our history: ROWDY KATE LOWE
Genesis of a Rowdy Couple
Notorious Old West Madam Known From Wichita to
Tombstone, Plied Her Trade in Weatherford
By MEL W RHODES
A
84
Wichita newspaper once
described him as “an elegant
looking fellow with a somewhat
swarthy complexion, very dark eyes,
large heavy mustache, and, as a
matter of fact, an interesting charac-
ter.”
The man described was Joseph
Lowe, better known in cowtowns
and boomtowns across the American
West as “Rowdy Joe” Lowe. By
all accounts, Lowe, born in 1845,
earned the nickname. He left Illinois
for Kansas after the Civil War during
the heyday of the great cattle drives
tramping up out of Texas to ship-
ping terminuses on the Great Plains,
cowtowns bursting at the seams
from beef-fed economies, Kansas
towns like Abilene, Dodge City and
Wichita. These were often places
where violence and vice thrived,
places where men like Rowdy Joe
were in their element.
Joe arrived in Kansas in 1871,
bringing with him a woman history
has described as his common-law
wife — Katherine Lowe (born 1851,
possibly as Katherine O’Leary), better
known as “Rowdy Kate.” The couple
established a saloon and brothel in
Newton, some 27 miles straight north
of Wichita. Liquor, loose women and
gambling proved a profitable enter-
prise for the Lowes until one night
when Kate slipped off with another
man to visit a competing brothel. Joe
found out, and being rowdy, shot the
man, an injudicious Mr. Sweet, dead.
Sensing trouble in the wind, in 1872
the couple skipped town for Wichita
where, on the “wrong side” of the
Arkansas River, in an “addition”
called Delano, they set up shop.
“Rowdy Joe” Lowe