They say hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn, but what happens when it’s the woman doing the scorning?
And what if hell is nothing more than El Paso, Texas?
Apparently, one hell of a catfight.
You see, in the spring of 1886, a pair of El Paso madams went to war over a young soiled dove by the name of Bessie Colvin. By the time the smoke cleared, one of them had a bullet in her hoo-ha, and the other was arrested for attempted murder.
That’s what we’ll be discussing today, a little something I like to call the Battle of the Bordellos.
Before we leap into the fray, though, it’s important to take a look at the time and place. Back in 1880, only about 700 people resided in El Paso. Over the course of the next decade, the population exploded to over 10,000, mostly on account of the railroad.
As you can imagine, a boost in population also meant a boost in crime. Matter of fact, it wasn’t long before El Paso became known as the six-shooter capital of the world, or as visiting President Benjamin Harrison once referred to it, Sin City.
Of course, back in those days, El Paso, like many other western towns, was basically two separate entities. On one side, you had all the so-called decent people. That’s where you’d find legitimate businesses, churches, schools, and stuff like that.
On the other side of town, you had something known as the Tenderloin District.
That’s where a man could find temporary love, get a good drunk on, gamble away his money, and quite possibly his life. It’s also where the broken lived, the downtrodden, the unfortunate, along with those who liked to prey on them.
And within the Tenderloin District, you had an area known as the Utah Street Reservation, where hundreds of soiled doves plied their trade. Now, by soiled doves, I do mean prostitutes.
One of those ladies was a woman named Alice Abbott. Or as the locals called her, Fat Alice.
Now, we don’t know much about Alice, other than she was probably born sometime in the early to mid-1850s, and she came to El Paso by way of Louisville, Kentucky. Dark-haired and thin-lipped, with a somewhat plump face, Alice could best be described as looking a little on the stout side, like the kind of lady who could lift heavy objects with any heavy man if need be.
But you can only tell so much from a picture, right? Fortunately, as far as Alice is concerned, we’ve got plenty of eyewitness descriptions.
They say she stood six-foot tall and weighed anywhere from 190 to 230 lb. Hence the name Big or Fat Alice.
Now personally, I do take issue with that name. First off, how the hell did they know how much she weighed? I highly doubt she walked around advertising it.
And even at the high estimate of 230 lb, that’s not exactly what I’d call huge, especially these days.
And hey, let’s be honest. They don’t call them love handles for nothing. Far as I’m concerned, the bigger the fupa, the tastier the chalupa.
Although Alice got her start as a regular working gal, by the time the mid-1880s came around, she was already operating her own joint over on Utah Street. Or as it’s called nowadays, South Mesa.
Now, prostitution was not legal at that time in El Paso. In fact, they even had laws specifically against what they referred to as wanton women. But believe it or not, there was a workaround.
As long as Alice Abbott and her colleagues paid a weekly fine of around $10, they were allowed to keep operating.
And the best part? That $10 went straight to the local police department.
So in other words, everybody was getting paid, and everybody was getting laid. Not everybody was equal, though. See, there were levels to the oldest game back in the Old West, especially in places like El Paso.
At the bottom of the rung, you had the so-called crib girls, sort of like your modern-day street walkers. They advertised their goods in the public thoroughfares and took clients back to small little cubicles known as cribs. These women could be purchased for as little as 50 att.
I should mention more about them later.
Now, for the most part, these women lived pretty miserable lives. Others on the bottom were enslaved, just to survive.
Next up, you had the saloon girls. Think of the gals who worked for Skinny in the movie Unforgiven, or better yet, the Gem Saloon on HBO’s Deadwood. They meet their clientele in the saloon proper and take them in the back or upstairs to trade some bodily harm for money.
Once again, these were women who often did not have a choice in what they were doing. They’d be lured to town under false pretenses with promises of legitimate work, only to be turned out and forced into prostitution. And if you wanted to leave, you did so at your own peril.
