A review of Alison Li’s biography of Harry Benjamin

• Alison Li. Wondrous Transformations: A Maverick Physician, the Science of Hormones, and the Birth of the Transgender Revolution. University of North Carolina Press, 2023.
  
  
  

There are four biographies of Magnus Hirschfeld (by Charlotte Wolff, Ralf Dose, Elena Mancini and Heike Bauer), an autobiography and three biographies of Havelock Ellis (by Phyllis Grosskurth, Chris Nottingham, Arthur Calder-Marshall, John Stewart). Why has there been no book length biography of Harry Benjamin previously?

Li did a BSc in Biochemistry at McGill University and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at University of Toronto supervised by historian Michael Bliss, with the thesis J.B. Collip and the Making of Medical Research in Canada, which included Collip’s work 1921-2 contributing to the refinement of insulin and thereby saving the lives of many diabetics. Li taught at Toronto’s York University and more recently has been an independent historian and writer. She specialises in the history of hormones, their discovery and applications. She published a book based on her thesis, the biography, J.B. Collip and the Development of Medical Research in Canada, 2003. She was also a co-editor of Women, Health, and Nation: Canada and the United States since 1945, 2003, to which she contributed an essay on the hormonal product Premarin. In 2008 she was a co-editor of Essays in Honour of Michael Bliss: Figuring the Social, in which she contributed the essay “Wondrous Transformations: Endocrinology after Insulin”. This essay covers Harry Benjamin and his rejuvenation treatment of the novelist Gertrude Atherton, her 1922 novel based on the experience and the subsequent film. This last is redone in the 2023 book.

Li did research in quite a lot of academic archives, including the Kinsey Institute in Indiana, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Haeberle-Hirschfeld Archives at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. She read Benjamin’s diary, his correspondence and his unpublished book The Winter of Our Discontent, 1941. Hence she is able to relate details not found in other accounts: what happened to his brother and sister; how his wife Greta became involved in his clinic as secretary and as nurse; how the mothers of both Harry and Greta came to stay. She also tells anecdotes about Benjamin’s sex life:

“He continued to be attracted to actresses and chorus girls. For a time, he saw patients in Los Angeles and mixed with the rich and famous. Jean Harlow’s initials appear in his address book, and colleagues would recall that he later reminisced about ‘dating’ her.” (p135)

However, a few matters must be discussed. 

On p112, Li repeats the most well-known accounts of Hirschfeld’s trans patients. One she names as Carla Van Crist. This is a name she found in Meyerowitz’ How Sex Changed, 2002. The problem is that most of us know, since Raimund Wolfert’s 2021 biography, that Crist was a pseudonym for Charlotte Charlaque. And Li apparently knows nothing of Charlotte as receptionist at Hirschfeld’s Institute, and acting as his translator in London, of her involvement with Toni Ebel, another of the well documented trans patients of Hirschfeld who had completion surgery, and their attempted escape from the Third Reich into Czechoslovakia. Li quickly mentions the two-patient surgery account (archive) by Felix Abraham, tells us that one of these was Dorchen Richter, but is mute about the fact that the other was Ebel. There is of course a detailed account of Ebel in Rainer Herrn’s Schnittmuster des Geschlechts, 2005. However neither Wolfert nor Herrn are in Li’s bibliography – she relies on Meyerowitz only. Meyerowitz’ book was groundbreaking 20 years ago, but trans history and biography have moved on.

Incidentally, Charlotte, back in the US in the 1950s, corresponded with Benjamin using the name Charlotte Von Curtius. Neither Meyerowitz nor Li, despite their reading of Benjamin’s correspondence at the Kinsey Institute realize that this is the same person, nor even mention a Von Curtius.

Li next gives a very ordinary account of “Lili Elbe”. Li made a decision to not include any accounts of Benjamin’s associates – such as Leo Wollman – and their trans patients – so why does she include Elbe, who was Kurt Warnekros’ patient? She does briefly mention Pamela Caughie in an endnote, but does not seem to have read the books and the extensive website by Caughie, Sabine Meyer and their team, not even to note that Lili’s post transition name was Lili Elvenes. 

In New York in the 1960s and 1970s, if you were trans and had money or contacts or were lucky, you went to Dr Benjamin. For less money you could go to Dr Leo Wollman located close to Coney Island. And if Wollman was too expensive, there were Drs David Wesser and Benito Rish at the Professional Hospital in Yonkers. Benjamin and Wollman sent patients to Wesser and Rish for surgery, but Wesser and Rish are mentioned not at all by Li. 

Wollman is mentioned only once – in a list of the members of the Harry Benjamin Foundation. Li three times mentions the Harry Benjamin Foundation, but fails to mention its major accomplishment, the 1969 anthology book Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment edited by Richard Green and John Money.

On p116, Li writes “A few years later Benjamin wrote Hirschfeld in alarm that an unauthorized, abridged translation of the first volume of Hirschfeld’s Sexualpathologie had been published by Julian Press in 1932 with ‘a most atrocious translation, utterly impossible”. Why not name the book? By the date and publisher, she is referring to Sexual Pathology: A Study of Derangements of the Sexual Instinct, translated by Jerome Gibbs, Julian Press, 1932. However, most readers will assume the much better-known Sexual anomalies and perversions, a compilation from Sexualpathologie by Arthur Koestler, revised for the English version by Norman Haire, an associate of both Hirschfeld and Benjamin, which came out a few years later. The Koestler-Haire book actually is not mentioned at all.

Benjamin and Virginia Prince were associated across several decades, he prescribed hormones to her, and whenever Prince was in New York they would have a meal together. In Transvestia # 12, December 1961, p14. Prince wrote: “I was chauffeured over to Dr. Benjamin's office for a nice but too brief visit and dinner with him. Those of you who have never met Dr. Benjamin have missed a real treat. People of our persuasion have no better professional friend.” It was from Prince that Benjamin adopted the expression: “Gender is located above, and sex below the belt”.

Prior to 1962 Prince’s magazine Transvestia frequently featured reprints and new articles by Benjamin, she is mentioned several times in The Transsexual Phenomenon (unlike Louise Lawrence who is surprisingly not mentioned at all) and most significantly Prince had a significant effect on Benjamin’s scale in that in accordance with her views it erases gay and female transvestites and gynephilic transsexuals. 

Li mentions Prince once only (p148): “Benjamin also began to work with Virginia Prince, a chemist, transvestite, researcher”. Her footnote chp9n49 shows that her one and only source is Meyerowitz (again) p181-2. She does not note the mentions in The Transsexual Phenomenon, and ignores the biographies by Richard Docter and myself.

The ongoing interaction between Benjamin and Prince is only partially documented. I was hoping that Li’s reading of Benjamin’s diary and correspondence would have provided more detail.

As Li says of The Transsexual Phenomenon: “At a dense 286 pages, the book ranged over the entire field of study”. My A critical rereading of Harry Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon required 56 pages. Li devotes only two pages to it, only one page to its contents (p178-180). She gives only the 1966 Julian Press hardback in her bibliography, and in the text mentions that the 16 pages of photographs were withheld but could be requested by medical and psychological professionals. However most of us who have read the physical book, read the 1977 Warner Books paperback which did include the photographs. And of course most readers today use the PDF version which is available online. With such a short summary she is not able to discuss the Benjamin Scale, Benjamin’s inconsistencies, his ambivalences, his anticipations of future debates or of course the Virginia Prince impacts. Both Ray Blanchard with autogynephilia, and Charlotte Goiar with Harry Benjamin Syndrome later found a basis in The Transsexual Phenomenon but their applications deny his moral legacy. (See my A Critical Reading p10, 30-1)

She says that it was “the first major text” on the topic. “Major” is of course an equivocal term, but there had been three previous books specifically about transsexuality, the first two, as it happened, by persons themselves transsexual: Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology, 1946, by Michael Dillon, and Over the Sex Border, 1963, by Georgina Turtle. The third was Eugene de Savitsch’s Homosexuality, Transvestism and Change of Sex, 1958 which discussed the transition of the Swiss trans woman Arlette Leber who had surgery in 1941-2 . None of these are mentioned by Benjamin, although the latter two are included without comment in Richard Green's bibliography at the end of the book. And none of them are mentioned or are found in Li’s bibliography.

