Management
Swearengen recruited his prostitutes in the same manner as it is still carried out in many places today; advertising legitimate stage, cleaning, or waitressing jobs in his theater to desperate young women and advancing them the money for their (one way) trip; then, when they arrived, forcing them into what was essentially indentured servitude as prostitutes. Those who balked were first threatened with demands for repayment of the funds advanced to them for the trip; if that failed, they were threatened with beatings, and if that failed they were beaten and physically forced to submit to Swearengen's demands. Many still resisted, but those who escaped this fate could only find themselves in no better situation, as penniless women with no source of income, alone in a rough and rowdy mining camp, and with the constant threat of Swearengen's men hanging over them. Many grew sick and died from lack of proper nutrition and shelter, while many others committed suicide.
In any event, the Gem prospered, bringing in an average of $5,000 a night, even reaching as high as $10,000. Swearengen forged alliances with many of Deadwood's most prominent citizens, buying himself immunity from legal or other problems. His immunity even extended to the notoriously upright and incorruptible Marshall Seth Bullock, who did not have the political clout to extend his campaign to clean up the town as far as the lower regions of Main Street, which remained Swearengen's territory.
The front of the Gem consisted of a bar, and the "theater" area; in the back were the rooms for the prostitutes. Day to day operations were managed by a staff including Dan Doherty and Johnny Burns (both portrayed in Deadwood, although the real-life individuals were reputed to be much more brutal to the prostitutes than seen in the series, as was Swearengen himself). Customers also frequently brutalized the women, even to the point of killing them.
The violence in the Gem was not confined to the prostitutes, with the saloon being a frequent site of gunfights between drunken patrons; and in one memorable instance, the memoirs of John S. McClintock reported a prostitute named "Trixie" having shot a large hole through the skull of a man who astounded everyone by surviving for another half an hour. (This incident is portrayed in the first episode of the series, truth being at least as strange as fiction).
Read more about this topic: Gem Theater
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