Michael Rutter (2) (1953–)

Interesting stories of the women who 'ran' with the Wild Bunch - Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid, Kid Curry, and others. The writing is a bit boring at times but the stories are interesting.

Upstairs Girls begins with a history of prostitution in the West. The different classes of prostitution are explained; although prostitutes were looked down upon, there were different classes of them. The book ends with short biographies of 14 prostitutes -- these stories include both the madams who owned or managed the houses of prostitution, and the common prostitutes. The book includes a helpful glossary of terms in addition to a bibliography and index. This book is a popular rather than show more a scholarly history; although there are quotations, the book lacks footnotes/end-notes, and the works some of the quotations are attributed to do not appear in the bibliography. show less

This book addresses the interesting topic of what prostitution was really like in the American West. The author talks about the different kinds of prostitutes and how/why women became "upstairs girls." There are also several vignettes in the back of the book about famous prostitutes and madams.

The author could have really used a better editor, however; there were numerous punctuation mistakes.

Despite the rather sensational subtitle this, is a fairly sober account of women sex workers in the west, many of then forced into prostitution by their socio-economic circumstances.