Charles Ihlenfeld was Benjamin’s assistant from 1969 to 1976 and had been expected to take over the practice, but chose otherwise. Li tells this, but does not tell of Jeanne Hoff who did take over, and was herself in transition. 

Obviously the strength of the book is in the history of endocrinology, and the reading in various archives of Benjamin’s diary and his correspondence with patients and associates provide interesting anecdotes of them as people. It would be a better book if she had not mainly retold the stories that we know so well from Meyerowitz, and had told of some less-well-known patients instead. However it is a book that will be an essential reading for future biographers of Harry Benjamin.

Dorchen Richter/Dora Richterov (1892 - 1966) waiter, cook, maid.

Original July 2008.  Revised to include information from Rainer Herrn, Raimund Wolfert - and Clara at Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek in particular for her discovery of Dora's documents in the Czech archives.

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Rudolph Richter, the second of six children of a musician-farmer and his lace-maker wife, was born and raised  in Seifen (now Ryžovna in Czechia) (map), a village of some 600 persons in Bohemia close to the German border, which was then part of Austria-Hungary.  Germans referred to the high-altitude region on both sides of the border as Erzgebirge.

Dora, as she would become, once attempted to tourniquet her penis. She expressed a strong dislike of male clothing, and was permitted to live as female. She showed a preference for girls' clothes, girls' games and girls' company, as well as a deep aversion to everything rough, coarse and crude that was considered typical of boys. Her favourite occupations were typically feminine tasks such as cooking, cleaning and other household chores. Richter was brought up as and remained a Catholic.

After an apprenticeship as a baker, Richter moved to a city- probably the nearby Bohemian spa town of Karlsbad (now Karlovy Vary) in 1909, and was able to dress as female in his spare time.  Later he was in a travelling theatre and moved to Leipzig in Germany and worked checking tickets in a cinema, and then in a chocolate factory.  Then she was able to find work as a woman – as a waitress.  She was successful in sexual contacts with men who in some cases did not realise her non-standard anatomy.

Called for military service, Rudolph was twice suspended because of his "feminism" – wearing female clothing.  By 1916 as the war dragged on, the authorities became more desperate and standards were lowered. Richter he was now "found fit" "after some reservations" and was then drafted after all. But only two weeks later he was discharged “home” because of a severe fainting spell, and returned to Leipzig.

After the war, Richter returned to Seifen in the newly independent Czechoslovakia.  A friend, who hoped that Dora could also be "helped by an operation", told her of the 1922 Steinach film, a popular version of the scientific film Steinachs-Forscbungen. The film briefly featured images of trans women and mentioned the possibility of a change of sex and named the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, at In den Zelten 9A-10 in the Tiergarten area of Berlin. She registered there and in May 1923 was assessed at the Institut, where surgeon Heinrich Stabel suggested that she could be castrated [orchidectomy] by year’s end.  This was done.  Stabel was of the opinion that he always succeeded in:

“dissuading the patients concerned from their urgent desire for penile amputation, by insistent and serious references to the dangerous possible consequences. So far it has always turned out that after castration the patients always felt such a great relief and liberation of their condition that in time the desire for amputation of the penis disappeared completely”. 

He reported to Werner Holz that this was the situation with Dora also – although her life would be otherwise.

Having no other source of income, she worked as a maid at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.  Magnus Hirschfeld gave her the affectionate name of Dorchen, and arranged for her to gain a Transvestitenschein.

Werner Holz, at the time an assistant physician at the Oberlin district hospital in Nowawes near Potsdam,  had come to the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft  to write what is probably the first dissertation on a trans topic.  It is mainly an individual case study and biography of one person, Dorchen, whom he refers to as “Rudolph R”.  His primary focus is on her desire for castration, and it is also the first major work to use Hirschfeld’s terms “extreme” and “total” transvestites.  Holz uses male pronouns for Dorchen throughout.

“From that moment [when as a child he became aware of the difference between male and female sexual organs] he had acquired a direct hatred of his genitals until the present day. [...] Since then, all his thoughts and efforts had been directed towards freeing himself from those genitals he hated so much, which did not at all want to fit his mental constitution. At the age of 13, he had once made warts disappear by cutting them off with a thread. He therefore had the idea of freeing himself from his genitals in the same way by tying them off with a strong thread. Since this intention failed, he is said to have been quite depressed and then several times seriously thought of cutting off his genitals with a razor. Only the fear of bleeding to death is said to have prevented him at the last moment from cutting off his genitals. Even today he would give anything if he could be freed from his genitals by an operation. He had also come to Berlin for this purpose.” (Holz 1924, p 8)

"In our patient, the mental feminism is so pronounced that in conversation with him, one completely forgets that he is a man.” (Holz p 27)

Dorchen working as a waitress 

In April 1925 Richter applied to the Czechoslovakian consulate in Berlin for two passports, one as Dora for her stay in Germany, and a second in her male name for visits home to the family.  A copy of the Institut's report, describing her as intersex and that she had a Transvestitenschein,was attached.  The request was passed to the Ministry of the Interior in Prague.  They took six months to reply, and then declined the request in that Dora had not changed her legal name,

Hirschfeld had initially been opposed to surgical changes, but the castrations for Dorchen and others had gone well – in particular threats of suicide had declined. 

"In the beginning I was strongly opposed to these methods, which I judged to be very dangerous to health and, on the other hand, considered unnecessary" (Hirschfeld, 1933:6)

However Werner Holz, Felix Abraham and Heinrich Stabel gave positive reports and Hirschfeld changed his mind.

“But the more I got to know of these individuals, the more I realised that some of them were ready to commit suicide in the event that their desires for the transformation of their sexual identities were not satisfied. So I told myself that in view of this I must give up my hesitation.” (ibid.).

Arthur Kronfeld, psychoanalyst, co-founder of the Institut, left in 1926.   He was the major advocate of ‘curing’ queer people through psychoanalysis.  Such conversion therapy ceased with his departure.

In 1926 the Hamburg doctor, Otto Kankeleit, gave a paper on self-damage and self mutilation at the Internationalen Kongress für Sexualforschung, which was then organised by Albert Moll.  Kankeleit included photographs, and reported on ‘transvestites’ including cases which he had learned about at Hirschfeld’s Institut.  One of these was Dorchen referred to as “Rudolf Ri”. 

“His sexual attitude was passive female to the point of bondage. He turned to Dr Magnus-Hirschfeld to have his testicles removed, as otherwise he would have to do it himself.”

In January 1928, Toni Ebel’s wife Olga died, and Toni met Charlotte Charlaque.  They both came to the Institut, were employed and given room and board and 24 Reichsmarks a month.  They met Dorchen and the three became friends.

