Klondike Women

Prior to her book Women of the Klondike being published in 1995, Frances Backhouse wrote an article for the December 1988-January 1989 issue of The Beaver magazine.

The story describes the women who sought their fortune in Dawson City, Yukon, at the height of the 1896–99 Klondike gold rush. Backhouse estimated that there were about five hundred women in Dawson City in 1898, out of a total population of sixteen thousand.

Some accompanied their husbands, while others were single. They worked as shopkeepers, cooks, launderers, dancers, sex workers, nurses, doctors, and gold miners. A few dropped in as tourists and newspaper reporters.

The Klondike’s womenfolk fell into one of three broad categories, according to Martha Black, one of the Dawson City residents quoted by Backhouse. At the bottom of the social ladder were prostitutes; in the middle were entertainers, such as cancan dancers; and at the top were the more “respectable” homemakers and small business owners like Black. An upper-middle-class woman from Chicago, Black left her husband to pursue adventure, fell in love with the North, and never looked back. She wrote about her adventures in her autobiography, My Ninety Years.

In contrast, life at the bottom was grim: “The veteran prostitutes knew what to expect,” wrote Backhouse. “They faced a high probability of dying young from venereal diseases, tuberculosis, malnutrition, or violence at the hands of pimps or clients.”