Pictured here is Jennie Bauter’s brothel at Jerome, Arizona in 1898. Jennie is the woman in the black dress in the center of the balcony. This was her second building on this site which burned in 1898. The first burned down in 1897 and the third building still stands today. When Jennie Bauters was murdered in 1905, she was reputed to be the wealthiest woman in the Arizona Territory.
Born in Belgium, Jennie immigrated to the United States in July 1896 with her 14-year-old son, John Phillippe. She enrolled him in a Catholic boarding school in Chicago before moving west to the booming mining town of Jerome, Arizona.
In Jerome, she established “Jennie’s Place” which became the town’s grandest and most famous brothel. While others operated in tents or shacks, her establishment was a central part of the town’s “economic trinity” alongside mines and saloons.
Jennie’s business survived several devastating fires that plagued Jerome between 1897 and 1899. Each time her wooden structures burned down, she rebuilt, eventually constructing a fireproof brick building after the city incorporated in 1899; this third building still stands today.
She was known as a shrewd entrepreneur who provided medical care for her employees and was reportedly generous toward “down-and-out” miners.
Her life ended violently in 1905 when she was murdered by an opium-addicted boyfriend, Clement C. Leigh, in the mining camp of Goldroad. Clement was later convicted and executed for the crime in 1907. Today, her former brothel in Jerome is a popular historic site and museum, and legends of her ghost reportedly haunting various Arizona towns persist.
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