In spring 1930, the nascent Lili Elbe (actually Lili Elvenes) was sent by her doctor, Kurt Warnekros, to Magnus Hirschfeld for a second opinion.  In the waiting room, Elevenes encountered trans women, and it is highly likely that they included  Toni Ebel and Dörchen - Charlotte Charlaque was working as the receptionist.  All three had had a first operation by this date. Lili did not relate to them: “The manner in which they were conversing disgusted him; their movements, their voices, the way in which they were attired, produced a feeling of nausea.”  In addition, Ellen Bækgaard, a Danish dentist who stayed at the Institut, said later that Elbe expressed discomfort at being classed with Dorchen Richter.

Dochen, Magnus and one other

In 1931 at the latest, Dora Richter moved to the Kempinski restaurant at Kurfürstendamm 27 as a kitchen maid.  This was the year that her father died,

Dorchen was offered vaginoplasty that year, and so was one of the first persons to have a sex-change completion. The surgeons were Hirschfeld’s colleagues, Ludwig Levy-Lenz  who did the penectomy and Erwin Gohrbandt, the director of the Urbank Hospital in Berlin-Kreuzberg who did a vaginoplasty a few months later.  Felix Abraham wrote up two cases as "Genitalumwandlung an zwei männlichen Transvestiten" in the Zeitschriflfiir Sexualwissenschaft in 1931, naming the two cases as "Rudolph (Dora) R." and "Arno (Toni) E.".

Pierre Najac, a young French doctor who had spent an internship year at the Berlin Institute for Sexual Science, also wrote a report on Dorchen and Toni Ebel, which was published in 1931.

An anonymous article "Operative Umwandlung von Männern in Frauen gelungen" („Operative transformation of men into women successful") appeared in the medical journal, Die Geburtenregelung in 1933 and discussed the operations on Dorchen, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque.

Toni, Charlotte & Dorchen in Mysterium des Geschlechts

Lothar Golte put together a film in Austria released in 1933, Mysterium des Geschlechts, with input from Felix Abraham & Serge Voronoff.   The story features two medical students who learn about "most interesting questions of sexology" and fall in love in the process. Documentary sequences show sex reassignment surgery and transplants of animal testicles and explanations about abortion and contraception.  Included are scenes filmed in the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft  featuring Dora Richter, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque – both nude and clothed. A voice-over proclaims: "We see three people here who, according to their clothes, appear to be women. In fact, however, these are three men who, as a result of their mental attitude, have possessed feminine tendencies since birth and have surgically become women through their desire."

In April 1933 the film was shown in Vienna cinemas for two weeks before it was banned. In Germany, it was not even shown in public, as it was banned by the censors.

Also that year, Magnus Hirschfeld, in exile in Paris, commented to Voila magazine:

“Dorchen, as ex-Rudolf now called himself, feels completely like a woman. He is very happy and works in a woman's profession, having modified his marital status. Dorchen shows no symptoms of mental disturbance, she is hard-working and intelligent.”(p6)

Norman Haire, the London sexologist and associate of Magnus Hirschfeld wrote an introduction to the 1933 English version of the Lili Elbe autobiography.  Therein he wrote:

“In Berlin in 1923, I saw, at the clinic of a colleague, an individual who was apparently male, but who felt himself to be a female just as Andreas did. This patient, too, had his male organs removed at his own request, and was given injections of ovarian extract. No operation was ever undertaken to determine whether ovaries were present in his body or not. I saw him—or her—again in 1926, after the removal of the male organs, and quite recently I received a report about the case. The individual is very unhappy, and has not succeeded in becoming completely a woman.”

Not the nicest comment, but some have taken this as a reference to Dorchen.  (See the note p 59 of Caughie and Meyer).

6 May 1933 the Deutsche Studentenschaft made an organised attack on the Institut, followed by the Sturmabteilung (SA).  They destroyed many of the books and put an end to the Institut.

When Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque fled Germany, they chose Karlsbad in Czechoslovakia, partly because it was a hub of German speaking emigrants, but also because they thought that was where Dorchen was from.  Charlotte, writing in 1955, said of Dorchen:

"Because she is an excellent cook, she soon took over a small restaurant in the town of her birth” - meaning Karlsbad.

In February 1934, Richter applied for a legal name change “Due to congenital intersexuality – established at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft  Berlin”, which was granted by the office of the president of Czechoslovakia in April 1934. At this time, her address was still listed in Berlin. From then on, her legal name was Dora Rudolfine Richter (in the Czech form: Dora Rudolfa Richterová).  The approval letter asks the parish office to correct the baptismal entry – although that was not done at that time.  Also corrected at this time was Dora's Heimatschein, the Czechoslovak homeland certificate that gives the right to reside in Czechoslovakia, to vote and, if necessary, to social welfare.  The Heimatschein described Dora as a domestic servant and as unmarried.

 Charlotte, writing in 1955, said of Dorchen:

"Because she is an excellent cook, she soon took over a small restaurant in the town of her birth” - meaning Karlsbad.

Dora's mother died in 1938.  

By 1939 Dorchen was living in Seifen as documented in the German census of that year (which included Austria and the Sudetanland) but not in her parents’ house  No 12.   She is at No 61, previously the home of a master baker - presumably the baker who had trained her in the 1910s.  She earned a living as a lace maker working at home.  

The correction in the Seifen/Ryžovna records had not been done, but was finally recorded in January 1946 – perhaps Dorchen herself produced the approval letter from Prague.  There was an urgency for the Germans in Bohemia, the Sudeten Germans, to have their papers in order. 

With the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans (whose location had been used as an excuse for the German annexation of Czechoslavakia in 1938), Dorchen moved to Allersberg, Bavaria in May 1946, where she lived until her death at the age of 74 on 26 April 1966.  Her final years were spent in a seniors' care facility.

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Dorchen was played by Tima die Goettliche in Rosa Von Praunheim’s movie about Hirschfeld, The Einstein of Sex, 1999, IMDB.

Several sources claim that Dorchen was medically castrated in 1922 by Dr Erwin Gohrbandt at the Charité Universitätsmedizin in Berlin.   This is not the account in Holz, 1924 – the earliest account, which gives the surgeon as Heinrich Stabel.

Herrn says: “After Dorchen had been at the institute for assessment since May 1923, waiting for the doctors' decision, Heinrich Stabel held out the prospect of castration to her at the end of the year.” (p182). However Pierre Najac provided an exact date eight years later. According to this, the operation took place on 22 May 1923 (p184).

Richter was drafted, apparently, by the German army, although technically at that time he was an Austrian citizen. After 1918 Richter would of course be a Czechoslovak.  The EN.Wikipedia article simply declares Richter to have been German.

How did Dorchen get to Hirschfeld’s Institut?  I have gone with the version in Holz, 1924 based on interviews with Dorchen.  There is an alternate account:

She worked as a waiter or a cook in the fancy hotels in Berlin in the summer, and lived as a woman in the off-season. The police arrested her several times for cross-dressing, and she was sent to a male prison. Eventually a judge took pity on her and referred her to Magnus Hirschfeld who helped her obtain an official permit to dress in women’s clothes.

These two accounts are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  This other account was included in older versions of the EN.Wikipedia article and other secondary sources.  What is missing is a provenance, who first said or wrote that.  So I have not used that version in the account above.

It is not conceivable that Dorchen having returned to Seifen – a small village - at the end of the Great War could have seen the Steinach film there.   It must have been on a trip to Berlin.

Should ‘Dorchen’ be spelt with an umlaut: ‘Dörchen’?  EN.Wikipedia does so; DE.Wikipedia does not.  Neither does Herrn nor Wolfert, so I have not done so.

