Tubbs, Alice (1851–1930)

First and most successful woman professional gambler in the American West, who played at casinos from Oklahoma Territory to the Rocky Mountains in a career that spanned decades. Name variations: Poker Alice; Alice Ivers; Alice Huckert; Alice Duffield; Corduroy Alice. Born Alice Ivers on February 17, 1851, in Sudbury, England; died from a gall bladder condition on February 27, 1930, in Sturgis, South Dakota; only daughter of a schoolmaster and a housewife; moved with family to Virginia in late 1860s, then to Colorado; educated in a female seminary in southern United States; married Frank Duffield (a mining engineer), around 1870; married W.G. (George) Tubbs, in 1907; married George Huckert, after 1910; no children.

Began professional gambling in Lake City, Colorado (1876), as means of support after husband was killed in mine accident; traveled the West as gambler and ran roadhouses in Deadwood and Sturgis, South Dakota; retired (early 1920s).

Nearly $250,000 passed through the hands of Poker Alice during her career, but most of it went back into the faro and poker games she loved or to the down-on-their-luck compatriots who knew she was always good for a stake. Alice Ivers Duffield Huckert Tubbs was one of the first women professional gamblers in the American West. Eventually going by the moniker Poker Alice, she was certainly the most successful of the few women who made gambling an occupation.

Little is known about Alice Tubbs' childhood. She was born Alice Ivers in Sudbury, England, on February 17, 1851, the only daughter of a schoolmaster and a housewife. She was strictly brought up in the educational and religious ways of the 19th-century English middle class, and those values remained with her, even through her unorthodox career. In the late 1860s, the Ivers family left England for Virginia. Tubbs completed her education at a girls' school in the South, before the family moved to Colorado at the beginning of the silver boom.

A petite woman with blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and a clear English complexion, Alice was about 19 when she married Frank Duffield, a mining engineer. In 1875, they moved to the isolated mining camp of Lake City, Colorado. That spring, the settlement had had 3 log cabins and twice as many tents; by late summer when the Duffields arrived, the population was 500 and buildings numbered 67. By 1877, the population would hit 2,500, with 500 permanent buildings. Rapid growth and equally rapid decline was the norm for frontier mining camps.

Few women lived in the camp. Since Tubbs was not interested in sewing and chatting, there was little for her to do. Gambling was a major entertainment in mining communities, with all classes and professions represented. She became fascinated with the games. She would accompany Frank to the gambling halls and stand behind him while he played.

I enjoyed the game and never cared too much about the money part of it.

—Poker Alice

Then, in 1876, Frank was killed in a mining accident. Though Alice had enough education to teach, there was no school in Lake City. In fact, there were few occupations for Western widows outside of prostitution. So Tubbs took to gambling as a way to support herself, beginning a career that spanned 50 years.

Alice was one of only two or three women professionals for several years. In those days, professional gamblers wore clothing that set them off from other gamers. Men wore fashionable suits, including coats, vests, and hats. Most women gamblers wore ballroom fashions: gowns, gloves, slippers, and jewelry. Gamblers for the casinos worked in shifts, with tables opening at noon and closing at six o'clock the following morning. Tubbs, who was bright and skilled, quickly earned the respect of both amateur and professional gamblers. In the rough mining towns, she learned to protect herself; she began carrying a gun, later telling an interviewer that her father "had been an expert marksman. He taught me to shoot, and shoot well. I was never afraid."

Tubbs had to draw that gun more than once. There was the time she was playing faro and lost nearly $1,500. "I could not understand why I was always losing," she said, "so I began watching the dealer…. I detected a crooked ma neuver, [and] watched him a second time and he very clumsily handled it in a crooked way. Then I drew my gun. I said, 'If you'd have done that cleverly I wouldn't kick. I could admire a clever crook, I'll admit that, but I have no use for a clumsy crook like yourself. Now before I pull the trigger, you give me back all the money I lost in your crooked dealing. I want all of it.'" She got her money back and left.

