Sallie Shearer
American brothel-owner
Sarah D. Shearer (née Fisher; c. 1848 – 1 October 1909) was an American brothel-keeper in Reading, Pennsylvania. She married the artist Christopher Shearer who abandoned her and their sons to study in Europe, and whom she subsequently divorced. In 1880 she was working as a dressmaker but by 1883 she was working in the sex business and eventually opened a high-class "parlor house" (brothel) of her own.
Despite frequent brushes with the law and serving at least one jail sentence, she was financially successful and able to buy property and keep a fancy carriage. In the 1890s, the women of her house were the subjects of a secret collection of photographs made by local photographer William Goldman that was published in book form in 2018. She died of diabetes and was buried in a lavish casket at the Lutheran cemetery in Reading.
Early life and family
Sarah Fisher was born in 1848, in Muhlenberg Township in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
She married the landscape painter Christopher Shearer (1846–1926) who abandoned her and their sons Victor and Bernard to study in Europe and whom she subsequently divorced.
Career
In 1880, Shearer was listed as a dressmaker in a Reading city directory.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sallie Shearer” 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.