Bibliography

• Curt Thomella, Leopold Niernberger, Nicholas Kaufmann (dir). Steinachs-Forscbungen.  Germany BW silent 83 mins 1922.
• Werner Holz. Kasuistischer Beitrag zum sogenannten Transvestitismus (erotischen Verkleidungstrieb) mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Aetiologie dieser Erscheinung.  Diss. Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität zu Berlin, 1924.
• Otto Kankeleit. „Selbstbesch~idigungen und Selbstverstiimmelungen der Geschlechtsorgane“. Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, 79, 1927: 431-2
• Felix Abraham. “Genitalumwandlungen an zwei männlichen Transvestiten”. Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik, 18: 223-226. 1931. English translation as “Genital Reassignment on Two Male Transvestites”. The International Journal of Trangenderism. 2, 1. Jan-Mar 1998. Case 1.   Archive.
• Pierre Najac. “L’Institut de la Science Sexuelle à Berlin” in Janine Merlet (ed). Vénus et Mercure, Editions de la Vie Modern, 1931 : 165-192.
• Felix Abraham, translated by Pierre Vachet. Les Perversions Sexuelles, d’apres les travaux de Magnus Hirschfeld. Paris: François Aldor, 1931:245-7.
• Lothar Golte (dir).  Mysterium des Geschlechtes.  Scr: Felix Abraham, Lothar Golte, Professor Peham, Hofrat Teilhaber & Serge Voronoff, with Charlotte Charlaque, Toni Ebel and Dorchen Richer (all three uncredited). Austria 63 mins BW 1933.  
• Magnus Hirschfeld. 'L'amour et la science'. Voila, 3, 199, 1 Juli 1933: 6.
• "Operative Umwandlung von Männern in Frauen gelungen" Die Geburtenregelung, 1, 4, 1933:33
• Norman Haire.“Introduction“ to Neils Hoyer (ed).  Man Into Woman. Jarrolds, 1933.
• Pierre Vachet. Psychologie du Vice : Les Travestis. Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1934: 216-9,
• Charlotte Charlaque writing as Carlotta, Baronin von Curtius. "Reflections on the Christine Jorgensen Case". One, the Homosexual Magazine, March 1955: 27-8.
• Rosa Von Praunheim (dir & scr). Der Einstein des Sex - Leben und Werk des Dr. M. Hirschfeld (The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld). Scr: Chris Kraus, Valentin Passoni, Friedl von Wangenheim, with Tima die Goettliche as Dörchen. Germany/Netherland 100 mins 1999.  IMDB 
• Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 19-20, 292n13.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts. Transvestismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Giessen, 2005: 96, 176-7, 181-3, 201-4, 217.
• Elena Mancini. Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom. A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010: 69-70.
• Heika Bauer. The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture. Temple University Press, 2017: 86-7.
• Pamela L Caughie & Sabine Meyer.  Lili Elbe : Man into Woman: A Comparative Scholarly Edition.  Bloomsbury Acdemic, 2020: 59, 80.
• Raimund Wolfert. Charlotte Charlaque: Transfrau, Laienschauspielerin, „Königin der Brooklyn Heights Promenade“. Hentrich & Hentrich, 2021: 37-9, 42-8, 52-3, 56-8, 59, 63-7, 72-3, 76-7.
• Leah Tigers. “On the Clinics and Bars of Weimar Berlin”.  Tricky Mother Nature.  Nd.  Online.
• Clara. "A Puzzle Piece for the Trans* History".  Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek, 25. April 2023. Online. 
• Oliver Noffke. “Was wurde aus Dora?“.  rbb24-de, 01.06.23.  Online
• Oliver Noffke. "Pioneer of trans* history Dora went to Bohemia". rbb24-de, 02.04.24.  Online.  
• Clara. "Neue Dokumente zu Dora Richter gefunden – und ihr späteres Leben aufgeklärt".  Lili-Elbe-Bibliothek, 30 August 2024.  Online. 

  Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (1919-1933)        EN.Wikipedia     DE.Wikipedia

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Shelley Ball (1953–) sex worker, inmate.

Original: May 2011. 

William Ross Ball was raised, one of four children in Chilliwack, British Columbia. Their alcoholic father killed himself when the child was eight, followed by the mother having a nervous breakdown two years later.  The children were then raised in group and foster homes.  Shelley later said: "I wanted to be a woman since I was a kid, as far back as I can remember".  At 13 she was committed to a mental institution near Vancouver for dressing in female clothes.  Ball's teenage years were spent in reformatories and institutions across Canada, and even for a while at a boys' school in Washington State - he was kicked out for attempted arson.  Whenever Ball ran away, she survived as a female sex worker, selling her body to heterosexual men who very well knew what she was.  This fed a heroin addiction. She admitted robbing some of her customers, and had been stabbed several times. One night she was beaten, robbed and left for dead on a railway track in Vancouver. 

In 1977, Shelley, now 24, was working at a house for ex-mental patients in Edmonton.  In February, she met a trick in Edmonton's skid row section, and went to his hotel room with him.  Either: when he admitted that he had no money, she claimed to be a member of the police moraliy squad, he got nasty, she slapped him, and it escalated.  Or: the client became enraged when he realized that she was trans.  She ended up stabbing him 17 times.  

There was some confusion at the trial in February 1978 about which pronouns to use.  Edmonton psychiatrist Donald Milliken testified that Ball was transsexual, and already on female hormone therapy.   He said that she would be more confortable in a women's penitentiary.  Shelley, in male clothing, at first refused to testify in that there was a group of 14-15 year-old school children present in the court in pursuit of a language project.  The court accepted her contention that the case was not suitable for such young children and they were withdrawn,

Mr Justice Tevy Miller "with a great deal of trouble and soul-searching" found Shelley guilty of second-degree murder, and imposed the mandatory life sentence - which ruled out parole for the first ten years. Unusually, the judge also recommended a sex-change operation.  The chief of medical services for the federal corrections service approved the operation in that Ball would be molested in a male prison, and that the operation would likely decrease his violent tendencies.

This was the first such surgery for a convict in Canada, and is in marked contrast to how all other trans prisoners were treated until Synthia Kavanagh won her appeal in 2000.

Ball, who already had breasts, but was 1.88 m (6'2'') and 73 kg (162 lb.) did time in three different male institutions, and had no trouble. "In Prince Albert (Saskatchewan), I think I went out with nine different guys while I was there. I had more husbands than Zsa Zsa Gabor."

Shelley in 1984

Shelley had partial (no vaginoplasty) genital reassignment surgery in 1980 and was then transferred to Kingston Penitentiary for Women.  It was reported that the operation cost $250,000 - which led to cries of outrage.  Vancouver trans activist Stephanie Castle wrote to The Province newspaper pointing out that "The $250,000 is enough for 30 such surgeries. ... Doing SRS in Canada currently costs about $8,000."  She was given the reply that "Ancillary security costs to guard Ms Ball during repeated hospital visits pushed up the costs". 

 She was initially treated badly by the other women inmates, and attempted suicide several times. However she had an affair with an inmate and decided, after a lifetime of having sex with men, that she was a lesbian.  She took a  a hairdressing course while in Kingston, and later a Queens University psychology course.

There were two attempts at parole.  On one she made an unauthorized trip to Vancouver to see her mother, but the mother was too drunk to recognize her, which prompted Shelley to go back on heroin. Both the trip and the heroin led to the parole board revoking her privileges, and her hoped-for release in 1990 did not happen. 

She accepted that her life is in prison, and became chairperson of the prisoners' committee, pushing for more services for the other prisoners. 

She was in the news again in 1998, still in Kingston Penitentiary, when she attempted to slash her own throat.

Toronto Star 1979.8.12 p2

*Not the Canadian football player, not the insect ecologist.

