Monday, October 27, 2008

The Madam of Missoula When Mary Gleim finally died, the Missoulian had one last heyday with her. In the Feb. 23, 1914, newspaper, editor Arthur L. Stone attempted to recap the colorful, mysterious life of Missoula's foremost mistress of prostitution, without once mentioning the word. She was “of the underworld,” Stone asserted. “Mrs. Gleim had been a smuggler of laces and diamonds in her time,” he wrote. She was believed to be connected with the trafficking of Chinamen and “a great deal of opium” through the “old underground railway which had its outlet at Thompson Falls years ago.” Well, Mary has returned, and she's hell-bent on revenge. “The Missoulian always gets it wrong. I was a legitimate businesswoman, a real estate agent and a capitalist,” she says, fairly stomping her high heel at the foot of Gleim's mammoth headstone in the Missoula Cemetery. She isn't really Madam Mary, but Kim Kaufman of 21st century Lolo. On Sunday, Kaufman will set up her props for the cemetery's annual Stories and Stones historical tour in a ground-length Watteau dress, hand-sewn from a period American dress pattern catalog. She'll hang a railroader's red lantern near the fascinating photo of Missoula's Front Street in the 1890s, Mary's “business district.”....

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