In the early days of the West, gambling was legal and took place in the same room as the bar, an entertainment for both players and observers. Tubbs maintained that most professionals were honest. When cheating occurred, a casino would get a reputation for dishonesty, and professionals would avoid the place until it was cleaned up, making the house lose a great deal of money. But when gambling was "forced into the rear of the saloons behind closed doors," said Tubbs, "honesty seemed to have left the tables." Consistent with her upbringing, Alice refused to gamble on Sunday, which cost her a bundle, since Sunday was often the biggest day in saloons. Miners, who worked a six-day week, came to town for entertainment on Saturday night and Sunday. But Alice believed in "resting on Sunday and working like hell for the devil the rest of the week."

In those early years, Tubbs was described as a refined, well-dressed woman with a hint of a British accent, smiling except at the gaming tables; there, she won or lost with the same expressionless face, speaking in monosyllables. When Lake City calmed after 1877, Tubbs moved to greener pastures, dealing games in several area mining towns. For about a year in 1878–79, she worked in Leadville, Colorado, during its rapid growth from a few hundred to 18,000 citizens in a few months.

In the early 1880s, Tubbs moved to Silver City, New Mexico. There, one evening, while playing faro, she kept winning until the dealer called out, "Bank's closed." Alice walked around the table and took the dealer's seat, an accepted practice for winners at faro in those days. She declared the bank open and "the sky's the limit." Faro is a complicated game, requiring close attention, alertness, and quick thinking from players and dealer alike. Usually the dealer has an assistant, but Alice worked alone that night. She won several thousand dollars. As word filtered out that a woman was winning so well, people sauntered in from the other casinos to watch. The next afternoon, Tubbs took her winnings and went to New York City, living high until the money ran out. She recalled in later years that her visit was mostly shows, suppers, and fine clothes, but made no mention of trying the city's elite gambling houses.

She returned to the West in 1889. A few other women had joined the gambling profession, but there were never many. According to Tubbs: "Women have too many nerves…. One must have a countenance that can remain immovable hour after hour." She noted the best known of the other women gamblers was Eleonore Dumont , known as Madame Mustache, who "was clever and had a great deal of charm. She was a good musician and a linguist. I often wondered why she began her career as a gambler. I've heard the same thing about myself—love or thrill of the game, that's enough." She also recalled Kitty the Schemer , who "called herself the 'Queen of California Gamblers' [and] didn't last long." Faro Nell , Alice reported, could shoot a whiskey glass out of a man's hand or the heel off his boot. "She did shoot a heel off occasionally." Prairie Rose was "a very pretty girl" who wagered she could walk naked down a Kansas street. "She won her bet," said Alice. "Rose picked a time when nearly everyone was off the streets. She walked down with a revolver in each hand to discourage any curious person. This gave her the name of 'Lady Godiva of the Plains.'" Alice also knew Airship Annie, China Mary, Haltershanks Eva, Bowlegged Mary , and Iowa Bull , whom Tubbs described as "a robust, affectionate, quiet little woman."

Later in the year, Alice joined the homesteaders' run on newly released land in Oklahoma. She wasn't interested in land, but she knew there would be people who wanted to gamble. Tubbs drove from Caldwell, Kansas, into the Cherokee Strip, where she stayed for nearly two years before heading for Clifton, Arizona. Dealing at several casinos in Clifton, she received the nickname Corduroy Alice, for the suit she wore. Arizona was not friendly, however. An editorial in a local paper demanded that the law against women in saloons be strictly enforced, for such women "are of the lowest character and regular crime-breeders…. [They are] brazen-faced, blear-eyed, degenerate creatures." Since she was a professional gambler, not a prostitute, Tubbs did not consider herself "fallen." She was a woman doing what was considered man's work. "She met men on an equal basis … [taking] her booze straight, [smoking] cigars, [packing a gun], and … cuss[ing] like a mule skinner," claimed one spectator.

