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Ok tweeps! People keep DMing me this image & you may have seen it floating around Facebook.
It’s not real. (Thread) There really was a brothel in Jerome, Arizona run by a woman called “Belgium Jennie” Bauters. Bauters actually had three properties in Jerome.
It’s not real. (Thread) There really was a brothel in Jerome, Arizona run by a woman called “Belgium Jennie” Bauters. Bauters actually had three properties in Jerome.
Jennie was born in Belgium (hence the name) and not much more is known about her until turned up in Jerome. We know she had a son in Brussels, on Aug 26th, 1882.
Jerome was a typical mining town & in 1896 Bauters took out $1000 mortgage on three properties that formed a triangle on Boarding School Rd. There were already several brothels & saloons in Jerome.
According to the Jerome Historical Society, this is a picture of Jennie in the black dress.
Jennie ran a middle status brothel, her girls lived in house & charged about $2 per visit. Jennie successfully ran & rebuilt her businesses after several fires in 1897.
In 1905, Jennie was shot & killed by C.C. Leigh, a man she had been having a relationship with.
The licence ‘for prostitution’ is likely to be a fake because no licence was required to sell sex in Jerome, Arizona in 1898. Selling sex was illegal, though the law was poorly enforced. But no licence was granted because it wasn’t legal to do so.
In 1899, Jerome had passed an ordinance that made it illegal to keep a house of prostitution or work in one. Jennie spent her career ducking & dodging these laws & the authorities maintained an uneasy relationship with her
The woman with the teacups is of unknown origin, but very likely to be a circus ‘fat lady’ dating to around 1870 (by the clothes). Although it’s origin is not known, it’s quite a famous image online.
There is no record of a ‘teacup Annie’ in any of the surviving documents about Annie Bauter’s brothel.
Framed “licences for prostitution” are popular ‘wild west’ tourist souvenirs, along with ‘brothel tokens’ - like these ones
My main source for this is BELGIAN JENNIE" BAUTERS. Mining-Town Madam by Melanie Sturgeon, which you can read here jstor.org/stable/41697076
