At Leadville, Colorado, a few days ago, when the sun was doing its best to provoke the mercury beyond its never-varying maximum expression of heat—65—two handsome young girls rode in from the plains with game-bags, over their shoulders and rifles across the pommels of their saddles. They circled through the town two or three times, awaking the latent manhood In every ennui-stricken breast. They flirted violently as they rode about and managed to get half a dozen of the laziest young tourists In the place to ambling and dodging after them. Suddenly they began to discharge their rifles to right and left in a reprehensively reckless and Improper fashion. Their lovers scattered rapidly, and after pirouetting with their ponies for a short time succeeding the rifle discharges, the fair creatures gallopped off out of sight These two girls are the daughters of a gentleman who camps with his family in Middle Park every year They are highly accomplished and well educated and behaved young women during three-fourths of the year, and seen in the streets of Denver would attract attention by their lady-like deportment.

Illustrated Police News, August 16, 1879.

A gang of female rogues, of the East Side, New York, work a little racket of their own.

A New York reporter, while at Seventy-first street, between First and Second avenues, almost lost his eye-glasses and his composure when a girl accosted him and said: “Hey, there cully, chip in wunst for the beer.” She was backed up by half a dozen other amazons, all of whom wore their hair in straight bangs. “Hurry up, now. Chuck in your dust.” The girl took an affectionate grasp on the reporter’s coat-collar and the others closed around. Then the scribe went hurridly into his pocket, flashed up his second last quarter and gave it the female rough. Then they all scattered suddenly in answer to a signal, and a moment later the graceful outlines of Detective Salmon, of the Twenty-eighth precinct, loomed up. He laughed hastily. “You’ve been caught by “Lena’s gang,” he said, “and I suppose they saw the color of your coin. It’s just as well you did give them something, because they use their hands vigorously. Their leader in their neighborhood is a rather pretty Polish Jewess named Lena Meyerheimer, who works when she is not idle at one of the cigar factories up on First avenue. She and her younger sisters are about as tough as young girls can be. The congregate with and emulate the boys of the Sylvan Star gang. Most all her followers are cigar makers, too. That trade seems to have especial attraction for bad girls.”

Reprinted from the National Police Gazette, October 18, 1884.