ANOTHER FAMOUS COLORADO MADAM - JENNIE ROGERS

by Pam North

Jennie Rogers (born in Pittsburg on July 4, 1843 as Leah J. Fries) was
a tall, lovely, elegant,dark-haired woman with a quick wit and a hot
temper.  She had been married to a doctor and then had run off with a
steamboat captain, and had run high-class houses of prostitution in
Pittsburg and St. Louis before arriving in Denver in 1879.  In 1880
she purchased a house at 2009 Market Street from Mattie Silks.  She
renovated the house completely, papering and painting it and replacing
all the furnishings, then bought an adjacent house, knocking out the
wall to connect it to the first.  Bars were placed on the windows of
her establishments so that the windows could be opened to air out the
stale smells of copious alcohol, tobacco and perfume, a novel approach
when most houses were tightly closed up.  The bars also ensured that
the women could not let their favorite men in without paying.

The acquisition of her next house supposedly was accomplished through
a hoax that was perpetrated on a wealthy Denver businessman who had
aspirations to run for governor.  The man had married a second time
after his first wife had mysteriously disappeared.  Although there had
been no indication of foul play at the time, the man's political move
stirred up the imagination of the public, bringing up questions as to
whether he had remarried to improve his social standing, and had
possibly done away with his first wife.  Jennie's boyfriend (rumored
to be the chief of police in St. Louis), buried the skull of an Indian
woman in the man's backyard, then posed as an investigator, dug up the
skull, and threatened to arrest the man for the mrder of his wife.  A
deal was made in which the man gave Jennie's boyfriend $17,000 to keep
quiet about the matter, and the money went to Jennie to finance the
purchase of what was to become Denver's finest brothel - the Hall of
Mirrors.  The large gray stone house featured five carved faces high
on the facade, the top one supposedly representing Jennie herself,
with the ones below the political hopeful, his two wives and Jennie's
boyfriend.  The opulent interior boasted bird's-eye maple tables with
pearl inlay, plush furniture, oriental rugs, paintings, a wine cellar
and two grand pianos.  There were three parlors, one of which was
lined with mirrors and adorned with crystal chandeliers and a
sixteen-foot-diameter circular mirror on the ceiling.  A walnut
staircase in the entryway led to the fifteen bedrooms above, and
painted cattails adorned the walls.  After completion of this project,
Jennie again expanded, leasing the house next door, cutting an
adjoining door between them, and furnishing the latest one in the
style of a Turkish harem. At the height of her career, Jennie employed
twenty girls at any given time, more than any other Denver madam.

Jennie's boyfriend exited the scene about this time, and Jennie met
and married John A.(Jack) Wood, a hack driver who also worked
part-time at a stables where Jennie frequently rented horses (she
often could be seen riding about town, always wearing her sparkling
emerald earrings).  She set Jack up in his own business, a saloon in
Salt Lake City.  After she caught him with another woman, she shot and
wounded him, then divorced him.  Despite their breakup, she still
continued to hlove him; when Jack died in 1896 in Omaha, Nebraska,
Jennie had his body moved to Denver for burial.

Denver's growth and movement toward respectability resulted in the
passing of an ordinance that all prostitutes were required to wear
yellow ribbons in their hair so that they could be recognized and
avoided by respectable women.  Jennie and Mattie organized a spunky
retaliatory effort; the day after the ordinance went into effect, all
of Denver's prostitutes turned out on 15th Street dressed entirely in
yellow - hair ribbons, stockings, shoes, dresses, hats and parasols.
After that display, they simply ignored the ordinance.

Jennie had a humanitarian side.  During the Panic of 1893, many
respectable women lost their office and retail jobs.  Approximately
one hundred of them came to Jennie to become prostitutes in order to
survive, but Jennie would not allow it, and urged the other madams to
follow her example.  Instead, she personally paid to put them up in
respectable boarding houses until she could send them home.

Jennie married again in 1904; her husband, Archie Fitzgerald, was a Chicago
businessman twenty years her junior.  The marriage, although a rocky
one, lasted until Jennie's death from Bright's disease (a serious
kidney ailment) in 1909.  She was buried in Denver's Fairmount
Cemetery, under the name Leah Wood, next to Jack Wood.  Her
illustrious Hall of Mirrors was sold to Mattie Silks.