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Mammy Pleasant, Bush and Octavia
Mary Ellen "Mammy" Pleasant was a freed slave who came to San Francisco from New Orleans in 1852. She cultivated a reputation as a voodoo priestess and set up a brothel, the House of Mystery, here on the corner of Bush and Octavia. She turned the operation into a blackmail scheme and, extorting some of the city's wealthiest men, soon amassed a huge fortune. Fate stepped in when she learned that one of her girls had, without permisssion, married a customer, banker Thomas Bell. Mammy fought with Bell and he fell from the brothel's balcony. He was found dead with Mammy's red scarf wrapped around his body. Although never charged, Mammy was forced out of the brothel, penniless. She took up residence in a nearby grove of trees, haranguing and casting voodoo spells on passersby until her death at age 92.
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