• "Trans-sexual trial sparks confusion".  Red Deer Advocate, February 15, 1978: 2. 
• Dick Schuler. "Prostitute gets life for stabbing death". Edmonton Journal, February 15, 1978. 
• Isabel Miller.  "Not in Front of the Children".  Letter, Edmonton Journal, February 21, 1978: 5. 
• Peter O'Neil. "Sex-change operation proves less than blessing". The Vancouver Sun, Aug 5, 1989: B3.
• Beth Gorham.  "Transsexual is content in prison". Calgary Herald, February 5,, 1989: 29.
• Holly Horwood. "A female 'eunuch's' cry for help". The Province, Jan 29, 1995: A2.
• Stephanie Castle. "Hurts transsexuals". Letter in The Province, Fenbruary 6, 1995: 17. 
• "Inmate slashes throat". Kingston Whig Standard, Sep 29, 1998: 3.

-----------------

Kingston Penitentiary for Women was closed in 2000. From 1995 to 2000 its inmates were transferred to other federal correctional institutions.

I was unable to find any mention of what happened to Shelley Ball after this date.

The authors of April Ashley’s autobiographies

There are now three book-length (auto)biographies of April Ashley – Odyssey, The First Lady and Inside Out - and two major newspaper versions written by interviewing April (The News of the World. 6 May – 10 June 1962, and Sunday Mirror, 8 & 15 February 1970). This article compares how they were written, and tells of the very different (but all-male) authors – some gay, some straight. 

There are several other newspaper accounts, some based on an interview with April – the 12 May 1982 account in the Daily Mirror with Marjorie Proops is of note – but they did not add anything of significance, and are not discussed below.

Noyes Thomas ( 1916 - 2001)

Noyes Thomas was named after Alfred Noyes the Welsh poet, his uncle.

He became a leading foreign correspondent in the 1930s. In World War II he joined the Ghurkas, served in east Asia, and rose to Lieutenant Colonel. Afterwards, he returned to the News of the World.

In the 1960s, the News of the World, which was a Sunday paper then selling for 6d, was the biggest-selling newspaper in the world normally selling over 8 million copies of each edition. It was known for its emphasis on sex and scandal. Its major competitor was The People, also a Sunday paper, which had outed April Ashley 19 November 1961. 

In May 1962:

“The News of the World wanted to buy my story. They weren't the first but they were the most organised. I flew to London and took on as my manager a friend of Ronnie Cogan's. This was my first disastrous contract - but not my last. The paper offered £3,000. I demanded £15,000. They retired, returned, and suggested £10,000 which I accepted. My manager took £3,000 of it, an exaggerated percentage which didn't exactly endear him to me.

Noyes Thomas did the story. It was the classic, six-part sensationalisation of a short ragged life. My aristocratic associations gave it piquancy. England was unbelievably ho-ho in those days and I was pilloried for having the nerve to make friendships among the upper classes. The series, via sex and drugs and violence, but no names, ended with a reference to my liaison with Arthur.” (Odyssey p136-7)

In 1963, during the Christine Keeler/John Profumo scandal, the News of the World paid Keeler £24,000, and Peter Earle and Noyes Thomas spirited her away so that journalists from other papers could not interview her.

“And then the Profumo scandal had broken. I'd been spotted in Madrid with Noyes Thomas and Kim Proctor, the third Profumo girl. The press laid siege to the Villa Antoinette in pursuit of any details of these three stories. I was even thought to have harboured Christine Keeler when she vanished somewhere along the Costa del Sol. Day and night, reporters would pop up from behind bushes when I least expected it and start ranting at me. (Odyssey p144)

However Noyes Thomas had, despite his experiences with April and Christine, a rather old-fashioned attitude to sex:

“In July 1964 the News of the World’s Noyes Thomas warned readers about the ‘creeping menace of homosexuality in Britain today’. There was, he added, ‘a vast “queer” brotherhood with tentacles reaching around the globe’.” (Joyce p167) In August he published a check list in how to spot a homosexual. (Joyce p233-4).

• Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. “My Strange Life”. The News of the World. 6 May 1962.
• Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. "Goodbye M'sieu, hello Mamsells, the doctor said". News of the World, 13 May 1962.
• Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. "Roman Scandal – hotel throws us out". News of the World, 27 May 1962.
• Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. "The Operation". News of the World, 3 June 1962.
• Noyes Thomas writing as April Ashley. "There, in a crowded pub, Arthur told me he loved me". News of the World, 10 June 1962.
• Noyes Thomas, ‘Into the Twilight World’, News of the World, 26 July 
• Noyes Thomas, ‘The Men Behind the Mask’, News of the World, 2 August 
• Robert Warren. “Noyes Thomas” Press Gazette, June 26, 2001. Online. Obituary.
• John-Pierre Joyce. Odd Men Out: Male Homosexuality in Britain from Wolfenden to Gay Liberation, 1954-1970. The Book Guild Ltd, 2019:167.

----------------------------

In 1962/3 when April was paid £10,000, and Christine Keeler £24,000, many were working for £15 a week or less (£800 per annum).

Robin Maugham (1916 – 1981)

Robin Maugham, the gay nephew of the gay writer Somerset Maugham, was educated at Eton and Cambridge and trained as a barrister. During World War II, he declined a commission in the Hussars and instead joined up as an ordinary trooper in the 4th County of London Yeomanry tank regiment bound for North Africa. Later, his commanding officer recorded in dispatches that Maugham had saved the lives of perhaps 40 men by pulling them from destroyed tanks.

He started spending time at Ibiza, which was just becoming fashionable in the mid-1960s. There he met April Ashley. In 1967 he got it into his head that he should write her biography.

The Odyssey version:

“Robin wanted to write my life story. We met at the Ivy Restaurant where I often went with 'Daddy Pat' Dolin, and it was arranged that I go out to Ibiza to discuss it. When I arrived his first question on the subject was unbelievably tactless.

'Mind your own bloody business!' I replied.

He flew into a tantrum and I was banished to the back of the house. Robin often threw tantrums, especially after drinking too much. 'I'm the Viscount Maugham! How dare you speak to me like that!' “ (Odyssey p189)

The First Lady version:

“Robin wanted to write my life story and we agreed to talk about at his house. His first question on the subject was unbelievable tactless. ‘How often do you masturbate?’

‘Mind your own bloody business!’

Robin went into a tantrum of epic proportions. I was banished from the main house to a cottage at the back. It was a short-lived exile. He often threw tantrums, especially after drinking too much.” (First Lady p244)

The Peter Burton version:

“I knew that another friend of mine - the late Robin Maugham - had already relinquished the task after a row with April over a question, asked by Maugham's research assistant Derek Peel ("When you were a boy, April" he had queried, "did you masturbate?"), which Maugham thought vital and April thought an impertinence.” (Burton)

Maugham wrote a mini biography of April for the People newspaper in early 1970 after the divorce trial.

Maugham later came to know Peter Burton:

“Then, in 1968, his friend Colin Spencer introduced him to the novelist Robin Maugham, whose literary talents had been steadily eroded by his fondness for "just another little drink". For more than a decade, Burton learned to cope with Maugham's alcohol-fuelled whims and rages. He helped him complete a number of books and articles, and at least one, Conversations With Willie (WH Allen 1978), was entirely Burton's work.” (Collis, 2011)

• Robin Maugham. “Why I think the judge was wrong over April”. The People, 8 February 1970. Online.
• Peter Burton. “The star who never was”. Gay News, ??. Online
• Rose Collis. “Peter Burton: Writer and publisher who championed gay literature for over 35 years”. The Independent, 19 November 2011. Online.

