Portsmouth Women by Laura Pope

Author:Laura Pope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

Mary and Allen Baker’s Gloucester House Saloon on the corner of Marcy and State Streets in 1897, one of several bordellos on Marcy Street’s red-light district. Patch Collection, Strawbery Banke museum, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Colleen O’Leary and Polly Goldman knew Mary Baker when they were children during the 1920s and remember her distinct appearance: “She had diamonds in her two front teeth. She had a passion for jewelry, and she always wore a beautiful brooch at her neck. Mrs. Baker was always elegantly dressed, and when she walked downtown with her cane and her fur muffs, she looked like somebody. She wore a brilliant henna wig that was styled in a beehive, which made her look almost six feet tall.”

In 1889, Mary married Allen Baker of Massachusetts, but where they spent the first years of their marriage is unknown. The Bakers were probably in Portsmouth in the 1890s just before opening the Gloucester House Saloon.

Along with her unique appearance, Mary Baker’s business establishment was keenly recollected by neighbors, such as Gertrude Moulton, who elaborated on the Gloucester House interior: “You never saw anything like it. There were mirrors on the ceilings and the rooms had little cubbyholes, and I didn’t know it at the time, but that’s where the girls were. The house had a great big beautiful ballroom with a great big chandelier. There were red velvet curtains and paintings of bosomy nude women on the walls. It was really quite grand.”

The Bakers also operated an ice cream shop that was connected to the Gloucester House. Jane Cook stated why: “I was told that Allen Baker did not like the prostitution business, so he put the ice cream parlor out front. But Mary still had the other business going on at the same time.”

Many of the neighborhood children bought ice cream cones at the shop, and Polly Goldman and Colleen O’Leary remember being served by the Bakers: “He was very nice. When you went in and got an ice cream, you would get extra because he packed it in with a tablespoon. But if it was Mary, you got just exactly what you asked for. She was a businesswoman, you know. And when she waited on you, she was always dressed in her elegant clothes and jewelry. She was very much the lady all the time.”

Madam Alta Roberts also opened shop on Water Street in 1897. In October, she purchased the saloon at numbers 14 and 16 from Timothy Buckley. The daughter of a Civil War hero and a direct descendant of Revolutionary War Patriot Joseph Warren, Alta Warren Roberts was born in Limerick, Maine, in 1855. She married Frank Roberts, and they worked together in vaudeville during the 1880s. She lost a son in childbirth and was unable to have any more children. After her husband died, she lived with her sister Sarah Dawson in Ware, Massachusetts, where she worked in a textile mill. She moved to Portsmouth in 1897, perhaps on the suggestion of her sister Phoebe who lived there with her husband, William, a Water Street boat builder.

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