Famous drinkers: Calamity Jane

The original ladette, Martha Jane Canary led a debauched life even by today's standards.

Women were not welcome in nineteenth-century South Dakotan bars, but she was a permanent fixture, wearing men's clothes, chewing tobacco, swearing, telling highly improbable anecdotes, and drinking like there was no tomorrow. When she had money, she would burst through the saloon doors and shout 'I'm Calamity Jane and the drinks are on me!' When she didn't she would beg until she had enough cash to buy a round.

Born in 1852 in Missouri, Calamity was an excellent horsewoman and gunslinger, and got by as an express rider, cook, dance-hall girl and prostitute. She even found time to nurse the sick during a smallpox epidemic in 1878.

At the bar, though, she preferred to tell macho stories about her time as one of General Custer's scouts in 1870. (An unlikely story, as she would only have been 18 at the time.)

On 1 August 1903 Calamity Jane died of pneumonia following a heavy bout of drinking. She was 55.

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