Lou Graham (Seattle madame)

Lou Graham (February 9, 1857 – March 11, 1903), born Dorothea Georgine Emile Ohben, was a German-born woman who became famous as the madame of a brothel in what is now the Pioneer Square district of Seattle, Washington, USA. She was referred to as the "Queen of the lava beds," with 'lava beds' referring to the area of tide flats that were filled in with sawdust from the sawmill. She became one of the city's wealthiest citizens before dying in her forties.

Graham arrived in Seattle in 1888; the city, barely three decades old, was at the tail end of a period (from November 23, 1883 until a series of court decisions in 1887–1888) in which women's suffrage had led to a triumph of "reform" politics there. Monied interests were voted out of political office, liquor licenses revoked, brothels closed and relevant laws strictly enforced. The result for this frontier economy was, in the words of local popular historian Bill Speidel, that "The fines and licenses on liquor, gambling and prostitution that had been the major source of income for the operation of the city dwindled to almost nothing."

Graham approached Jacob Furth, and through him a number of the city's leading businessmen, with a proposal for the establishment of a brothel comparable in prices and quality to the city's finest hotels. Prices were to be openly posted (as against charging what the traffic would bear from night to night), staffed by women who would be (Speidel's words again here) "gorgeous…, talented…, … [and] who could discuss the opera, or politics, or economics, or world conditions on an intelligent level with the leaders of America.

With their forthcoming start-up capital she purchased the property at the corner of Third and Washington. Her first building was short-lived; it burned in the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889, but she had already profited sufficiently to rebuild in stone afterwards. In less than 18 months she had done well enough to expand significantly. Her initial parcel of land had cost $3,000; The larger parcel she bought after the fire cost $25,000.

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