Ellis Albert "Al" Swearengen
1845-1904. Owner of the Gem Theater
Ellis Albert Swearengen was born on July 8, 1845, in Oskaloosa, Iowa, one of twins. The spelling of his surname varies; HistoryNet uses Swearingen, and HBO made Swearengen the familiar form.
The Gem
He reached Deadwood in spring 1876. The Gem Variety Theater followed, with sources giving 1876 or, more specifically, April 7, 1877. It combined a bar, stage, gambling and a brothel at Wall and Main. Reported takings of $5,000 a night, sometimes $10,000, come from later accounts and should be read carefully, but the Gem plainly made him a wealthy man.
Its business rested on exploitation. Women were recruited with promises of legitimate jobs and then forced into prostitution. Contemporary John S. McClintock claimed that the Gem’s profits blinded leading citizens to its owner’s corruption. In 1887 the Omaha Daily Bee reported that he was holding two married performers at the theater without pay.
Violence at home
The most detailed record comes from his marriages. His first wife, a performer named Nettie, was repeatedly beaten; in 1879 he was arrested, fined $50 and put under a $500 bond for it. She fled to Leadville in 1880 and died in 1884, aged 30. In 1889 a Deadwood judge issued a warrant after he beat a second wife and threatened her with a straight razor, and he fled to Omaha.
Fires and the end
The fire of September 26, 1879, destroyed the Gem, and he rebuilt it larger by December. The Chamber of Commerce says the 1894 fire took it too, though other accounts do not. HistoryNet says Sheriff Bullock closed it for 48 hours in 1878 and had it auctioned to pay debts, though Bullock had lost the sheriff’s office by then, so the date or the officer may be wrong; no one bid against Swearengen. The last fire came on December 19, 1899. Broke, he did not rebuild, and he appears to have left soon after.
HBO has him die in Deadwood. In fact he was found dead on November 15, 1904, at a Denver and Rio Grande railroad crossing on Alameda in Denver, with a serious head wound. The inquest found injuries consistent with a fall from a train but also with a beating. His twin brother had been shot five times a month earlier, possibly in a case of mistaken identity. How he died remains an open question.