Petticoat Prisoners Of Old Wyoming

Some of these twenty-three petticoat prisoners may have been a threat to society: Eliza "Big Jack" Stewart shot a man in the neck at a dance; Anna Bruce baked poison into her father's plum pie, and Minnie Snyder and her husband killed a man in a shootout with neighbors.       Many of these women's crimes tend to draw our sympathy--like that of Stella Gatlin, whose kleptomania didn't mix with her work as postmistress or Anna Trout, who abandoned her baby grandchild in a train depot or Annie Groves, who shot at, but missed, a man who had given her an infectious disease.      These women, wearing frills, lace, and their best bonnets, became quests at the Gray Bar Hotel. "Brown is a thorough researcher who cites the sources for each woman's story, but his writing is far more colorful than old gray prison walls." --Chrys Ankeny, Wild West Magazine