Belle Brezing

[Linked Image from recollections.biz]


Belle Brezing was dealt a bad hand in life and did her best to survive when faced with a dire situation and virtually no prospects or opportunities. It is a complicated and fascinating story, and I will just cover a few main points here. 

Belle born in 1860 in Lexington, Kentucky, to Sarah Ann Cox, a mother down on her luck. Sarah soon married a man by the name of George Brezing, who appears to have been an abusive alcoholic who eventually ran out on the family. To make ends meet Sarah worked part-time as a dressmaker and part-time as a prostitute. 

As a teen, Belle was involved in a complicated love triangle that left one man dead, one man on the run, Belle pregnant, and all dissatisfied. After Belle delivered the baby, she continued to live with her mother, despite having married the father. However, Sarah passed away just months later and the landlord immediately took over the home. This is when Belle decided to enter the sex industry. She soared to the top of the local market, even working in a brothel housed in one of Mary Todd Lincoln’s former houses. Soon, she would be known as one of the most famous Madams of the Wild West.

When Belle decided to venture out on her own she has built a loyal clientele who provided business as well and investments into her various brothels. She owned several different houses of ill refute over the years, becoming known as having “the most orderly of the disorderly houses.”

Belle was said to let her employees keep most of their earnings and that she made her money with the liquor she sold at her establishments, particularly the best champagne she could get her hands on. She continued to operate in Kentucky until Prohibition forced her to close down. She remained living in the house of her last brothel, sadly becoming addicted to morphine and inflicted with uterine cancer (the two ailments likely related to one another). 

In her good days, Belle was known as the classic lady of the night with a heart of gold, contributing to local charities. This reputation was so strong that it is believed she inspired the character of Belle Watling in Gone With the Wind, though Margaret Mitchell denied it.