#7 "Who was she? She was born Ellen Loretta Callahan around 1860 in New York. She was the fourth of at least 10 children, all of them girls except one boy. Her parents were from Ireland, and her father was a longshoreman who died when she was still young. Her mother had to go to work to support the family. Dolly, who was reportedly willful to begin with, grew up with little supervision and became a wayward and independent young girl. She lost her virginity when she was 16 and became a prostitute in a New York parlor house. The madam of this house introduced her to another madam, Mary Ellis, who along with San Francisco madam Diamond Carrie Maclay, persuaded Dolly to come with them to San Francisco in 1878 when she would have been about 18 years old.
Gentry said that sometime during her youth she had become a good swimmer and had developed the ability to hold her breath under water for very long periods of time (Well, she certainly seems to have the lungs for it. - VRWC). However, she herself said that she got her start at The Aquarium at Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street in New York in the late 1870s, when it first opened. The management of this venue let a group of girls learn to dive and hold their breaths underwater, undoubtedly with a view towards training a pool of inexpensive performers. Miss Adams said she was singled out by Captain Beach, another performer there, as having a special aptitude for this kind of performance, and was given:"
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