Jenny Moore (1887 - ?) keeper of a disorderly house

 Moore was born in the then slum area of Oakwellgate, Gateshead (just across the River Tyne from Newcastle), and raised as a boy called Robert. Moore and her siblings were raised by their mother. From an early age she had declared herself to be Jennie, a female, and attempted to live as girl. By 1901 13-year-old Robert was incarcerated at the Abbot Memorial Ragged and School, where children under 14 were sent after arrest for vagrancy, truancy and/or begging, or if vulnerable to abuse and neglect. This was an ‘industrial school’ where children were offered skill training and ‘moral education’. 

By 1911, when she was 24, Jennie, listed as Robert, was living at a seaman’s boarding house in South Shields and working there as a servant, and was so recorded in the Census of that year.

Daily Mirror 1913

By 1913 Moore was living as Jennie, and was convicted of keeping a disorderly house in Hartlepool, County Durham. She was taken to Durham for trial, and a street photograph of her was published in the Daily Mirror. Many so charged would have appeared in court in male clothing to mitigate the sentence, and claimed the transvesting as a lark or fancy dress. Jennie however was now confirmed in her gender, and appeared as her true self.

Jennie and her brother Fred Coulthard were in Gateshead in 1915. They were observed by the police, and charged with “being a reputed thief he did loiter in Gateshead for the purpose of committing a felony”. Jennie was, as usual, initially taken to be a cis woman, until she was examined at the police station. She explained that she had lived as female when she could since childhood. When asked why, made no reply. A search of Jennir’s home found no male clothes at all, but did find a well-kept neat flat with a piano and a gramophone, good curtains and carpet. The police also found correspondence with a soldier serving in the already ongoing war. Jenny was committed to a men’s prison for three months, and Fred was fined £1/7/-. 

In 1916 she was arrested in Liverpool charged with living an immoral life and ‘permitting a house to be used for immoral traffic’. She had been living as Mrs Jennie Gray, wife of James Gray – who was also charged with the same offence. Initially the arresting officers again accepted that she was a cis woman.

• “Man who dresses like a woman”. Daily Mirror, 16 December 1913 p9.
• "Man as a Woman: A Remarkable Masquerade: Gateshead Man Sent to Prison". Greenock Telegraph. 2 August 1915 p6.
• "Man dressed as a Woman: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Strange Disclosures". Newcastle upon Tyne Journal, 2 August 1915 p8.
• "Man-Woman at Gateshead: Extraordinary Case of Masquerading". The Darlington North Star, 2 August 1915 p5.
• “Man in woman’s clothes: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Remarkable evidence at the Police Court”. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 2 August 1915 p9.
• “Man dressed as woman: Extraordinary Liverpool disclosures”. Liverpool Evening Express, 29 June 1916 p3.
• “Man and ‘Wife’: Male Prisoners sent to Assizes”. Liverpool Daily Post, 30 June 1916 p3.
• Nic Aaron & Jeanie Sinclair. "Remembering Jennie Moore" in Kit Heyam & Jon Ward (eds). New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity: Forging A Home For Ourselves. Bloombury Academic, 2025: 87-113.

Unfortunately all we have as primary sources are newspaper articles that give her male name, and treat her as a curiosity. We can however see past these and see a lone trans woman unable to get a regular job, and without information about other trans persons.

1913 was almost the last time that fashionable women wore ankle-length skirts/dresses.  The changes brought about by the 1914-8 war led to more practical shorter skirts, and in the 1920s the demands of fashion took this further.

The government had passed the National Insurance Act 1911. All workers who earned under £160 a year had to pay 4 pence a week into the scheme; the employer paid 3 pence, and general taxation paid 2 pence. This provided some sick care and a small income whilst ill. This was the beginning of the welfare state, and was copied from the system that had been introduced in Germany in 1883. This was obviously a good step forward, but the associated NI cards, which were required when starting a job, would have outed Jennie and other trans persons, and thus made it very difficult to get a legal job.

The 1915 conviction re loitering would have been under the 1824 Vagrancy Act, while the 1913 and 1916 convictions of keeping a disorderly house would have been under the 1751 Disorderly Houses Act.

In January 1916, military conscription was introduced for the first time in British history, despite the previous raising of one of the largest all-volunteer armies in history for the Great War. Presumably Jennie’s male persona was called. Did her female persona result in rejection? Did she serve, voluntarily or otherwise, and die on the Western Front (as did the trans protagonist of the novel The Scarlet Pansy)? We have no record of her after 1916.

Whatever happened to her after 1916, Jennie Moore is what we might call a primary transsexual, although she would not know the term. When she was asked in court why she lived as a woman, she did not answer, probably because she had not encountered any suitable jargon even though ‘travesty’ and ‘transvest’ as a verb had been in use in England since the beginning of the 18^th century, and 'Travestiment' was being used by 1832, and 'Travestier' by 1883. It is likely that Jennie did not associate herself with those terms in that they were mainly used for cross-dressing, and she did not voluntarily cross-dress as a man.