Al Swearengen - Wikipedia

Ellis Alfred Swearengen (July 8, 1845 – November 15, 1904) was an American pimp and entertainment entrepreneur who ran the Gem Theater, a notorious brothel, in Deadwood, South Dakota, for 22 years during the late 19th century.

Swearengen originally owned and operated a canvas-and-lumber saloon in Deadwood known as the Cricket, which featured gambling and hosted prizefights. Shortly after, he closed it down and opened a larger saloon known as the Gem Theater.[5]

The Gem functioned as a saloon, dance hall and brothel. Swearengen lured desperate young women to Deadwood, then forced them into prostitution through a combination of bullying and physical brutality committed by himself and his henchmen.[4][2] Calamity Jane, who was one of his first dancers at the Gem, procured 10 girls from Sidney, Nebraska, for him on one occasion.[6]

The results were highly lucrative: the Gem earned a nightly average of $5,000, and sometimes as much as $10,000 (equivalent to $235,000 in 2018).[7][3] The Gem burned down on September 26, 1879, along with much of the town, but Swearengen rebuilt it larger and more opulent than ever, to great public acclaim.[8]

Swearengen's talent for making canny alliances and financial payoffs kept him insulated from the general drive to clean up Deadwood, including the otherwise successful work of Seth Bullock, the town's first sheriff. The Gem burned down once again in 1899 and was not rebuilt.[8] Swearengen left Deadwood and remarried the same year to Odelia Turgeon.[9]