Satin, Lace and Cherry Pie

The true story of how a small-town Texas girl became legendary madam, Big Bertha.

- JAN MACKELL COLLINS

The only known portrait of Bertha, wearing a most fetching hat, was taken on a visit to California sometime in the early 1900s, when she was in her thirties.

– COURTESY MICHELLE BOWERS –

Ten-year-old Laura Frazier gazed up at the large lady in the open door. “She almost filled the entire doorway,” Laura later remembered. The girl had talked her mother into letting her sell magazine subscriptions to earn money for a scooter. Little did she know, however, that the woman standing before her was Big Bertha, proprietress of the best-known parlor house in Williams, Arizona. “She kind of scared me, but I gave her my best sales pitch,” Laura said. “She opened the door and ‘scooped’ me inside.” Laura followed the madam to the kitchen. “Now honey,” Bertha said, “you just sit down and have a piece of cherry pie while I go find my purse.”

Bertha was kind like that. Born Cordelia “Cordie” Bell Curbow (aka Kirbo) in Georgia in 1881, the future madam moved to Texas as a child. She grew up learning the meaning of true Southern hospitality, a trait she carried with her even after she fled the Lone Star State following a short-lived marriage and the death of a baby. Life on the road was tough for any 17-year-old—especially Bertha, who first embarked on a career of prostitution in New Mexico Territory. While there, the girl shot a man over some unknown skirmish. Afterwards, the authorities “basically ran her out of town because she was underage,” according to Bertha’s great-great niece, Michelle Bowers.