A newspaper reporter, from the Butte Miner, who witnessed the bloody scene of Mollie Forrest's death, wrote:
"The poor fallen woman made the last sacrifice it was in her power to make-the sacrifice of her life through her love for the man whom she had cheerfully supported from the gains of her arduous calling."
Those are nice pretty words that the man penned but it's also pretty certain that he hadn't a clew about what he wrote. I'm willing to guess that there wasn't a though of "sacrifice" in Mollie's blown-out brain as her short life oozed away from her in that little back room where a bad substitute for love was sold for a little glittering gold. And I've a notion that if she'd had the "power" and a choice in the situation it would have been her dear darling husband whose life would have been leaking onto the dusty floorboards.
I can't but help wondering if, when Mollie married Scott, she was counting on not having to go into prostitution or return to it, as the case may have been, in order to put clothes on her back, food in her mouth and a roof over her head. But that was not how Mollie's life turned out. Unfortunately, it was the same situation for many women who chose, or were forced, to seek their fate in America's Wild West. There just were not many jobs a woman could obtain in those rough-and-wooly times and places. It was hard enough for a woman, single or married, in the eastern states to support her self. A lone woman out west had even fewer choices. She could teach school--if there was one. She could clerk in a store--unless some man was hired instead. An unmarried woman, and obviously at times married women as well, were forced to take in laundry and mending, do sewing, sell baked goods--or turn to prostitution.
Recommended Reading:
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: in The Outlaw That Got Away-Or Did He?.
Jack McCall: in "Good-bye Bill: The Murder of Butler 'Wild Bill' Hickok.
Sources:
Butler, Anne M. Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865-90. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1987.
Christopherson, Edmund. This Here is Montana. Montana Book, Missoula, Montana, 1961.
