Poker Alice

It is time to wheel ourselves around the expansive shelves of the library and only hit the brake when we hit the section marked ‘Poker History of the Wild West’.

Ah, here we are.

Welcome to Deadwood.

Fans of quality American television may remember the series in which Ian McShane plays the aptly named Al Swearengen, a character based on a real life brothel owner.

Most of the show’s characters were modelled on actual people who lived in the town in the 1870s but it is a shame that the writers omitted ‘Poker Alice’.

Alice has had some twentieth century screen time but, sadly, her character was only judged worthy enough to feature in some made for tv tosh called ‘The New Maverick’. (A character rides in town. He’s meant to be a professional poker player but has to borrow money so he can play a game against Poker Alice. You might see a copy next time you are on a garage forecourt.)
She deserves more.

She was born in England but moved to Colorado and married the kind of mining engineer who should have paid more attention to the canaries. Finding herself young, free and widowed, she turned to the gambling halls as a means of support.

After the kind of time that writers of obituaries might call ‘colourful and eventful’, she met her second husband, a gambler called Warren G. Tubbs. He became the love of her life, despite an inability to know his aces from his no-goes.

Alice could mesmerise Warren and most of her male opponents at the poker table, partly because of her good looks, but also due to her expression. Her impenetrable face was a great counterpoint to their impenetrable stupidity and her win rate was such that she could support their seven kids. In an unlikely scenario, she was a type of early feminist, in that she was the breadwinner and the hapless Warren G was forced to paint for his supper.

Such was the difference in their poker ability that Alice frequently had to defend Warren, often by waving a shooter, sometimes squeezing the trigger.

When Tubbs croaked due to tuberculosis, Alice left Deadwood and picked up a third husband, George Huckert. It proved to be another short lived affair and Alice was soon a widow again.
It proved to be the beginning of the end, as the halcyon days of youth turned into a period resembling ‘the dog-food years’, described by William Boyd in his novel ‘Any Human Heart’.

She was now often seen dressed in clothing more suitable for a man and she lost the joy of playing poker. She ran liquor for a while until prohibition forced the liquidation of her assets and motivated her to serve the interests of the nation by providing the solders at nearby Fort Meade with a convenient cathouse.

In 1930, a lifelong attachment to cigar smoking took its toll and she was buried at St Aloysius Cemetary in the Black Hills.

Her formidable poker skills won her a place in Deadwood’s folklore and she is still remembered in the town’s ‘Days of 76’ parade.

It is a far more fitting testimony to her character than depicting her as the love interest to James Garner.