What offenses did these women commit to cause them to be locked away for the protection of the citizens? These twenty-three women, wearing frills, lace, and their best bonnets, became guests at the Gray Bar Hotel in early Wyoming.

Some of these petticoat prisoners may have been a threat to society: Anna Bruce baked poison into her father’s plum pie; Eliza Big Jack Stewart shot a man in the neck at a dance. Others seem only to have been at the wrong place and time.