Skip to main content

Nancy Boggs Debunked




I suppose every town has local legends that are fabrications that turn into "hard fact" with the multiplicity of their retelling. Portland has many of these, which is a shame because they detract from a fascinating history that is far more interesting than worn out fictions. In this post I will mention only one. There are many more, but I have to start somewhere.

Here is the tale of Nancy Boggs as it was related to Stuart Holbrook by "Spider" Johnson, the loquacious bouncer and bar keep from Erickson's Working Man's Saloon that once stood on 3rd and Burnside. If you enjoy fiction you can read it a number of other places with varying details, this is the bare bones version:

Nancy was a madame who kept a "whiskey scow" that was a bawdy house as well. It was a two-storied affair that she painted "Nile green and bright red." She would keep it on the west side until the police started harassing women of her sort, then she would move the scow across the river to East Portland until thing settled down.


Since all good tales needs and ending, this one ends with an enterprising police officer cutting the ropes on the gilded palace of sin, causing it to float down to Linnton--where Mrs. Boggs lived happily ever after.

This ludicrous tale has be repeated more times than there are stains on a whiskey scow's bar room floor. It has even been repeated in several history books, including Jewel Lansing's history of Portland. So why do I think it is ludicrous? Here are my reasons:

1. The scows of Portland were lowly houseboats that gathered around the east side bridges and hard to access locations on the west. The scows were places for homeless squatters, not fancy women like Mrs. Boggs.The west shore in the 1880s was unbroken working wharfs all the way up to the O. R. & N. boneyard north of the city. There would be no place for such a scow on the west side.
Scowtown north of the boneyard 1901


2. I say "Mrs." Boggs because that is what she put on the advertisements for her stamping business in Portland in 1869 when she lived on First street between Main and Madison.(Oregonian 3-22-69) I presume she was a new widow at this time, but that is a presumption. In 1873 she had a daughter old enough that she was able to be seduced. Mrs. Boggs brought charges against her seducer. (Oregonian 5-8-73)

3.  From 1874 through 1878 Mrs.Boggs ran a dressmaking business from two separate locations. Then in 1879 she opened a "saloon" (meaning brothel) at 46 Pine street that she would keep going until 1886. (City Directory) In 1888 she married a fisherman who owned an island on the Columbia river.(Oregonian 6-28-03) During her years of running her brothel she had minor run ins with the law. Once she was nearly killed by a customer. (Oregonian 12-22-77)

4. The most compelling argument against this tale is that, as anyone familiar with Portland history knows, Portland was "wide open" during that period. This means that there was no need to hide out in scowtown. The only inconvenience was the payoff to the "special" police the city sent around.

This info is from the Oregonian and the Portland City Directory. There are no whispers of "whiskey scows," Nile green and red, or otherwise in Portland in anything earlier than the stories of Holbrook in the 1930s. Nancy Boggs was no angel, but she was probably trying to survive on her own after the death of a husband. I am sure she would be amused by the postmortem attention. It's an old writer's trick to throw in a vivid detail, like "painted Nile green and red," to detract from a lack of substance.

Oh, and if you might think there were two ladies named Nancy Boggs in Portland, the City Directory named everyone down to the char ladies and ditch diggers--there was just one lady by that name.

It is too easy to repeat the things that have become "history" by repetition. But notice the history that is being overlooked, the extreme corruption at every level of city government, the unabashed mistreatment of minorities. and the hypocrisy of the "upper classes." Below is a clipping from an 1884 Daily Astorian detailing the names of the Portland Police "special officers" and the amount of money they collected from each whore house, gambling den, or other business. The article is a reprint from the Sunday Welcome, a Portland weekly.



The was an old madame named Boggs,
Who emitted sweet perfume in fogs.
She would kiss any fellow
In her floating bordello,
Still sober enough to walk logs.

(Just made this up. If anyone can think of a better ending line, let me know)

Dear avid reader of history blogs. Keep your eyes peeled and notice if the Fat Billets thing doesn't start showing up in other blogs after this.

Posted May 29, 2012


Comments

  1. Ooops.. spotted the year. Thanks again for an interesting read.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Last Word on Shanghai Tunnels - Including 14 reasons why the stories are bogus

I have never been on a tour of Portland's so-called "shanghai tunnels," so I am unable to comment on this attraction, except that I have heard that the tour is quite entertaining. Neither have I been to the Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland,  the Magic Carpets of Aladdin, or the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, for that matter. The closest I have come to this sort of tourist entertainment was while visiting the ancient city of York I took my family on the "York Ghost Walk." This tour is a bit of innocent fun with some old ghost stories mixed in with distorted history—just for the tourists.  It may be true that I have no experience with the tourist tours of these basements in the northwest regions of downtown, but I do know a bit about them. There is a great deal of documentation in the newspapers, and in old court records. They were built by Chinese back in the days when Chinatown was the center of gang activity related to the different tongs

The Chinese Ghost in the Grain Elevator

A photo I took of T5 from a water taxi while doing stowage area exams on ships anchored in the Columbia In my book, "Portland's Lost Waterfront," I have a section devoted to the O. R. & N., Pacific Coast Grain Elevator System, often called the "great grain pipe." This was a system of grain elevators following the rail lines up the Columbia River basin, with tendrils reaching out as far as Idaho . Today this system is duplicated in many ways by the Japanese owned, Columbia Grain International, a company with elevators reaching as far as North Dakota . Since the 1970s this company has operated the gargantuan Terminal 5 grain elevator near the mouth of the Willamette. This one grain elevator is responsible for a large percentage of Oregon's total exports, and a surprisingly large percentage of the entire nation's wheat exports.   This industrial giant pulls grain from hundreds of railcars each day—up its whirring and rattling &qu

Asthmatic Weakling Writes Book on Prizefighting in Portland

It is true, an asthmatic weakling, who used to regularly give up his lunch money as tribute to bullies, has written a book on prizefighting. Not only this, History Press has just published it! Oregon Prizefighters: Forgotten Bare-knuckles Champions of Portland and Astoria , will hit the shelves on Monday. What was it that made someone like me, born without the “sports gene,” to become interested in the bare-knuckles prizefighting of yesteryear? It was the people: brash, naïve youths, wracked by passions, ruined by limelight. Then there is the model Portlander, Dave Campbell, for many years “Our Dave,” beloved chief of the Portland fire department. He was self-educated, intelligent, measured, and fearless, and gave up a sure championship career as a boxer to fight Portland’s fires. Add to the mix the original all-time champion, Jack “Nonpareil” Dempsey (died 1895), and “Mysterious” Billy Smith—both legends in the world of boxing history—and you soon begin to wonder why these fellow