She paraded into the San Francisco Hilton ballroom wearing a feathered boa flowing down over an ornate, floor-length gown. In 1967, Stanford made a surprise appearance at the men's luncheon during the California Jaycees Annual Convention. In her autobiography, Stanford wrote: 'Madaming is the sort of thing that happens to you-like getting a battlefield commission or becoming the dean of women at Stanford University.

The building was demolished in 1961 to build a condominium. Then-San Francisco district attorney Pat Brown's raid on the establishment helped lead to his 1950 election as attorney general for the State of California. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen wrote 'the United Nations was founded at Sally Stanford's whorehouse' because of the number of delegates to the organization's 1945 San Francisco founding conference who were Stanford's customers many actual, if informal, negotiating sessions took place in the brothel's living room. Stanford ran one of San Francisco's more notorious brothels. According to her autobiography Lady of the House, she saw a newspaper headline about Stanford University's winning a football game and adopted the surname. She adopted the name Stanford as one of many pseudonyms. Early life īorn Mabel Janice Busby, in Baker City, Oregon in 1903. From 1940 to 1949, she was madam of a bordello at 1144 Pine Street in the Nob Hill neighborhood, in a house designed by architect Stanford White. Sally Stanford ( née Mabel Janice Busby, and political pseudonym Marsha Owen – February 1, 1982) was an American madam, restaurateur, city council member, and a former mayor of Sausalito, California.

Sally Stanford by Alton Pryor