Sweetwater Madam

Libby  Thompson

Elizabeth “Libby” Thompson was born Elizabeth Haley in 1855 in Belton, Texas.  Like many Texas families, her family’s fortunes collapsed during the Civil War and faced near poverty.  To make matters worse, Libby was abducted by the Comanches in 1864.  She was only nine years old.  After three years of captivity, her father paid a hefty ransom for her release.  Although she appeared physically and mentally healthy, most Belton residents assumed she had been raped while in captivity.  By the morals of the day, Libby was now a “soiled dove;” a young woman who lost her virginity out of wedlock.  She had little to no chance of finding a husband.  The only man who tried to court her was shot by her father.  He thought he was too old for her.  Ostracized by the locals and having a father who might shoot what few suitors she had, Libby was left with few options.   At fifteen, she ran away from home.  In frontier Texas, the only career options for a single woman were school teacher, boarding house matron, theater actress/singer and prostitute.  Libby chose the latter, and where better to get a start than the Kansas cattle town of Abilene.  

Libby later moved to Ellsworth, Kansas where she met the love of her life, Billy Thompson, the brother of notorious Texas gunslinger, Ben Thompson.  When he wasn’t drunk, Thompson drove cattle along the Chisholm Trail or dealt cards as a professional gambler.  When he was drunk, Billy had an itchy trigger finger like his brother.

A Confederate veteran, Billy had little respect for the U.S. Army during Reconstruction.  After a drunken altercation on March 31,1868, Thompson shot and killed William Burke, a U.S. soldier and clerk with the U.S. Adjutant General’s Office in Austin.  In Rockport, he shot an unarmed stable hand named Remus Smith.  Remus had slapped his horse when it nosed into the wrong feeding trough.  After both shootings, he hid out to avoid arrest before making his way to Ellsworth.  Joined by his brother Ben, they both became in-house gamblers at Brennan’s Saloon in Ellsworth.

By 1873, Billy and Libby were a couple.  Libby gave birth to their first child while both were on a cattle drive.  To give legitimacy to their child’s birth, they both goth married the same year.  It was also the year Billy faced his most serious charge - murdering a town sheriff.  A fight with a Brennan’s customer, over a high stakes game of Monte, led to the intervention of Sheriff Chauncey Whitney.  The sheriff was a good friend of the Thompson brothers.  Guns were drawn and tempers flared.  A drunken Billy accidentally discharged his shotgun into Sheriff Whitney.  “My god Billy,” his brother Ben stated, “you have shot your best friend.” The sheriff died and Billy fled Kansas after a $500.00 reward was issued for his arrest.  The three killings kept him on the dodge, leading to eventual arrests and acquittals in both Kansas and Texas.  Libby and Billy settled in Sweetwater, Texas where they purchased a ranch.  Libby became the madam of a Sweetwater brothel that fronted as a dance hall.  While there, Libby became known as “Squirrel Tooth Alice;” a nickname she acquired because of a rodent-like gap between her two front teeth and a talent for making pets out of prairie dogs.  Like a pack of poodles, she placed them in collars and walked them on a lease. As a madam, she had little tolerance for bad manners.  Any cowboy who got out of line could be looking down the barrel of her pistol.

Though Billy was away for long stretches of time, she managed to raise nine children.  Being a prostitute, it’s highly questionable if Billy was the father of all nine of them.  Most of them would follow her into a life of crime and prostitution. Worn from the years of sharing a bed with sex- starved cowboys, Libby retired at sixth six.  She lived with her many children before dying at a Los Angeles nursing home on April 13, 1953.  She was ninety eight years old.