In Their Graves
The grisly deaths met by the two independently wealthy brothel-owning wives of a Laramie saloon owner reveal a seedy cautionary tale of greed that trailed prostitutes and madams not only while they were still living, but also after their deaths.
Source for the image above: Grover, Montie E., Mrs. Scrapbook (1881): Toppen Library, Special Collections, Uncat. Laramie, Wyoming.
Embedded in my digital narrative history of prostitution is this question: when infrastructure supports male pleasure and child rearing while punishing female survival, what are the consequences? Through my brief narrative history of Monte and Christy Grover’s lives here, I intend to make inroads toward addressing this question, beginning with Anne Butler’s incisive commentary on the lives and deaths of prostitutes—part of a much longer text that is truly a seminal exploration of nineteenth-century prostitution along the frontier:
“Caught in the economic fever of the frontier, prostitutes fought for a chance to snare a few of the profits. This competitive setting inhibited the development of sound friendships with other workers. Pitted against one another in life, only in death did these women seem to catch a glimmer of their universal plight. These real occasions did not exert enough influence to inspire women to break the mold that enclosed them; rather, afterward, they reverted to their original feelings of hatred for each other, and continued exchanges of frenzied insults and cruelty.”
— Anne Butler, Daughters of Joy, Sisters of Misery: Prostitutes in the American West, 1865-90 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987), the quotation is from 45-46.
SUICIDE
Last Sunday evening about 8 o’clock Mrs. John A. Grover, alias Mrs. D. Bailey, alias Puss Newport, alias “the Blonde”, a noted Cyprian of the city, committed suicide by shooting herself through the head. She has demonstrated that “with the ??? of an angel a woman (as well as a man) may be a fool.” And oh! what a fool.
There is little to which such wrecks upon the shore of time can be put, except to serve as beacon lights to warn other voyagers of the rocks and shoals. We have no knowledge of the past life and history of this woman, but it is not probable she had kind, loving, judicious, christian parents and was brought up under good and wise training. It is not out prerogative (sic) to judge her. She had lived a life of vice and crime, leaving the trail of the serpent wherever she went, sowing the seeds of death and dragging others down with her, and such a death is a fitting end to such a life.
But her horrible life and shocking death must make mothers press their little daughters close to their breasts, and strive harder to hedge them round with good influence and wise counsel and shield them more effectually by their prayer against the dangers and temptations that lie in their path.
Laramie Sentinel, Writer Unknown, 02/18/1883
Christy Grover’s obituary.
The Ascent and Untimely Death of Christy Grover (Finlayson)
Photo by Sylvie Hansen, Laramie, Wyoming, 2024.
Born in Scotland in 1850, according to the inquest of Laramie’s Greenhill Cemetery where she is buried, Christy Grover died on February 19, 1883, between the ages of 31-32.
Formerly a prostitute in Cheyenne, Wyoming’s storied House of Mirrors, the head-turning Christy Finlayson was also unfortunate enough to stumble upon John Grover. Christy was known also known as Mrs. John A. Grover, Mrs. D. Bailey, Puss Newport, and The Blonde.
According to that inquest, “when her personal property was put into probate with her husbabnd (a licensed gaming operator) as executor, it was appraised at c. 6,200.00 (2015 value: c. $150,000).” As scholars including Carol Bower have noted, the possibility that she was murdered by John will always be up for speculation.
According to the Albany County Historical Society’s website,
John Grover was the kingpin of the demimonde circuit in Laramie. He came to town from Maine as a grocer with a wife and child but soon they dropped out of sight. His sporting house, called the “Grover Institute,” was founded in the 1870s, though the property on the south side of Grand Ave, between 2nd and 3rd Streets was owned by Christy Finlayson. John Grover married Christy Finlayson in 1882. But the new Mrs. Grover had a short wedded life. Six months after the wedding she died of a gunshot wound to the temple, ruled as suicide by the coroner. (Albany County Historical Society 2018)
Shortly thereafter, John Grover moved on to marry Monte Grover, a “young protege of Christy’s.” It was reported that John Grover heard a gunshot and found her with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. However, we know due to his disreputable character that there is a great degree of reasonable doubt as to the proper facts.
With the support of her property that “included two buildings and $3,617.53 in cash and personal property,” with “diamonds, fancy piano and elegant furs” that “indicated the level of her success” (ACHS 2018), John Grover and the new Mrs. Grover continued along their path of sin.
It is clear from her scrapbook in the Toppen Rare Books library in Laramie, Wyoming, however, that Monte Grover had other plans. What she got instead was a life without fulfillment.
Specifically, Monte Grover died, reportedly, from starvation because she believed despite reassurance from everyone around her that her husband was trying to poison her. This followed a serious attempt to drown herself in the Laramie River, as reported by the Boomerang in 1885. Following his marriage to a fourth wife, Minnie Grover, and a bizarre attempt to cut her out of his life and will, first by changing the locks when she returned to him in Los Angeles, he committed suicide. John Grover also saw to it that his third wife was buried in Greenhill Cemetery next to Christy Grover, in a grave left unmarked to this very day.
In Monte Grover’s scrapbook, you can trace the devolution of a mind at first obsessed by the notion of everlasting matrimony and children. You can also find evidence of the vanishingly thin boundaries between business relationships and pleasure for sex workers, as evidenced by the juxtaposition of a wedding invitation and a business advertisement, both from the same Sachs family. The first half of Monte’s scrapbook is characterized by her evident desire to live in a world of romance and flourishing.
By the scrapbook’s end, however, particularly following her wedding notice clipped from the local paper, Grover (Arlington) begins a marked descent into an intensifying obsession with death: a clipping with a story depicting the grisly death of a child’s beloved dog is followed by obituaries and various other death-related ephemera.