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09 August 2009

Patricia Morgan (1939 - 1986) sex worker, business woman.

Henry Peter Glavocich was born in Jersey City, and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey. His mother left his father soon after his birth because he refused to feed them. At fifteen months Henry was put in an orphanage. When his mother remarried, she took him out of the orphanage, but he did not get on with his stepfather, and stayed with aunts and uncles.

At age eleven, after a mutual undressing with a girl downstairs, the juvenile authorities put him in a boys home. Each time he ran away they put him in the home’s jail, where he was raped.

After three years he was released to live with an aunt, where he was raped by her husband. Later, living with another aunt, he tried on his female cousin’s clothes.

At fourteen he started shining shoes, first in Hoboken, and then on 42nd St in Manhattan. He became friends with Shelley, a male prostitute. He made good tips from gay men but refused their sexual offers. At fifteen he ran away and as Pat became a male prostitute.

Six months later he started dressing as female. With some friends he went shoplifting, and then with Shelley robbed a prospective trick. Pat was sentenced to three years at Elmira Reformatory, where he met the man he loved, William Hurst. William got out first, but was back inside by the time that Pat got out.

Pat returned to male sex work. He met a transsexual for the first time, and then Shelley and another of his friends went to California and returned as women.

Pat started taking female hormones, and began living full-time as female. She learned how to have sex with a man without his realizing that she had male organs. She was saving seriously for the $5,000 plus expenses for the operation. She was arrested as a female prostitute, got through the strip search without being read, and declared herself as a ‘boy’ only in court. She was released in that the prostitution law applied only to women.

She made arrangements through Harry Benjamin, and flew to Los Angeles in 1961 for surgery with Dr Elmer Belt. While waiting for a hospital bed, she was in a car crash with a drunken john. She sued the john, a movie producer, to cover her medical bills, and they settled out of court.

After four months in Los Angeles, Pat had a penectomy and her testicles implanted in her abdomen. Two months after that she had a vaginoplasty. Afterwards she was in pain, very weak and her money had run out.

She moved in with Shelley, but was gang raped by two of Shelley’s tricks. Later they were arrested and Pat was charged with living in a house of prostitution. She served 30 days in the prison hospital. She developed urinary problems and had to have a third operation with Dr Belt.

She hustled to raise the airfare to go home. Back in New York she took up prostitution again. She had breast implants to 42DD but then reduced to 38D. She also had her nose straightened. She was booked for prostitution when she accepted a ride in the rain. Her lawyer tried to get her off on the technicality that she was still a man, not having changed her name or birth certificate. The judge ruled that she was a female anyway, and gave her a suspended sentence.

She did change her name shortly afterwards to Patricia Anne Glavocich. Patricia Morgan was her professional name. She started a business of limousines with female chauffeurs, but it lasted only a year. She also did modeling.

Returning to prostitution she tricked with many celebrities, whom she diplomatically does not name. In 1971 William Hurst escaped from prison just before he was due to released. Pat thought that he was released, but he had changed so much that she did not love him any more. He was re-arrested for bank robbery and murder.

Pat developed a friendship with an older man who put up money for her to buy a candy store, and then the building that it was in, and the one next door. She became a landlady.

++In 1973 she published her autobiography as told to Paul Hoffman.

++Apparently she died in 1986, as there is a grave in the name of Patricia Glavocich in New Arlington, New Jersey.   She was then 46.

*Not the keynote speaker, nor the sociologist, nor the artist.
  • Patricia Ann Morgan.  "How I Changed My Sex".  Female Mimics, 1,3, 1963. Online.
  • Patricia Morgan as told to Paul Hoffman. The Man-maid Doll. Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, Inc 123 pp 1973.
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Arrangements were made in advance, but she still had to wait four months after arrival in Los Angeles before the operation. This would exhaust most people’s savings, and anyone in a more conventional line of work would lose their job!

According to this site, the US inflation factor from 1961 to 2007 is 7.1210. Therefore Belt’s operations cost over $35,600 in modern money.

On the second prostitution trial, the judge ruled that Pat was a woman. Another legal precedent that was never used elsewhere. See also Francis Carrick.

In my article on Elmer Belt, I mentioned that it was his standard procedure to push the testicles into the abdomen. Diane Kearney replied to this: “Pat Morgan was a friend of mine and she did have the final surgery but you make it seem she was simply a half woman for her entire life with testicles in her abdomen. Not true!”. If Diane is in Pat’s book under a pseudonym, she is well disguised. If she ever ever read Pat’s book, she must have forgotten it. On page 53 Pat summarizes what Dr Belt does with the testicles. I couldn’t find the reference when I first replied to Diane.

Now, which movie producers are known to have had a car crash in Los Angeles in 1961?

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous20/7/15 00:47

    met you when I was 17 - many yrs. ago. You were living on 81 st. and we met - -you were great!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am 99% sure that Patricia Glavocich, aka Patricia Morgan, died in 1986 and is buried in her home state of New Jersey. Doing some research uncovered her on Find-a-Grave, and the birth date (along with the location and the unusual last name) make me pretty sure this is her.

    https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/122709260/patricia-glavocich

    ReplyDelete
  3. "She started a business of limousines with female chauffeurs" - by coincidence, the British comedy film Carry On Cabby, 1963, has a similar plot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Her Grave is located in North Arlington (Holy Cross Cemetary) not New Arlington.

    ReplyDelete
  5. MrSandman26/1/23 20:35

    She was my first and only business mentor. She chose a great business name for me, and l will forever remember how kind she was to me. May we meet again in this life, or the next, l can still hear your words, rest in peace eternal my sweet friend.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous31/5/23 14:25

      Who are you Mr sandman?! That is sooo fascinating you met this woman do you think she knew she was a legend when she was alive

      Delete
    2. Anonymous31/5/23 22:53

      A legend, yes. Only she would never boast of it to me. She and l shared a morning chat over bagel and coffee, for about 4 weeks. l lived around the corner from the four story flats she renovated on 14Th & Washington Street, Hoboken, NJ. l was all of 23, a young father, and Patricia gave me her best business advice which l cherished and in 1990, set out on my own. She never got a chance to see all that l accomplished because of her. l poured my heart and soul into every wood floor l worked on, because all l could think about was my friend. She gave me my identity, even God was jealous.

      Delete

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