A Southern Madam and Her Man is the story of two
people who, despite their conventional upbringings,
thrived in the raucous decade known as the Gay Nineties, or
America's decadent version of the Gilded Age. The daughter
of a wagonmaker, Susie Tillett was raised amid the horse and
hemp farms of the Kentucky Bluegrass; Arthur Jack was the
oldest son and heir of a successful Atlanta merchant. By the
time they met in 1892, when they both were in their early
thirties, Susie had become the successful madam of popular
"parlor houses" (up-scale brothels) in Lexington, Kentucky,
and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Arthur had left a wife and a
child in Atlanta to become a saloonist, gambler, horse-trader,
and publicly acclaimed "dashing Don Juan" about town.
Uncovered during a decade of unflinching research and
told here for the first time by their great-grandson, the author
and historian David Dearinger, this is a tale of conventional
people making unusual and even socially suspect choices
simply, in the end, to do the best they could.
- ISBN13 9798987587843
- Publish Date 14 December 2023
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher State University of New York Press
- Imprint Modern Memoirs Publishing
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 354
- Language English