Of course, you also had the more upscale establishments. Walking into one of these places was like a different world. The fancier the place, the cleaner the girls, and the more money a man could expect to spend, especially at the even fancier joints.
That’s the kind of place that Alice Abbott ran over in El Paso—a proper parlor house.
Only problem, she wasn’t the only game in town.
Across the street, a rival madam ran a competing establishment—a woman by the name of Adda the Grasshopper Clark. And despite the violence we’re soon to hit, these two women hadn’t always enemies. Fact, not only had Adda once worked for Miss Alice, but we also have evidence they may have even been lovers at some point.
Whatever they had between them, it was long gone by the spring of 1886. That’s when a young dovey named Bessie Colvin decided to make her move and cross the street.
Bessie wasn’t just one of Fat Alice’s top earners; she was one of the most popular working girls in all of El Paso. And apparently she knew it. She and Alice had been going at it over money for the better part of a year.
Everything culminated on the evening of April 18th, 1886. That’s when Bessie marched through the parlor, announcing to all who’d listen that “Prime Cut will soon be found across the street.”
Prime Cut, of course, meaning her little valuables.
Now, that’s the good thing about being good at what you do. If you’re just an average employee, you’re replaceable. But if you’ve got a good skill and a good trade, you can take it anywhere.
Bessie had that skill in a way that Adda needed.
Only one problem—one does simply not walk away from Fat Alice Abbott.
At first, Alice sent two of her girls over to collect Bessie. When they found no luck, she took matters into her own hands. Marching across the street, she banged on the reception room door demanding to be let in.
Adda, for her part, wasn’t having it. She cracked the door open, told Alice to go kick rocks.
Alright, at that moment, Alice went ahead and ripped the door straight off its hinges, charging in and smashing her fist dead in Ada’s face.
Now, it just so happened that Adda was holding a gas lighter, the kind used to ignite street lamps or ceiling lights. Doesn’t sound like much, but those things were pretty damn heavy. Made of brass, and not exactly something you want slapped across your face.
That’s exactly what Adda tried. But Alice had her dander up, and there was no stopping her. When Adda swung, Alice just deflected the blow and once again caught Adda right in the mouth, sending the smaller madam reeling across the floor.
She then grabbed Bessie by the wrist and tried dragging her outside.
Miss Adda, meanwhile, ran to her quarters, retrieved a little bone-handled bulldog revolver. She cocked back, aimed, and told Alice to get the hell out.
When Alice charged at her, that’s when Adda hollered out that she’d 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 the damn bitch, and then she squeezed the trigger.
Sending a bullet straight into Alice’s money maker.
You heard me correctly. Adda shot Alice in the cooter.
“My god, I’m shot!” Alice bellowed, staggering out of the house, collapsing in the street. Adda followed, fired again, but missed.
At which point a couple of Alice’s girls came running to drag her to safety.
Did I mention Adda missed?
Now, turns out that .44 slug struck Alice in her pubic arch—a medical term that the El Paso Herald would report the following day, either accidentally or tongue in cheek, as her “public arch” for obvious reasons.
I didn’t know what a pubic arch was when I looked it up, so according to the dictionary—if anyone actually reads that—the pubic arch is the notch formed in the inferior rami of the two conjoined pubic bones as they diverge in from the mid. For all of us without a medical degree, it’s basically at the lowest point of your pelvis.
Think those plastic skeletons hanging in science class, that bone that comes down and curves in a U-shape at the front, right below the groin—that’s the pubic arch. Luckily for Alice, the bullet passed just barely to the right of it, exiting without hitting any vital blood vessels.
Still, it took a good while before she was back on her feet, and certainly back on her knees, making that cash.
As for Adda, she turned herself in and was charged with attempted first-degree murder. Apparently had a pretty good lawyer, because in less than a month, she was found not guilty on grounds of self-defense.
Now, while I do agree she was definitely fighting for her life, you also got to wonder how many of those jurors were regular customers of hers.
Just a couple of weeks after that, in 1888 on—oh yes—July the 12th, 1888, Ada’s brother was burnt to the ground. And according to some, it was Alice who played a role.
