Al Swearengen arrived in Deadwood in the summer of 1876. He camped out on a spot along Main Street and there is where he soon built his Gem Theater. The Pioneer touted the opening of the theater “as neat and tastefully arranged as any place of its kind in the west.” But it did not stay that way for very long. It was quickly recognized as a den of prostitution under the guise of being a dance hall. This notorious den of iniquity drew its support from many so-called leading citizens and so it prospered financially and the authorities left it alone. The Gem was referred to as the "ever-lasting shame of Deadwood," a "vicious institution," a "defiler of youth and a destroyer of home ties."
The first girls to be persuaded to come west to work at the Gem were a “motley crew of ungainly features and uncertain ages.” The women of the Gem were known to sport constant injuries and Swearengen’s own wife wore a black eye on a regular basis. Swearengen’s "box herder," Johnny Burns, kept the girls in line.
Swearengen found it easier and cheaper to persuade girls back east to make the trip to Deadwood by convincing them that they would become stage performers at his Gem Theater. He choose those who had no means to purchase a ticket on their own so that once the trip was made the girls were forced to work off not only their fare to Deadwood but the fare home as well, which left many of them in a position of virtually slavery, the salvation for which always seemed just out of reach. One such innocent girl, Inez Sexton, was outraged upon learning of her fate and declared that “although her voice was for sale, nothing else was!” A benefit was arranged by the respectable ladies of the town and Inez was able to return home on the stage. But many more met their fate by taking their own lives with a pistol shot to the head or quick poison rather than face the sinister meaning of the curtained boxes.
One of the most notable stage performances in Deadwood was the killing of Ed Shaughnessy. Shaughnessy had lived with a woman by the name of Fannie Garrettson who had come to Deadwood from Cheyenne. Fannie was living with Handsome Banjo Dick Brown who happened to be playing on stage when Shaughnessy entered the theater. Ed picked up an axe and threw it at Brown who pulled a revolver and shot Shaughnessy five or six times until he was dead. Brown was acquitted on the grounds of self defense. Fannie claimed she had never married Shaughnessy so there was nothing immoral in the fact that she was now living with Brown.
Gunshots flew around the Gem with more frequency than drunken shouts. Many are the stories of love lost, love requited, or love spoken aloud that resulted in the blast of a pistol. Lou Desmond shot a girl who had stolen her lover from her but the bullet hit the heavy steel of her corset and saved her life. Flora Fleming shot at a discarded lover after he had broken her door down but the shot went wild and she only fined one-dollar. One girl while singing on stage inserted the name of her admirer in her song. He happened to be sitting in a box and was so outraged that he began to throw chairs out of the box toward the stage below. The girl was unhurt but the incident cleared the orchestra pit and seats below the gentleman’s box.
In the summer of 1880 the Gem presented an entirely different spectacle when Red Cloud, an Oglala Chieftain brought his band from Pine Ridge to perform native Lakota dances. The advertisement proclaimed war dances, squaw dances and scalp dances. Since the Indian wars were fought in the not-too-distant past many found the spectacle entrancing without the threat of actual scalping.
The nightly take at the Gem averaged $5,000 and probably reached as high as $10,000, yet Swearengen died broke, killed by a train while trying to hitch a ride in Denver as a common tramp.