EN.Wikipedia(Robin Maugham)

Ronald Maxwell

“As April left the court room at the conclusion of Corbett v Corbett, “There was a scuffling press conference but April said little, committed as she was to an exclusive telling of her courtroom experience, in return for five thousand pounds. It was quickly done. … On 8 February 1970, the Sunday Mirror printed conversations with the accomplished interviewer Ronald Maxwell.” (Inside Out p167-8)

• Ronald Maxwell & April Ashley. “I am a woman: April Ashley’s Own Story: I am not a monster”. Sunday Mirror, 8 February 1970. Online.
• Ronald Maxwell & April Ashley. “April Ashley’s Own Story: The next man I marry”. Sunday Mirror, 15 February 1970. Online.

Peter Burton ( 1945 - 2011)

Early in 1973, April made her first attempt at writing her memoirs. The gay journalist Peter Burton was contacted by her solicitor, Peter Madok and asked if he were interested in being her co-author. 

“I expressed interest in the project and after initial discussions with both April and Peter, a contract was drawn up. I started a series of interviews with April at her Chelsea flat — but somewhere along the line, I realised, after all, that I was not the right person to co-write the book. April saw her autobiography as bright and glamorous — our working title, I seem to remember, was April: The Star Who Never Was; I saw the book as a tragedy enlightened by moments of high comedy — in cinematic terms, a movie by Bergman rather than Lubitsch. I wrote to Peter and April expressing my doubts, returned a suitcase full of research material and considered the project abandoned.”

• Peter Burton. “The star who never was”. Gay News, ??. Online

Duncan Fallowell (1948 - )

April first met Duncan Fallowell on her first visit to Oxford in the late 1960s. He later said: “I must have been the first Oxford undergraduate to be caught with a transsexual in my rooms. We met through friends and I invited her to dinner at Magdalen.” (Kirby, 2006)

On leaving university in 1970, Fallowell wrote to the Spectator on a hunch asking to write a rock column for them. They accepted on the condition that it be called ‘pop’. He was later their film and then fiction critic. He wrote about and then became involved with the German avant-garde group Can. He also became known from his writings as bisexual.

April re-met Duncan several times over the next decade. (Odyssey 204-5, 219-20, 231, 253, 261)

In 1976, after a heart attack after running a restaurant, after the divorce case, April retired to the bookshop town of Hay-on-Rye on the Welsh border. 

“I was in bed for five months. I had just arrived in Hay and I hardly knew anyone, I did not know what to do with my time so I began to write down my life. I sent off the manuscript and though people liked the content, they said I was no writer, which I knew. But Jonathan Cape did show an interest and now the book is being reworked with a professional writer called Duncan Fallowell.” (Williamson)

Fallowell moved in with her in Hay-on-Wye, which caused comments from the neighbours. He stayed for two years, and the book, April Ashley’s Odyssey was the result.

Fallowell later commented: 

“I’d known April since my teens and she often asked me to write her life story. So when I burned up in London at the end of the 1970s I moved to Hay-on-Wye to do it. April had moved there when she too had burned up in London, some years earlier. We were both good friends of Richard Booth who’d already started the book business in Hay, which was still in its early, wildly eccentric phase; so the place suited April and me very well. I told April I could never be a ghost writer and only agreed to do it if my name came first as author. She agreed. She had the title set in stone: April Ashley’s Odyssey. I didn’t want to write it in the third person, so interviewed her exhaustively, researched widely, and took all the material to a flat in the Hay workhouse, which I’d rented for the purpose, and wrote it pretending to be April. She was already well into her exiled duchess manner, so I took that and added an educated underpinning.” (Wisniewski)

Anthony Andrew commented in 2000: 

“Duncan Fallowell, co-author of April Ashley’s Odyssey, says that in his experience few transsexuals harbour dreams of being a ‘normal’ woman. ‘They aspire to this sort of glamourised ideal of womanhood’ “.

Roz Kaveney’s review: 

“April Ashley's Odyssey is essentially a bit of social chit-chat rags to riches to sadder but wiser - but it is readable and amusing and a superior example of its kind. It does convey a sense of time passing and society changing. It also has the major merit of lack of pretension; it is the life of one transsexual whose life has been interesting for reasons other than simply being a transsexual's life. April is more interested in her status as a socialite than in her sexuality and there are times when this attitude becomes a refreshing corrective to too much earnestness. … How much Duncan Fallowell contributed to the book's structure how much he improved April Ashley's memory with research is neither here nor there. His achievement in helping her with the book has been largely to disappear from the end product and leave it recognisably hers. The result is as stylish as the pair of them.”

• Richard Williamson. “The book that will put April Ashley in the news again”. Sunday Mercury, 29 June 1980: 10.
• Duncan Fallowell & April Ashley. April Ashley’s Odyssey. Jonathan Cape, 1982.
• Peter Bradshaw. “The invasion of Tuscany-on-Wye”. The Evening Standard, 2 June 1992.
• Roz Kaveney. “The unsinkable April Ashley”. Gay News, ??. Online.
• Andrew Anthony. “At the court of Queen Lear”. The Observer, 24 December 2000: 12. Online.
• Terry Kirby, “April Ashley: the first Briton to undergo a sex change”. The Independent, 2 February 2006. Online.
• John Wisniewski. “Writer DUNCAN FALLOWELL: On The New Journalism Movement And Upcoming Projects”. AMFM magazine. March 17, 2021. Online.

EN.Wikipedia(Duncan Fallowell)

Douglas Thompson (? - )

In the mid 2000s April spent some time in the south of France with friends where she was introduced to Lesley Thompson and her husband Douglas, who had authored books on a variety of subjects. They agreed to produce a second April autobiography, which was released in 2006.

“April Ashley, the first Briton to undergo a sex change, has co-authored a new autobiography, ‘The First Lady’, with one Douglas Thompson. This has come as a surprise to her old friend (and former lover) Duncan Fallowell, who collaborated with her on an earlier book, ‘My Odyssey’, which was published back in 1982. After all, Fallowell and Ashley are still in touch and she has said nothing to him about it. Surprise has turned to dismay now that Fallowell has seen the new book, for it contains vast swaths of material that have simply been lifted from the earlier book. ‘April has been very naughty,’ he tells me. ‘She seems to think that she owns the copyright to a book of which we were joint authors, which was almost entirely written by me.’ John Blake Publishing, the firm behind ‘The First Lady’, can expect firm action from Fallowell. He has already consulted the Society of Authors and prepared a dossier for his agent Gillon Aitken showing the extent of the alleged infringement of copyright.” (Silvester, August 2006)

“So how come Ashley and Thompson thought they could help themselves to so much of Fallowell's prose? Step forward Robert Smith, Thompson's agent, who describes what has happened as a ‘terrible error’. Three years ago he wrote to the publishers, Cape, asking if they would relinquish the rights to the book. Smith told me last week that Cape said they had already been returned to Fallowell and Ashley, but that he (Smith) didn’t know how to get hold of Fallowell. This is curious, given Fallowell has a website, writes book reviews for national papers and has lived at the same Notting Hill address for more than 30 years. But another question occurs. Why, in his initial letter to Cape, did Smith claim he was acting for ‘the above authors’, i.e. Fallowell and Ashley? ‘I did not claim to be representing Fallowell,’ says Smith. It's all very mysterious”. (Silvester, December 2006)

After taking legal action for plagiarism, Fallowell received damages, costs, and the reaffirmation of his intellectual property rights; and a public apology from the authors and John Blake Publishing was printed in The Bookseller 1 December 2006.

Remaining copies were pulped. However many copies had already been sold, and even today copies are available on the second-hand market.

In 2024 Douglas Thompson released a second book on April, this time written in the third person.