Tubbs then moved to Creede, Colorado, where a silver boom had begun. Since she arrived just after the discovery was announced, she and Mrs. Creede were the only two women in a camp of seven people. After Alice cut and prepared the logs, neighbors helped with the construction of her cabin. In Creede, she was a dealer for Bob Ford, the former gang member who killed his pal Jesse James for reward money and amnesty for his crimes. Other women gamblers were attracted to Creede as well, including Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Cannary ), Kilarney Kate and Creede Lily . None of these women gambled as well as Alice, and some reputedly resorted to prostitution occasionally. Tubbs stuck to her eight-hour shift at Ford's, every day but Sunday. While never wealthy, neither was she destitute, and unlucky gamblers knew she would advance them a bit of money.

As mining slowed, Tubbs left Creede. She worked in Bachelor City for a while, where it was not unusual for play to reach $30,000 a night. After Bachelor City, she drifted to Deadwood in the Black Hills of Dakota Territory.

Though it was not the boomtown it had been in the 1870s, it still had a strong gambling contingent. But when Alice sought work in a saloon, the miners protested; they did not like to lose to a woman. So Alice put on her corduroy coat and a hat and stuck a cigar in her mouth. It was the first time she had smoked a cigar, and it was to become her trademark. Deadwood gamblers gave her the nickname Poker Alice and she became known as the toughest dealer in town.

At the next table was a dealer named George Tubbs. Alice and George became such rivals that eventually they refused to speak to each other. Then a drunken miner charged George with cheating and threatened him with a knife. As he backed George against the wall, Alice shot the miner through the arm. George proposed marriage shortly thereafter and Alice accepted.

The couple bought some land and left the gambling tables for homestead life. They worked hard and had few neighbors, but, said Tubbs, "It was the happiest part of my life with George." After three years, in the winter of 1910, George contracted pneumonia. He died during a raging blizzard. Unable to travel for several days, Alice preserved the body by freezing it. When the storm abated, she took off in the extreme cold and drove 48 miles into Sturgis, South Dakota. Having little money, she stopped en route and pawned her wedding ring to pay for the burial. There was no funeral parlor, so Alice convinced some men to dig a grave. After a few graveside words were said, she returned to town, entered a gambling hall, and asked for a job; she said she only had to earn $25. Later in the day, when the saloonkeeper told her she'd made her goal, Alice left, stopping on the way home to reclaim her wedding ring. She remained at the cabin for a while, grieving over her loss. Although she would marry again, George's name was the one she kept. She often said, "I was really in love with Tubbs and he was the only man I ever loved."

The homestead was too lonely, though, and Alice went back to the gaming tables, dealing faro in Sturgis for a short time before returning to Deadwood, where she reportedly opened a casino and dance hall. As was her long practice, the business was closed on Sunday. It was said that she taught Sunday School lessons to the women who worked at the house while their neighbors walked to church. Asked later about the dance hall girls she had met, Alice replied: "The life of a dance hall girl was what she cared to make it," she said. "It was entirely up to the woman to do what she pleased with her life—make it or wreck it."

As reformers began to force the closing of gambling halls and saloons, Tubbs went back to Sturgis and opened a roadhouse, providing liquor, gambling, and women primarily to soldiers from Fort Meade. She also had a sheep farm several miles from town and hired George Huckert to take care of the house and stock. She eventually married him, though it may have been largely a wedding of convenience. Apparently, Huckert had proposed marriage several times, but Alice always turned him down. Then, one day she figured up his back wages. "I owed him about $1,008," she said, "and all I had was about fifty dollars on hand, so I got to figuring it would be cheaper to marry him than pay him off." After Huckert died a few years later, Alice reverted to "Tubbs" as her last name.

The roadhouse near Fort Meade continued in operation despite moves for reform. One night some drunken soldiers created a ruckus. Two versions of the story exist—the official version and the one Tubbs told a friend. The official version said the soldiers had been turned away because the place was full. They tried to force their way in, battering on the door. Alice, in her 70s at the time, tried to persuade them to leave but again they refused. Still able to handle a gun, she shot through the door to frighten them, but a calvary trooper was killed.

