Squirrel Tooth Alice

Believe it or not, this infamous legend of the old west was still alive when I was an infant. Mary Elizabeth “Libby” Haley Thompson was born in 1855 and passed away at age 98 in 1953. Her professional name was “Alice” and kept prairie dogs as pets. A drunken cowboy thought they were squirrels and with a noticeable gap between her front teeth gave her the moniker or nickname “Squirrel Tooth Alice.”

When she was 10, she was captured in an Indian raid and lived among the Comanche for three years. When she was ransomed back, she was shunned by “polite” society. She was considered tainted or spoiled goods for certainly she had been used by her captors. (You know, the older I get, the more ashamed I am to be a white person.) A man several years older than Alice took an interest in her, and her father just knew the man had dishonorable intentions, so he shot and killed the man. Rather than being condemned to living her life as a spinster on the family farm, Alice ran away from home.

At age 14, she wound up in Abilene, Kansas and took one of the few jobs available for young women becoming a dancehall girl and prostitute. She eventually took up with William “Billy” Thompson, a gambler and part-time cowboy. He really didn’t care much about being a cowboy, it was something he did when he had lost all of his money. He was also the brother of gunman and later lawman, Ben Thompson.

After Alice gave birth to their first child out on the prairie, Billy decided to stop pretending they were married and actually married Alice. She had nine children in all and since she continued to ply her trade folks would say three of the children were Billy’s, three of the children were not, and the heritage of the other three were questionable.

Billy didn’t seem to mind Alice continuing in her profession and Alice didn’t seem to mind Billy wandering all over the country gambling and causing mischief. Billy didn’t spend much time helping to raise the family.

Once the Comanche were finally defeated, West Texas exploded with new settlements. Billy and Alice bought a small ranch and dancehall in Sweetwater, about fifty miles from my hometown. The dancehall was on Main street. Alice worked as a madam until she retired in 1921. She later moved to Palmdale, California to be nearer to some of her children. She passed away in a retirement home in 1953.

Billy died in 1897 of consumption, a disease which we today know as tuberculosis, in a hospital in Houston.

Alice was an unabashed floozy! Once on the Federal census form, she listed her occupation as “one who diddles and squirms in the dark.” What is “diddles”? In researching what Alice said, I’ve discovered that what Churchill said about Americans and the British being separated by a common language can also be said of the past. Here in the U.S., “diddle” and “piddle” means “squandering or wasting time”; in Britain, “diddle” means to “cheat or take money dishonestly” and “piddle” means to “pee or urinate”. However, in the past, in the U.S., “diddle” meant “to have sex.”

While my grandmother would have said “quit diddling”; my mother and aunts said “quit piddling”; my generation said “stop screwing around”; my kids and grandchildren use “f*cking around”; great-grandmother would have said “I diddled with Carl last night.”

“Squirm” is also interesting, in both U.S. and British dictionaries, the word’s basic meaning is “twist or wiggle”, but the U.S. dictionary adds “with excitement” and the British dictionary adds “in an awkward way.”

So, Alice said on the census form her occupation was “having sex and wiggling with excitement in the dark.”

The Miniature

The figure is from Knuckleduster Miniatures’ Gunfighters Ball range, the Soiled Doves pack and is titled “Squirrel Tooth Alice.” Knuckleduster sometimes sculpts figures from historical photographs, but most often uses photos from movies to sculpt the figures. This figure is of a woman holding a lap dog and a bottle while wearing a full-length chemise and corset.

I chose to paint Alice with red hair. You can’t tell her hair color from the photographs, but those of us who have colored our hair have been a redhead a least once in our lives. Red was a popular color for coloring hair as far back as the Paleolithic Age and was readily available in the nineteenth century.

I also chose to paint the lap dog as a prairie dog. If you hold the mini up close, you can tell it’s not a prairie dog, but on the tabletop, it looks the part.

All in all, Squirrel Tooth Alice was a fun figure to paint and a fun addition to any Old West collection. So, does your collection contain any dancehall girls or soiled doves?

As always, your comments, suggestions, platitudes, criticisms, and lavish gifts are most welcome, while proposals to “diddle and squirm in the dark” should have been made a few years ago.

Meanwhile…

Downstairs Big Nose Kate is settling a dispute with Buck Tooth Billy while the Tascosa Rose backs her play.