• April Ashley with Douglas Thompson. The First Lady. John Blake Publishing, 2006.
• Christopher Silvester. “A new autobiography, The First Lady”. The Independent, 20 August, 2006: 32.
• Christopher Silvester. “Congratulations to Duncan Fallowell”. The Independent, 3 December 2006: 43.
• Douglas Thompson. Inside Out: The Extraordinary Lagacy of April Ashley. Gemini Books, 2024.

https://dougiethomp

--------------

The First Lady and Inside Out somehow avoid mentioning Duncan Fallowell at all, despite his friendship with April over the years, and avoid mentioning Odyssey.

Both Odyssey and First Lady do not mention the Sunday Mirror interview with Ronald Maxwell.

One thing that I liked about the first two books, unlike so many auto/biographies, is that they have an index, and one can find persons etc. Inside Out does not.

The reviews of Inside Out that I have seen all seem to have never heard of April Ashley before, and certainly do not compare the new book with the previous two. Goodreads.

There are two books that give a history of the News of the World:

• Cyril Bainbridge & Roy Stockdill.  The News of the World Story: 150 Years of the World's Bestselling Newspaper. Harper Collins, 1993.
• Laurel Brake, Chandrika Kaul & Mark W Turner. The News of the World and the British Press, 1843-2011: Journalism for the Rich, Journalism for the Poor.  Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Neither of them mentions April Ashley. Come to that no transsexuals at all are mentioned.  

However see Alison Oram's Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture, Routledge, 2007 which, although confined to trans men, does detailed comparisons on how The People and The News of the World differ in how they reported trans stories.

Three books – expected but never arrived

 All writers have plans that do not pan out, but readers, who enjoyed/appreciated the early book, do have a pang of regret that the promised second volume has never appeared – not even after a quarter-century. 

These three books in very different ways dominated the discussions of gay and trans history over that period, and were much appreciated.

• 
  Camille Paglia. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. 1990.
  

“The first volume of Sexual Personae examines antiquity, the Renaissance, and Romanticism from the late eighteenth century to 1900. I demonstrate that Romanticism turns almost immediately into Decadence, which I find throughout major nineteenth-century authors, even Emily Dickinson. The second volume will show how movies, television, sports, and rock music embody all the pagan themes of classical antiquity. My approach throughout the book combines disciplines: literature, art history, psychology, and religion.” (p xiii)

• 
  George Chaucey. Gay New York: Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. 1994.

“Thus the dangers gay men faced increased rapidly in the postwar decades, even as the cultural boundaries of their world were changing. I take up the reconfiguration of the boundaries between queer and normal men, the reshaping of the gay world and the transformation of its public image, and the shifting modes of gay resistance in my next book, The Making of the Modern Gay World, 1935–1975, currently in progress.” (p 360-1)

• 
  Randolph Trumbach. Sex and the Gender Revolution, Volume 1: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London. 1998,

The expectation is in the title: Volume I implies a volume II, and also:

“The lives of these sodomites (and of the sapphists after 1770) have been described recently by myself and by other historians, and I mean in the second volume of this study to present a full analysis of London’s sodomites and sapphists”. (p 3) and

“These are the uncertainties that remain in constructing the history of sexual behavior and its relation to gender in the first century of the modern Western world’s existence. I hope that others will take them up, and I mean to pursue them myself in a succeeding volume on the history of sodomites and sapphists and the origins of modern Western homosexuality.” (p 430)

Frank Blunt (1865 - ?) pioneer trans man, gigolo

Original version October 2011.

Initially from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Blunt had been raised as a girl named Annie Morris. The father was abusive and at age 13, Morris ran away.   Morris was accepted by a horse trader, James Blunt, and they presented Morris as his son, Frank Blunt. They traveled within the US.  Frank worked men's jobs.  For a while Frank managed a lumber camp in northern Wisconsin.   

The Blunts moved to Milwaukee and opened a saloon, a rooming house and a retail coal business.  Frank gambled in (men-only) pool-halls, voted and chased women.  He thrived as a gigolo, and was funded by several woman.  James Blunt later commented: "He was never fond of work. He felt he had done his time and that part of his life was over."

Frank married a wheat heiress, Lulu Seitz, in Fond du Lac.   The marriage was reported as "happily consummated", but after six years, he began seeing other women, and Lulu demanded a divorce. 

Later he married Gertrude Field of Eau Claire, and they started a restaurant together, but they had already separated by the time of his arrest.

In July 1893 Frank visited J G Perkins in Fond de Lac, Wisconsin, claiming to be a long-lost nephew.  After he left it was dicovered that $175 (over $6,000 today) was missing from a trunk, and an empty wallet was concealed in the chimney.  

Perkins filed a warrant and Blunt was arrested in downtown Milwaukee, and returned to Fond de Lac for trial.  During examination, it was discovered that he was female-bodied, and that he had previously been Annie Morris.  The judge asked Frank Blunt why he had chosen to live life as a man. Was this the only crime he had committed under a false identity? Frank told the judge that once he put on a man's suit, he felt like a real person for the first time. As a girl he had been scared. As a man, his life finally began: and he drank, smoked, swore and gambled as much as any other man.  This is who he felt himself to be: a man. He did not intend to return to women's clothing or a women's life, no matter what the verdict was.

A witness, a Milwaukee saloon-keeper confessed to nearly shooting Blunt dead for "paying heavy attentions to his wife." "She always dressed stylishly, mingled with men, and succeeded in having an easy time of it," he told the court. "She was always very sporty".

Another barkeeper reported Blunt had stolen away his wife and taken $450 (almost $16,000 today) He followed the couple to Chicago, Oshkosh and Milwaukee, but Blunt was "too cute for them." Reunited in Walker's Point, the saloon man fired six shots at Blunt but missed.

In January 1894, convicted of larceny, Anna Morris - not Frank Blunt - was sentenced to 12 months in the penitentiary.  

Blunt's defense costs had been provided by his second wife, Gertrude Field, and she embraced him and wept for a half-hour.  

He was released for good behavior in December 1894, and quickly disappeared, and was never heard of again.

• " 'Anne Morris' Guilty".  Watertown Republican (Wisconsin), Nov 29, 1893.  Online. 
• "He was a Woman: For Fifteen Years - She lived here for several years and was married to another woman".  The Weekly Leader, (Eau Clair), Jan 7, 1894,
• "One Year for 'Frank Blunt' ".  Grant County Witness (Platteville, Wisconsin), Jan 10, 1894.
• Michael Lesy: Wisconsin Death Trip. Pantheon Books, 1973, - under 1894.
• Jonathan Katz. Gay American History: Lesbians And Gay Men In The U.S.A. New York: Crowell 1976. New York: A Discus Book.1978: 352.  Online.
• Ria Brodell. "Frank Blunt & Gertrude Field" Butch Heroes.  Online.
• Wisconsin LGBTQ History Project. "Frank Blunt" XTwitter, Nov 20, 2021. Online
• Michail Takach & B J Daniels.  "The Curious Case of Frank Blunt'. In  A History of Milwaukee Drag: Seven Generations of Glamour.  The History Press, 2022: 30-2.

David Petillo (1908 – 1983) hitman, mafioso

Original Version March 2010.

Antonio Petillo from Pollico, Salerno south of Naples, emigrated to New York in 1885, and married Michelina, also an Italian immigrant, the next year. They had seven children – David was the sixth. Antonio was a sanitation worker and later a driver. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1910. 

David attended a public school sometimes, and left for good when he was 14. He became involved with Giosue Aiello, a criminal who ran an area in the Lower East Side of Manhattan around Cherry Street. Petillo became regarded as a finocchio, or even a fairy. At age 18 he was sent to Chicago where Al Capone was to straighten him out.

