August 01
Anniversary of the Closing of the Texas
Chicken Ranch
Boston Operatic Society
2000 Production of
Best Little
Whorehouse In Texas (Boston.
Lincolnshire, England).
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The "Chicken Ranch" in La Grange, Fayette
County, made famous by the 1978 Broadway musical The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas, was perhaps the oldest continuously running brothel
in the nation. The original whorehouse that later became known as the
Chicken Ranch opened in La Grange, Texas in 1844. Run by a widow known as
"Mrs. Swine," the brothel operated out of a hotel near the saloon and
featured three young women from New Orleans, Louisiana. The ladies used the
hotel lobby for entertaining and rented a room upstairs for conducting their
business. The brothel was successful for over a decade, but was forced to
close during the Civil War when Swine and one of her prostitutes were forced
to leave town as Yankees and traitors. In 1908, Jessie Williams, known as "Miss Jessie," purchased eleven acres just outside the city limits of La Grange, and only two blocks from the Houston-Galveston highway. This would be the new location of the Chicken Ranch. The brothel looked like a typical Texas farmhouse, with whitewashed siding and a few side buildings," which held the chickens. The entrance was located in the back of the house, and led to a house with fourteen rooms. Miss Jessie stayed on good terms with the sheriff, Will Loessin, who visited every evening to pick up gossip and get information on criminals who had visited the whorehouse and bragged of their exploits. Many crimes in La Grange were solved in this way. While the sheriff kept a tight grip on criminals, Miss Jessie ruled the house with a firm hand. Miss Jessie would walk the halls, and if she heard a customer giving one of her girls a hard time she would chase him out of the room and house with an iron rod and perhaps never admit him again. During the Great Depression, Miss Jessie was forced to lower the prices she charged. As the Depression lingered, the number of customers dwindled, and Williams had difficulty making ends meet for her employees. She implemented the "poultry standard," charging one chicken for each sexual act. The number of chickens at the brothel exploded. Williams supplemented her income by selling surplus chickens and eggs. The women who worked there lived almost exclusively on fried chicken and scrambled eggs until the end of the Depression Williams began suffering from acute arthritis
in the 1950s, and in 1952 turned over the running of the ranch to a young
prostitute named Edna Milton. After Williams died in 1961, Milton purchased
the property, which she officially renamed "Edna's Fashionable Ranch
Boarding House. In November 1972, the
Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) surveilled the Chicken Ranch for two
days, documenting 484 people entering the Chicken Ranch. At the request of a
member of the Texas DPS intelligence team, local law enforcement closed the
Chicken Ranch down permanently On August 1, 1973. |
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Miss Jessie's Texas Fried Chicken |
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Ingredients |
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1/2 cup hot sauce 3-3&1/2 pounds of chicken pieces 1/2 cup milk 2 extra large eggs 1 cup all-purpose flour |
2 tsp salt 1 TB ground black pepper 2 cups bread crumbs Canola oil (Miss Jesse used lard) |
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Instructions |
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Serves 4 |
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