Josephine Airey
American prostitute
Josephine "Chicago Joe" Airey (c. 1844 – October 25, 1899), was an Irish-born American prostitute, madam, and proprietor of brothels, dance halls, a variety theatre, and saloons in Helena, Montana. She eventually became the most influential landowner in Helena. She was known as "Chicago Joe" Hensley following her marriage to James T. Hensley.
Origins
Josephine was born Mary Welch in Ireland in about 1844. When she emigrated to New York City in 1858, she changed her name to Josephine Airey. She held a menial job, but this soon bored her, so she moved to Chicago where she took up prostitution. In 1867, she quit Chicago and moved out west to the newly established gold mining town of Helena, Montana. There she opened a "hurdy-gurdy house", a dance hall in which customers paid attractive, seductively dressed women for a dance, which quickly became a success due to its appeal to the local miners since women were very scarce. She left behind two sisters in Chicago who she supported throughout her career.
“Josephine Airey” enters the record as american prostitute. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Josephine, Airey and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Josephine Airey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.