Jane Haspel had three children by her first husband, a Civil War veteran, before she deserted him in 1863. The first child was a daughter named Sarah, born in Bloomington, Ill., in 1854. Sarah had a sister, Mary, born in 1860. The U.S. census of 1870 lists 10-year-old Mary Haspel as a domestic in the brothel of a woman named Thankful Sears, located in Peoria's Sixth Ward. (The enumerator, in a rare display of partiality, wrote after Mary's name, 'God pity you.') Also found in 'Mother' Sears' house, occupation prostitute, was one Sally Haskell, age 16. It is quite likely that she was, in reality, Sally Haspel. The age, the birthplaces of the parents, the presence of her sister Mary, the nearly identical name, the fact that Jane Haspel is on record as being in Peoria as early as 1865 — these all strengthen the assumption. If Jane Haspel, herself a known madam, would turn her 10-year-old daughter out to do char work for another bawd, she would not stick at sacrificing the older sister to man and Mammon as well.

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Wyatt Earp spent time in Beardstown during the summer of 1869. He had accompanied his brother Virgil to Illinois, and by early 1870, Virgil had found quarters in a square block of Peoria infamous for its lewd women and larcenous dives — Bunker Hill — and was earning his keep as a bartender there. A strong likelihood exists that Wyatt visited Peoria in 1868-69. Once again, Stuart Lake's notes on the chronology of Wyatt's life offer confirmation. And given Wyatt's familiarity with the demimonde and his attraction to it, one must seriously consider the possibility that he met 15-year-old Sally Haspel at the Sears brothel, the largest in the city. This would go some distance toward explaining how he came to be a resident in Jane Haspel's house in 1872 — if he had a prior acquaintance with Sally and her mother.

It was no simple matter to become a pimp at a major house of prostitution in Peoria. Some men in the profession had gained footholds during the years following the Civil War, many of them veterans for whom carnage had become second nature, and they continually made news for their violent exploits in a tough town, where slaughterhouses and distilleries were employers of first resort. If Wyatt Earp had not cultivated a previous acquaintance with the Haspels, he must have lived in Peoria for an extended period in 1871-72, long enough to earn a reputation as a hard case. A paper trail places him in Lamar, Mo., from November 1869 to November 1870, then in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) during the late winter of 1870-71, and in Arkansas during April 1871, at which time he took part in a jailbreak at Fort Smith, where he was being held on a horse-theft charge. After that, nothing is heard of him until he turns up at Haspel's in February 1872.

There is also the possibility that Wyatt settled where he did because of another connection to the Peoria underworld. In 1870, Virgil Earp was living and most likely working in the saloon of William Vansteel, a native of Denmark, who had made his home in Peoria before the Civil War and subsequently served two hitches in the 11th Illinois Cavalry. Vansteel had tasted his share of battlefield powder — at Pittsburg Landing, Bolivar, Lexington, Yazoo City — as Union forces scythed through the lower Mississippi Valley. The essence of carcasses from the meat market next door and the reek of hops from the brewery at the end of the block mingled with scarcely less pungent human odors in his saloon, on the bluff (north) side of Water Street. It was located in the center of Bunker Hill, an area denounced in various news accounts as a 'wretched locality,' 'a notorious locality,' 'an infamous locality.' The gin mills of the neighborhood raised a racket at all hours, and explosive frictions built up in them. Brawls were commonplace, often between prostitutes from the house in the rear of Vansteel's establishment. And the very day Minnie Randall committed suicide at the McClellan building, with Sally Haspel and possibly Wyatt and Morgan Earp as witnesses, Sally's mother, Jane, was facing arraignment for public drunkenness in Bunker Hill the previous night.

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