Aiello disappeared, probably killed, around 1920, and David Petillo, along with partner Charles “Chalutz” Gagliodotto, and others of Aiello’s crew, were initiated into the Lucky Luciano's  (Genovese) organization. 

Petillo and Gagliodotto were contracted to carry out murders for the bosses of the Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago Mafia organizations. It was during this time that “Little Davie” earned a reputation as the “cross-dressing killer”, as he often dressed in drag in order to get close to unsuspecting victims, although it was sometimes Gagliodotto (who had the advantage of being barely 5 feet/1.5m) in drag, and sometimes both. It is said that both dressed as female mourners for a funeral, complete with veils, and slipped into a car after their target to kill him without detection. The FBI estimated that Petillo and Gagliodotto were involved in as many as 30 murders.

In 1924, Petillo was charged with "jostling" (intentionally and unnecessarily placing one's hand in close proximity to another person's pocket or handbag) and given sixty days. That same year in October he was charged as Joseph Rose Richmond with attempted grand larceny, but discharged. He served a day in jail in May 1925 and in June, he was charged under the name Joseph Rose and given 30 days. He was charged again in October in Danbury, Connecticut with vagrancy: this time as Herbert Quell.

David married Madeline in 1928 or 29. In the 1930 federal census he gave his profession as a salesman. He had a unit on Canal Street buying odd lots, although other sources say that he was in Chicago as Al Capone’s bodyguard. 

In 1932 Petillo made his first trip to Italy with his sister Lavinia. He made another trip as part of Luciano’s entourage.

On return to New York, he reported to Lucky Luciano, and in 1936 he was arrested on ‘white slavery charges’ in a racket that grossed $12 million a year with over 3,000 prostitutes working at over 200 brothels. Enough women were happy to testify against him.

“Among the brothels Luciano and Petillo had under their proverbial thumb was one operated by the husband-and-wife team of Pete Harris and Mildred Balitzer. Harris pleaded guilty, and Balitzer turned state’s evidence. Balitzer testified about meeting both Little Davie and Charlie Lucky numerous times, and that she was required to collect from each of the girls at her brothel $10 a week which “bonded” them to the mobsters.” (Crawford, 2015 p 85).

“It was the gangster trial of the decade. After beer baron Dutch Schultz was shot to death in a New Jersey tavern, Luciano was declared public enemy number one on the East Coast. [Special Prosecutor Thomas E] Dewey vowed to take him down. Instead of narcotics or gambling, both of which fell under Luciano’s domain, Dewey went after what he saw as the gangster’s weak spot: his control of the city’s $12-million-a-year “vice rackets,” including two hundred brothels and two thousand prostitutes.

Indicted under his given name, Salvatore Lucanía, the trial of Charlie Lucky garnered daily headlines. Dewey depicted the crime lord pulling the strings as he strutted around his luxury suite in the Waldorf-Astoria in a silk robe. Luciano’s main instrument of terror and control over the prostitution ring was “Little Davie” Petillo, or Betillo as he often allowed his name to be misspelled.

'You guys are through,' a brothel operator testified he was told by Luciano. 'I am giving the business to Little Davie.' Those who resisted suffered beatings, bullets pegged in their direction, and guns and knives in the ribs, Dewey told jurors.” (Capeci & Robbins)

Petillo was sentenced to serve 25-40 years in New York State’s Sing Sing prison. Luciano was sentenced to 30-50 years. Later in 1936, authorities moved them to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY, a remote facility far away from New York City. At Clinton, Petillo prepared special dishes for Luciano in a kitchen set aside by authorities. After the US entered the Second World War, Luciano struck a deal with the  government to get Mafia co-operation re security on the New York waterfront to prevent Axis infiltration, and then provided Mafia contacts in Sicily to aid the Allied invasion in 1943. In return Luciano was released but deported to Italy. Petillo was still in prison.

David’s wife Madeline died in 1950; his parents returned to live in Salerno, Italy. Antonio Petillo died in 1954. One of David’s brothers, Roland, became an Italian police officer, and another an agent for the IRS.

David was paroled in 1955, and then trafficked heroin for the Genovese family though Lower East Side and Greenwich Village bars including the 82 Club (run by his cousin Anna Genovese (née Giovaninna Petillo).

He was arrested for violation of parole in June 1958, and on narcotics charges. He was returned to Clinton Correctional Facility for another nine years.

Gagliodotto was among 19 arrested in 1965 charged with being part of a $90-million-a-year narcotics ring. The defense attorney filed multiple motions and three years passed. Gagliodotto was particularly edgy, and was addicted to his product, the heroin. He accused two colleagues of stealing from him and executed them. The others thought that he had gone too far. Petillo, newly released from prison, agreed to deal with him, and took along his cousin Eddie Vassallo. Gagliodotto did not suspect his old partner, but Petillo and Vassallo, using a plastic bag, strangled him, and then left him on the street. The morgue doctors did not pay enough attention and put it down to a heart attack, until rumors reached the FBI and the job was done properly. However nobody was ever charged.

Petillo now, in the late 1960s, became involved in pornography until the business was sold to the Gambino family.

David, age 61, married for a second time in 1969 to Phyllis aged 19. They went on honeymoon to Italy and Greece. On a second trip to Italy in January 1973, David and Phyllis were arrested on arrival and quickly deported back to the US.

From 1975, Petillo lived in Brick Township, New Jersey, and was building up a new criminal crew, and running adult bookstores and gay health spas. In February 1980, after a dispute about ownership and profits, Petillo and three others shot and killed his cousin Edward Vassallo.

Petillo fled the US via Mexico after the murder. The FBI and Interpol tracked him as he moved between luxury hotels in Germany, Greece, Singapore, Bali, Hong Kong, and Hawaii. The trail ended three days after Christmas in 1983 when Petillo collapsed and died while staying in the resort town of Málaga, Spain, on the Mediterranean coast. He was 75. His body was returned to New York City for burial.

• John Martin. “Dewey’s Vice Raids Peril Police Jobs », Daily News, February 4, 1936.
• “Vice Ring Links Half of Nation”. The Reading Times, May 12, 1936.
• Tom Renner. “Mobster Reported Slain”. NY Newsday, August 28, 1968.
• Dorothy Hinchcliff. “Witness tells of carrying out mob’s orders to kill”. Asbury Park Press, May 19, 1982.
• “David Petillo”. "The FBI Files: David Petillo Did It in Drag". Friends of Ours: Mostly About Organized Crime,12/20/2010. Archive. 
• Eric Ferrara. “Petillo, David Silvio” in Manhattan Mafia Guide: Hits, Homes & Headquarters. History Press, 2011: 122-4.
• Phillip Crawford, The Mafia and the Gays. Kindle, 2015: 85-6.
• Jerry Capeci & Tom Robbins. Mob Boss: The Life of Little Al D’Arco the man who brought down the Mafia. St Martin’s Press, 2013.
• Jim Elledge. The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago’s First Century. Chicago Review Press, 2018: 82.

Wikitree(David Silvio Petillo, Antonio Petillo)

IT.Wikipedia(Dave Petillo)

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David’s family name is sometimes given as Betillo. Wikipedia spells it so when writing about Lucky Luciano. 

Neither Petillo nor Betillo is listed among the notable inmates on the Wikipedia page on Sing Sing prison.

Petillo almost certainly was not permitted to transvest while in prison, and there is no mention of any action afterwards. Therefore he had stopped by the age of 28.

See also The Murderers amongst us.