Madam money
» Sex Workers
Recently recovered records reveal how dependent the town of Miles City Montana was on madam money as the fees sex workers paid were called.
Allison has found only one register of prostitutes, covering 1915-1917, but it is full of revealing information. The register first served as a listing of impounded horses, cows and mules, and the fees their owners had to pay to get them back. Then, a little way into the volume, it switches to a monthly register of bordello owners and the women working for them. …
The docket records only $23 in process fees - fines for infractions such as being drunk and disorderly or carrying a concealed weapon. But the nonprocess fees, charged at the rate of $10 per madam and $5 per working girl, brought $125 into city coffers that month. Among those who paid the $5 fee that month were girls named Flossie, Sadie, Jeannie, Birdie, Aggie, Mabel and Pearl.
By 1912, Allison said, the city was no longer levying individual fees. Instead, each madam was charged monthly with the offense of "running a house of ill repute and being an inmate therein," and paid a "fine" that apparently was based on the number of girls working for her. During one month of 1912, the various madams paid fines ranging from $73.40 to $153.50. …
"Madam money kept the city running through the Depression," she sai
Ed Kemmick, Billings Gazette: Records reveal Miles City survived Depression on 'madam money'