Tubbs' version was that the soldiers were new to the fort, had been drinking, and wanted female companionship. She told them there was to be no roughhousing. Determined to show their toughness, however, the soldiers mistreated the women and, when Alice warned them, began tearing up the furniture. After repeated warnings, she finally threatened them with her revolver. One of the soldiers came at Alice apparently intending to kill her and, in self-defense, she shot him. She also had to injure another soldier before the group would leave. Tubbs was arrested and taken to jail where she read her Bible daily. When she stood trial, the jury acquitted her on grounds of self-defense. Elated, townspeople declared a holiday, while Alice returned to running her business.

But reformers eventually managed to have Tubbs arrested and charged with conducting a disorderly house. The business was shut down and Alice convicted of the charges; but friends appealed to the governor and she was pardoned. At this point, Alice Ivers Duffield Huckert Tubbs retired. She had saved money for her old age, but claimed that most of her life's winnings had gone to help those in need. "If I had all the money that I have passed out …, I would be rich," she said, "but there would be many haunting faces looking up at me from the past."

Alice was still a slight woman, her white hair pulled up in a bun and her blue eyes still bright. She spent her remaining years in Sturgis, wearing an army shirt and a black woolen skirt to work in her small garden or rock on her porch with a cigar clenched between toothless gums. A contemporary noted, "Any woman was welcome in her home and Poker Alice would see to it that she was protected from any and all advances or insults from any man."

Alice seemed to live mostly in the past after retirement, talking of days gone by and even of England. Soldiers left Fort Meade and the town changed. Tubbs became even more religious, joining the church and becoming involved in its activities. In Deadwood's annual "Days of '76" celebration, she would ride on a float in the parade, sitting behind a faro table and smoking her big black cigar. She appeared with Deadwood Dick (Richard Clark) at the Omaha (Nebraska) Diamond Jubilee when she was 78.

Many changes had occurred in Western life from Tubbs' early days in the mining camps, where there was "little regard for human life," to her final years, with modern developments like telephones. Despite many friends and acquaintances, Tubbs missed the old days and may have been lonely by herself. Once, a friend happened by and found her sitting with a gun, thinking about suicide. He managed to talk her out of it, but from that point on, friends made sure someone was with her at all times.

In 1930, at age 79, Alice Tubbs became ill with a gall bladder condition and needed surgery, but doctors said her chances of survival were poor. A gambler to the last, Alice replied, "Go ahead. I've bucked worse odds than that, and I've always hated a piker." When a concerned neighbor tried to persuade her against the surgery, Alice responded, "You know it's all in the draw."

Poker Alice died on February 27, 1930. Prior to her death, she had written that she wanted her tombstone to read "Alice Huckert Tubbs," honoring "the only man I ever loved." In her will, she disinherited any relatives "for the reason that they have not contributed to my welfare and happiness during the declining years of my life, nor have they made any effort to inquire as to my welfare for a great number of years." She left her chickens and the crop in her field to a neighbor, several individual items to other neighbors and friends, and the bulk of her estate to her friend David Keffeler.

Wherever her life had led her, Poker Alice died true to herself, her religious principles, and the code of the West. As directed in her will, she was given "a decent burial by the Church, consistent with [her] station in life," in the Catholic Cemetery at Sturgis, South Dakota.

sources:

DeArment, Robert K. Knights of the Green Cloth: The Saga of the Frontier Gamblers. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.

Mumey, Nolie. Poker Alice: Alice Ivers, Duffield, Tubbs, Huckert, 1851–1930: History of a Woman Gambler in the West. Denver, CO: Artcraft Press, 1951.

suggested reading:

Horan, James D. Desperate Women. NY: Bonanza, 1952.

Ray, Grace Ernestine. Wily Women of the West. San Antonio, TX: Naylor, 1972.

collections:

More information about Alice Ivers Tubbs and other women who were professional gamblers in the American West may be found in the Denver (Colorado) Public Library's Western History Department.

related media:

Poker Alice (television movie), starring Elizabeth Taylor and produced by Renee Valente , released in 1987, was based on the life of Poker Alice in title only.

Margaret L. Meggs , independent scholar, Havre, Montana