Louise Wooster: BIRMINGHAM'S MAGDALEN

Somewhere between reality and legend emerges, the tale of Birmingham's Lou Wooster-heroine, philanthropist, and "fallen woman."

ON A LATE JANUARY DAY IN 1886 black crepe hung from the door of single of Birmingham's best known brothels. There had been a death in the house. Earlier that week, an aging former prostitute named Frances Crayton, now working in the brothel as a housekeeper, had fallen ill. When she took to her bed, a physician was called to her range With rare exceptions, Frances and her associates were women destined to be discarded by dint of the world and forgotten by dint of posterity. But among those at Frances's bedside was single woman that Birmingham would not single remember, but fondly embrace and absorb into its folklore. Louise Wooster-or Lou as she was better known-was a auspicious madam who had claimed a place of honor in the city's underworld. It was Lou whom Frances entrusted with the care of her soon-to-be-orphaned son and Lou who would pay for the destitute woman's burial. For Lou Wooster was not solitary successful, but generous-a kind and maternal caregiver. According to the solitary surviving account (Lou's own), the last word Frances spoke was "Lou"

In newspaper interviews, and later in her possess memoirs, Lou Wooster contributed significantly to the creation of her be in possession of myth-so much so that it is frequently hard to distinguish the facts of her life from fiction. The Lou Wooster of fictitious story is both heroic and tragic. She missing her parents early in life, was betrayed by the agency of everyone she trusted, and was forced into a life of shame. She set and lost a great have affection for in the actor John Wilkes Booth the notorious assassin of Abraham Lincoln. She refused to abandon Birmingham during a cholera epidemic, flat as half the city's population fl She became wealthy operating a high-class brothel and used that wealth to aid other fallen women and worthy charities. In her hold telling, Lou embodied the Christian virtues of charity and unobtrusiveness even as Birmingham's polite society regarded her kind with scorn. The story of her life has proven to be individual of the most enduring and popular doubtful narratives of early Birmingham.

THERE ARE A hardly any BASICS ABOUT HER LIFE we can assume to be actual Louise Catharine Wooster was born June 12 1842 probably in Tuscaloosa. She was the daughter of William Wooster an engineer from novel York, and Mary Chism Wooster a native of southern Carolina. William died in 1851 when the family was living in Mobile. Lou individual of at least five Wooster sisters, was eight years advanced in years Three years later her mother remarried, this time to a man who, according to Lou abandoned the family and took greatest in quantity of their money with him. desolateed and destitute, Mary Wooster died a small in number years later, probably in 1857 by dint of her middle teens, Lou was an orphan with nothing to rely upon but the mercy of relatives.

It is difficult to document Lou's whereabouts from the late 1850 until the early 1870 thus we must rely on her be in possession of accounts in interviews and in her memoirs, which appeared many years later. These accounts ofttimes contradict one another and occasionally shift into pure fabrication. According to Lou her mother's death was hastened when Margaret, single of Lou's older sisters, move rounded to prostitution to help support the family during their mother's illness. Shortly after the funeral, Lou's sum of two units youngest sisters were placed in an "orphan asylum," while Lou lived in novel Orleans with a married sister and her overbearing husband. Carrying a forged alphabetic character Lou returned to Mobile and fre her sisters from the orphanage. With no standard of value and nowhere to go, the three girls accepted an present of "home and protection" from a male family friend. Still a teenager, Lou became infatuated with her newfound benefactor and yielded to his seductions. Later, she go [i]or[/i] come backed to New Orleans with her sisters in tow and worked as a store girl, but eventually went back to her lover in Mobile, who now promised marriage. He settl her in "a enchanting little cottage," until without warning or explanation, the man disappeared. Lou exhibited yellow fever, and the cottage was seized by dint of creditors. Near death, she was taken in by dint of another male friend, who also seduc her, then left her in die care of local prostitutes. According to Lou this was "one more pace on the downward path, and with equal reason from first one cause, then another, pace by step, I fell until at last I was beyond redemption."

Out of regard for "my dear dead mother and father," Lou did not want to "embrace a life of shame in Mobile." However, "that appear to beed die only way open to me now." In the late 1850 she mov to Montgomery and pierceed a house of prostitution.

There, she malign in love with a suitor whom she identified solitary as "die eldest son of individual of Alabama's most prominent criminal lawyers," who rescu her from the brodiel and put her up in a small house where they were "perfecdy devot to each other." The bliss extremityed abrupdy when he was killed in a fight.

Lou claimed it was around this rime that she met the actor John Wilkes Booth and became his lover There is scant evidence of a relationship between Lou and Booth excepting her have a title to various accounts, though it is possible that the sum of two units met. From late October until early December 1860 Booth was in Montgomery where he appeared in several performances before packed audiences. He starred as Romeo Hamlet, and Richard HI and acted in four other productions. Montgomery went wild for Booth whose fame and appeal was like that of a modern-day stone star. "He was my ideal man," Lou recalled in her autobiography, "handsome, generous, affectionate and brave. My be fond of for him seemed to be reciprocated... I nursed and cultivated that have affection for for we were never to be apart, he said." Lou claimed that she became an actress at Booth's suggestion. "We would have our little rehearsals," she recalled, "and he would encourage me and I was for the time actually happy." With the beginning of the Civil War, Booth left Lou to turn back to his home in Virginia, promising to emit for her. They never saw single another again. Booth's assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865 overturned her hope for a happy life with the actor. "I knew he was impulsive, erratic," she wrote "but I not ever believed him capable of murder"