggy began fooling around with Senator John Eaton, a close friend of Andrew Jackson.  Rumors abounded about the affair, with one stating that Peggy had become pregnant by Eaton and had an abortion.  Whether that is true remains a mystery, but Peggy's husband slashed his own throat at sea, while serving aboard the USS Constitution in 1828.  After his suicide, Peggy and Eaton decided to get married, and Jackson gave his approval.  The following year, Jackson became President and appointed Eaton his Secretary of War, which fueled gossip even more.  The men and women of Washington DC slandered Peggy on a regular basis and felt she was too notorious to be in such a position.  Jackson defended his decision and the Eaton's, as it reminded him of personal scandals related to his late wife Rachel.

The Petticoat Affair started at the beginning of the Jackson administration in the spring of 1829 when the wives of cabinet secretaries, led by Vice President John C. Calhoun's wife Floride, refused to invite the Eaton's to parties.  The ladies regularly ostracized Peggy and did not speak to her or socialize with her even at official functions.  President Jackson took pity on Peggy and decided to take action.  He demanded that his cabinet members invite the Eaton's to their parties, but out of fear of their wives, they still refused to entertain the notorious couple.  Scandalous rumors continued to fly about Peggy, and Jackson decided to hire a private investigator to come to the bottom of the various allegations.  His agents could find no proof of Peggy's promiscuity and thus Jackson summoned his entire cabinet and laid out the evidence.  Jackson lectured them, "Female virtue is like a tender and delicate flower.  Let but the breath of suspicion rest upon it, and it withers and perhaps perishes forever."  Jackson seemed to spend more time on the Eaton's, than on any political, domestic or economic issue during his first year in office.

After the cabinet meeting, John Eaton challenged two different men to duels, but both of them skipped town.  Jackson began blaming the entire controversy on John C. Calhoun and his wife Floride.  He felt that since Eaton was not one of the vice president's puppets, Calhoun was attempting to undermine him and President Jackson.  Secretary of state Martin Van Buren  decided to take advantage of such suspicions.  He began frequenting the Eaton's home and inviting them to functions.  Van Buren wanted to be President some day and used this chance to get on Jackson's good side.  His scheme worked and Jackson singed his praises.  Jackson's administration was now divided over Peggy Eaton, and in 1831, Jackson asked for the resignations of his entire cabinet.  In 1832, Jackson dumped Calhoun from his ticket and replaced him with Martin Van Buren.  At the end of his second term, Jackson rewarded Van Buren with the ultimate prize, the Presidency.

Interestingly, Peggy Eaton's life became more colorful as time went on.  At the age of 59, after her husband Eaton's death, she married a 19 year old dance teacher who stole all her money and ran off to Italy with her 17 year old granddaughter.  She lived to be 80, and her funeral was attended by all of Washington society, including the current First Lady, wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes.  Peggy Eaton may only be remembered for her sexual notoriety, but she is remembered.

Maria Reynolds a.k.a. Hamilton's Whore

Alexander Hamilton was an intelligent man.  He was General Washington's aide-de-camp during the Revolutionary War and the Secretary of Treasury under President Washington.  He wrote the Federalist Papers, created the National Bank, founded the New York Stock Exchange and created an economic plan for the fledgling country that impacts us to this day.  With the ladies however, Hamilton was not sharpest tack in the shed.  Maria Reynolds was a 23 year old blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty who approached Hamilton claiming that he abusive husband had run off with another woman and left her penniless.  Hamilton decided to console her in a horizontal fashion and thus began the Reynolds Affair.  The "relationship" lasted 13 months total and began with Hamilton only seeing Maria at her house.  After Hamilton's wife Betsy became pregnant again (yes, he had children with his young wife), she went further north for the summer months and Maria moved in.  Even after Betsy returned home in the fall, Hamilton continued to see Maria.  You may wonder, why is Maria a whore and not simply an adulteress?  First off, Maria's husband James shows up on the scene when Maria claims he had discovered their affair.  James then decided to blackmail Hamilton for $1,000 or he would tell his wife Betsy.  After that James urged Hamilton to continue seeing Maria if he would regularly "loan" him money.  Thus, James was a pimp, Maria a prostitute and Hamilton a fool for love.

So how did all this play out?  Supposedly Hamilton began to wise up to the situation and break off the affair, but Maria threatened suicide and he would give in.  Finally, after over a year, Hamilton worked up the courage to end the affair.  In his surprise, the requests for money came to an end.  Potentially, no one ever had to know about the Reynolds Affair, but in 1792 James was arrested for treasury fraud and when Hamilton refused to have the charges dropped, James told a Democratic-Republican congressman about the sordid affair.  For awhile the Democratic-Republicans decided to sit on the information as Hamilton had not technically committed a crime.  In 1796, however, Vice President Thomas Jefferson decided to leak the story in order to lessen Hamilton's power and influence.  The leak was an attempt to not only place a stain on Hamilton's character, but also to allude to the possibility that Hamilton's economic plan was corrupt as he had potentially been part of a larger conspiracy with James to defraud the government. In order to save his economic plan and help his country, Hamilton decided to come clean about his cash for sex arrangement with Maria and denounce any possibility of fraud.  As the journalist James Callender stated of Hamilton's defense of himself, "I am a rake and for that reason I cannot be a swindler."  Hamilton's confession damaged his personal reputation but allowed him to remain a leader of the Federalist Party.

Thus, America's first sex scandal was over and Maria Reynolds became just another harlot in history.

AN ODE TO THE FAIR BUT FRAIL

Welcome to a blog dedicated to ladies of the demimonde, otherwise known as whores, prostitutes, painted ladies, trollops, hussies, fallen women, and many other varieties through the years!  I am a graduate student who studies these harlots in history, specifically in the United States.  Every week I will post on one notoriously fascinating lady of the evening that I have run across during my research.  Hopefully, you will find these women as interesting as I have.  Remember, although we may disagree with the methods of survival these women sometimes used, they were important and often forgotten players in the historical narrative of the United States.