Red Lights on the Prairies. Rev. ed.

R. Douglas Francis is a professor of history at the University of
Calgary.

In many respects, the two volumes under review (both originally
published in the early 1970s) overlap and thus duplicate one another. As
the author himself admits, “[g]etting drunk and getting laid” went
hand in hand in the frontier West. Thus, there is a great deal about
booze in the Red Lights on the Prairies, and a great deal about
prostitution in Booze. What prevents them from mere duplication is
Gray’s emphasis on the prohibition movement in Booze and the glaring
absence of a similar movement to fight prostitution. What this
difference means for these two volumes is that Booze is more of a
genuine social history—one that establishes the social context of the
time through a discussion of the rise and fall of the prohibition
movement—whereas Red Lights is little more than an anecdotal account
of famous prostitutes, brothel houses, and the men who frequented them.

That Gray came to history through journalism is evident in his
masterful storytelling. But while Red Lights and Booze are entertaining
reading, are they social history? Social historians today would argue
that they lack objectivity, that they contain no footnotes to verify the
facts, that they distort the past by focusing on the exceptional and
sensational, that they generalize on scant evidence, and that they lack
analysis. All this is true. Gray and his supporters would respond,
however, that these books are filled with real and colorful people, not
the bloodless subjects typically found in scholarly and objective
studies. In the end, Gray and his supporters are right. The mere fact
that these two books are being reprinted some 25 years after their first
appearance—despite a flood of more recent competitors—speaks to
their value as good social history, and their continuing status as
classics in the field.