"Maria" was
a tough little Irish lass who worked the saloons of Santa Cruz for a dozen
years. Her free wheeling life style was a source of endless shame for her
brother, a prominent druggist in the community.
Her real name was
Mary McDermott and she was born at Stone Pew, Ireland in 1843. Her father died
during the great famine of the 1840s and as a result, his large family suffered
much privation. In 1854 several of the children migrated to America where they lived
for many years in the Irish conclave at New York City.
In 1865, two of the
McDermott's, Mary and William, moved to San Francisco and the following year
made their way to Santa Cruz where William, a druggist, opened an apothecary in
the Hugo Hihn flat iron building on the lower plaza.
Mary first found
employment in a restaurant, and then went into a saloon as a waitress, but
before long she found her real calling - Prostitution. At this she must have
been quite good, for within a short period of time she had managed to
accumulate enough money to open up her own house on Front Street next to Madame
Pauline's. At this time she started to call herself "Maria" in
deference to her many Spanish customers.
For a while she
prospered quite well from the wages of sin. At one time she was able to send
$3,000 to her mother in Ireland. In April of 1877, she bought a house on the
east side of River Street (North Pacific) where she carried on her business.
Later that month "Maria" was arrested during the crack down on prostitution
and received a fine of $200.
In 1881, she met the
man who was eventually to be her downfall. He was a good looking Irishman named
Tim Collins and she called him "my nice young man." But it appears
that Tim had a weakness for the whiskey and "Maria" definitely had a
weakness for Tim.
She moved him into
her house and continued to work her trade in order to support them. Tim acted
nominally as the bartender, but in reality he was a pimp and gambler. Soon
"Maria," too, was drinking heavily and they began to quarrel almost
constantly. After one such fight during the month of March, 1882, they were
jailed. She, for one hundred days and he for sixty. When "Maria" was
finally released, she went home to find that Tim had left her, taking with him
everything that he could carry. From this point on she slipped deeper and
deeper into alcoholism.
On November 3, 1883,
she sold her home to Dr. Benjamin Knight. A month later she entered the county
hospital suffering from dropsy, there she died on December 11, a tired old
woman at the age of forty.