Maybe. I’m not going to lie—I only found one source on this, and it comes from an El Paso Community College publication called Borderlands. The authors, Sunshine Menez and Olga Joan Valles, writing that it was later determined that Fat Alice had hired some drunks to burn the house down on her enemy, but because of gaps in the evidence, Alice and hired henchmen were acquitted.
Now, eventually, a rich client came along and built Adda a brand new replacement parlor. Choosing to do so had quite a side effect: his wife divorced him over it. In the end, he and Adda would go on to live as husband and wife, without ever officially marrying.
Well, you know how it is.
There would be yet another fire, in 1905, and this time Adda barely survived. In fact she passed away just a few years later in 1908 due to complications from all the smoke.
But what about Alice? Well, she continued to run her business in El Paso until February of 1890. That’s when she leased her place to another madam, named Tilly Howard.
And finally, on April 7th, 1896, Alice Abbott died of a heart attack.
As for Bessie Colvin, the Helen of El Paso, nobody knows what in the hell happened to her. I have no idea if she ever went straight, if she got married, when or day she died, nothing. All I can confirm is that, despite all the 𝒹𝓇𝒶𝓂𝒶—the gunfight, the shooting, the stabbing—she still went back to work for Fat Alice.
That must have been one hell of a town.
The fact is, most of the pictures we have of these ladies come from Alice Abbott’s own personal photo album. Inside, among the photos, are some interesting notes—nicknames for the girls. There was one she described as the “Whore of the Road,” another titled “Missouri Whacker,” and a few she called “Lover Boy Mabel Jones.”
She also drew hearts around some, and symbols that point to those who doubled around as lovers. Even Adda had a heart drawn around her.
Interestingly, Alice also marked it out with a big red X, and left a note claiming that her rival was a whore to in the end.
Fun fact: the same type of revolver that Adda used to shoot Alice was also the same kind of pistol used in the assassination of President James Garfield. The only difference? The one that killed Garfield chambered in .
442 caliber, while Ada’s was slightly smaller.
Now, before we close things out, I know I made a lot of jokes today regarding prostitution, and I know it’s often glamorized in the movies. But in our reality, like I said earlier, most of these women were living miserable lives.
Just lives of pure desperation. Whether it was drugs, human trafficking, extreme poverty, 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, coming from broken homes or just a combination of most of all above. Very few of them were in that line of work because they wanted to be, and a whole large majority of them died before their time.
Every single one of these ladies was somebody’s daughter or little sister. To this day, even here in the United States, we don’t know exactly how many women are in that same situation. All we really know is that as recently as 2023, the National Trafficking Hotline reports involved 17,000 potential victims.
Those are just the ones that picked up a phone.
That’s the part that gets me, man.
These women were virtually invisible in 1886, which sort of ties to poor Bessie Colvin, right? No birth record, no death record, no grave. The only reason we know she existed is because she was fought over as a piece of property.
Sadly, these same women nowadays are just as invisible. I don’t know how to fix it, but if you’re like me and you have a daughter, I might just let them know you love them. Let them know that you’re here for them even if they mess up.
Or as the great Billy Joe Shaver once sang: don’t let the darkness take them. Don’t make them feel forsaken. Just lead them safely to the light.
And I guess that’s about all I’ve got on Fat Alice and the Battle of the Bordellos. Thank you so much for listening along.
And for all you long-time listeners, no, you don’t have a memory issue. I did cover this story years ago, and I thought it’d be nice to give it a little glow-up. I’m not lying when I say I’ll be doing this with some of my older episodes.
I’ve got the death of Johnny Ringo coming up, and there’s some details I forgot that are pretty important.
There are a few others I want to revisit, but don’t worry, we won’t do it all at once, okay?
Next time you hear from me, it’ll be something brand new. This was just a way to rehash an old story, and make sure it’s better told, plan and simple.
Until next time, try not to shoot anybody in the vagina, alright?
Just be good to one another.
Adios.
