A Hot Springs businesswoman built a successful career running a brothel that catered to a “high-classed” clientele.
Maxine Temple Jones was born in 1915 and while working at a brothel in Texarkana, Texas, became an experienced manager with a reputation for steel nerves and solid business sense. After serving in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in World War II she eventually moved to Hot Springs and established “The Mansion,” a brothel that served businessmen, state officials, congressmen and mobsters who ran the city’s gambling operations.
After resisting the mob’s efforts to control her business, she was arrested and served two years in prison. Returning to the Spa City, she started a new brothel in 1965, running it until retiring six years later.
Jones wrote Maxine “Call Me Madam”: The Life and Times of a Hot Springs Madam in 1983 to “set the record straight” on corruption and politics in the city. Her last place of business survives today as Maxine’s Coffee House and Puzzle Bar.
To learn more, visit encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
