I’m old enough and have been in Austin long enough to know of the stories of prostitution on South Congress and in South Austin which didn’t really end until the 1970s. When did it started as a destination for houses of ill repute? I don’t know yet. That is for another story. This story that was printed in and is not the full story:
FREE & EASY
An Extraordinary Compendium of Central Texas Leisure’s
May 15th through June 15th, 1975, volume two number1. by Robert A Burns
On January 13th, 1953,, newly elected Travis County Sheriff T. O Lang not two weeks in office, made a highly publicized raid on 3 well known Austin body houses, ”Hattie ‘s”, ”Peggy’s” and ”Dolores.” The headlines in the Austin paper at the time declared Lang closes call houses, says they will stay closed. Lang himself stated, ”I swore to uphold the law, and as I see it, those houses were in violation of the law.”
Four months later, after the raids on the same places, he said, ”I’ll do my best to keep Travis County clean.” Tears later, after raids on the same places, a federal undercover agent declared that Travis County was ”clean,” stating that the county officials were playing for keeps. 12 1/2 years after the first raid, after an estimated hundred such raids and periods of benign neglect, the last of those houses closed for good, not because of due process of the law, but because time had finally caught up with the proprietors, Hadi Valdez, and she decided to retire.
When Lang took over as Sheriff, the two most prominent Madame S in town were Hattie and a fiery woman by the name of Peggy Stevenson. Actually, Peggy’s propensity for marriage kept her last name in flux, so much that she was almost exclusively known only as her first name.
His first raid resulted in nothing more serious than the woman promising to close down and be good girls. On the second raid a few weeks later, Lang ran into unexpected opposition. During the raid, Peggy and her boyfriend, soon to be husband, soon to be ex husband, Dudley Bryant were involved in a slight struggle with a couple of the lawmen while Hattie went quietly to pay her fine and get back to work, Peggy made headlines by charging the police with harassment and brutality in beating up her boyfriend. Although charges were filed against the two agents, and there was no immediate effort to arrest them, and the whole matter seemed to have died out with a perfunctory investigation.
Over the next couple of years, Peggy and Dudley Bryant were involved in many scrapes. Dudley was well known to the police, being arrested some 50 to 60 times in Austin on numerous charges. In addition to scrapes with the law, they were also frequently involved in some rather public marital marital stats. The biggest was some three years after their divorce, while each was awaiting legal action of a couple of different types, Peggy decided to drive by Dudley’s house, apparently to check up on him. When she discovered him sitting in his own car in front of his own house with another woman. In the car with him, she went into a jealous rage. She twice rammed the side of his car with hers, But before she could drive away, Dudley leaped out of the car and threw several bricks through the windshield of Peggy’s car. Several more charges arose out of this incident.
After numerous raids on her houses on the San Antonio and Lockhart highways, Peggy finally faded from the scene somewhere around 1957. Her main house on the San Antonio Highway had burned down under suspicious circumstances and she had gotten married for the 3rd time. Apparently, after a few quiet years, she moved out of town.
By far the most famous of Austin’s Madame’s was Hattie Valdes. Unlike her younger and more flamboyant associate, had he operated with as little fanfare as possible. She operated a house, sometimes two or three at once, almost continually for some 25 years. One of her places, a small motel named M & M Courts, was undoubtedly the best known and longest lived body house in Travis County.
Hattie was a respectable, of sorts, a widow whose everyday life was usually as calm and mundane as anyone else. Whenever Hattie was arrested, she went quietly and obediently to court, sometimes to jail, to pay her dues and get it over with.
Events leading to the final closing of Hattie’s M & M courts have been related many times, but are bizarre enough to be told again. In 1965, at the age of twenty four, Tim Overton decided that he was going to take over this city. He went to Hades and told her he was going to install a couple of girls of his own at the courts, and would also take a percentage off the top of whatever she made. Being older and wiser in the ways of the world, she told him what he could do with his elaborate plans and sent him packing.
Tim and an associate went to the County Courthouse and boldly told Sheriff Lang what they were planning to do. According to eyewitnesses, Lang calmly chased them out of the office at gunpoint. In the meantime, word had gotten around of the takeover attempt, and Hattie’s friends and backers sent equally armed reinforcements from Austin and San Antonio. Just as the battle lines were drawn and troops were setting up on either side of South Congress, the sheriff’s men and a couple of Texas Rangers appeared on the scene. The lawmen made a few arrests, confiscated many guns, and sent everyone else home. After this episode, Hattie finally decided that she was really too old for such activity and retired to her South Austin home.
Almost no one knew that Hattie had a daughter Bettie Jean. She was sent to Boarding School at Saint Mary’s Acadamy in Austin when she started elementary school. She graduated from St. Mary’s Highschool in 1948 and in 1949 upon reception of the holy habit on February 2, 1949, the young woman became known as Sister Loretta Marie.
According to Sister Loretta’s obituary in 2021: Hattie Marie Bardmess Valdes was Betty Jean’s mother, who gave birth to her in Fort Worth, Texas, March 21, 1931. Mozy Valdes adopted his wife’s daughter. Both Hattie and Mozy ran separate businesses in Austin and were able to provide for Betty Jean’s education and care even after their divorce.
