THE WESTERN BELLE WHO NEVER WAS
On Sept. 18, 1881, readers of San Francisco’s Daily Examiner stirred their coffee while reading an unusual front-page story. The headlines were catchy:
A REMARKABLE WOMAN
MADAME VESTAL AND HER CAREER ON THE FRONTIERS.
TWENTY YEARS OF ROMANCE AND ADVENTURE–PITIABLE CONDITION OF A ONCE NOTED WESTERN BELLE.
In frequently florid detail the unnamed author told the colorful story of the beautiful Belle Siddons, debutante of a distinguished family in Civil War St. Louis who became a defiant Confederate spy and was ultimately caught and imprisoned. On her release she married a U.S. Army surgeon from Kansas City, Mo., and moved to Texas. Soon widowed, she joined the gold rush to Deadwood, Dakota Territory, where she opened a gambling hall under the assumed name Madame Vestal. Her fortunes took a downturn, the paper wrote, when she became the paramour and confederate of lowlife stage robber and road agent Archie McLaughlin (alias Cummings). It was his demise at the end of a rope that sent Belle spiraling into drug addiction and a pitiable appearance in San Francisco’s drunk tank.
“Her career has been eventful and exciting,” the Examiner wrote. “She has passed through the several phases of life—belle of society, affianced bride, spy, hospital nurse, gambler’s wife, gambler, confederate of robbers, saloonkeeper—and now, after wandering all over the frontiers, she finds herself behind the bars of the female cell in the City Jail of San Francisco.”
That newspapers nationwide reprinted the lurid story is not surprising. The 1792 Postal Service Act permitted publishers to exchange copies of their newspapers through the mails for free, and material culled from these exchanges supplied much of the copy for harried, short-staffed editors without much local news.
Thus a new Western legend was born. The story became the basis for scores of subsequent profiles of Belle Siddons in magazines, books, broadcasts and online posts. Today she remains a minor celebrity, having made appearances in 1950s radio serials and TV Westerns. Jeanne Bates played Siddons on four, and Kathleen Crowley portrayed her in “Destinies West,” a 1962 episode of the Western TV series . At least in theory she’s better looking than notorious outlaw Belle Starr (Myra Belle Shirley)—though not nearly as famous.
