Pre-Stonewall Trans peer-support groups

Outside of Europe and the Americas peer-supporting trans groups have thrived for millennia, the Hijra in India and the Kathaoy in Thailand being the best known. Many of the First Nations across the Americas had two-spirit roles with community support, but were repressed by European colonialism. The major trans community in the Roman Empire was the Cybele worshipping gallae, but they were repressed in the 4th century with the Christianisation of the Empire.

This account is of the recovery of trans communities in Europe and North America.

Peer-support groups as we know them do not appear until after WWII, but earlier trans persons sought out each other at clubs and balls and in select publications, and also found each other in unexpected places like POW camps. The major Female Impersonation nightclubs are also listed here, even where cross-dressed customers were discouraged, in that there was often back-stage peer support and information exchange for the performers re clothing and makeup, and later hormones and surgeries.

See also Three Centuries of Police raids.

1709 onwards Molly Houses

A new development in the early 18th century was that of houses where queers, some of them transvesting, sought their own kind. Their dressing was distinctly different from the cis cross-dressing found in the masquerade balls, and their gender-role sexual activities were very different from the heteronormative sodomy that had been common until that time. 

1860s Fanny and Stella

Fanny and Stella were the best known of a circle of trans women who frequented fashionable places in and around London, until Fanny and Stella were charged with 'conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence'. Sodomy was not proved, and their acquittal established that transvesting was not a crime in England. GVWW

1897 - 1917 Storyville, New Orleans

The District, a 38-block area, was designated as the part of the city in which prostitution would be tolerated. This had been proposed by Alderman Sidney Story and the area became known as Storyville. Miss Big Nelly was the Madam of a gay brothel. The Frenchman’s was a small jazz club which was popular with trans women. The District played an important part in the evolution of early jazz, and was an area where queer persons were more comfortable.

1914 - 1918 Prisoner-of-war camps

All-male POW camps had theatricals and needed persons to play female roles - some of whom stayed in role off-stage. A major example was the German officer Emmerich Laschitz held in the Siberian camp of Achinsk until 1920.

1919 - 1933 Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Berlin

In addition to Magnus Hirschfeld’s general support for trans persons, some also lived at the Institut, of whom the best known are Dörchen Richter, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque.

1920s Club D’Eon in Berlin

A transvestite social club. Hirschfeld’s associate Felix Abraham was on the committee.

1922 - 1923 Eldorado, Berlin

Three dance halls opened sequentially and run by Ludwig Konjetschni, where trans persons were welcome. GVWW.

1923 - 1941 London Life

The major British publication between the wars that paid attention to cross-dressing and similar topics and printed readers’ letters on such. Google Books.

1923 - 1938 the Faggots’ Ball or the Dance of the Fairies at the Hamilton Lodge, Manhattan.

This became the most popular gay event in town, attended by both black and white queers, and also artists and writers. About 800 attended in 1925 and fifteen hundred in 1926. Growing numbers of spectators attended not to dance but just to gawk, particularly at those in dresses. Three thousand spectators in 1929 watched two thousand dancers, and in the next few years a total of up to seven thousand spectators and dancers attended. GVWW.

1926 DamenKlub Violetta, Berlin

Run by female transvestite Lotte Hahm.

1929 Transvestitenvereinigung D`Eon, Berlin

Founded by Lotte Hahm for both male and female transvestites. This was so successful that a few weeks later they had to find a larger meeting place. Later the Association had its own dance events at Violetta. Its events were reported in Die Freundin.

1930s - The Lady Austin Balls, London

Mainly “Hotel Staff Dances” in private ballrooms attended by domestic servants and hotel staff, mainly men, but many cross-dressed. In 1932 it was raided and 33 men and 1 woman were arrested. GVWW,

1933 - 1940 La Paloma Club, outside Miami

A club of which it was said that the clientele included “homosexuals in evening gowns, trousered lesbians, and prostitutes”. It acquired nationwide fame in1937 when it was raided by the Ku Klux Klan. It was finally closed on charges of under-age heterosexuality. GVWW.

1933 - 1999 Finocchio’s, San Francisco

The most glamorous of the US Female Impersonation clubs, popular with celebrities and with tourists. It ran for 66 years, and most professional drag artists appeared there. GVWW.

1935 - 1950s. The Finnie Balls, Chicago

Following the raid on the Cabin Inn, Alfred Finnie organized a small extra ball on the South Side at 25¢ to get in, mainly attended by blacks. Each year it grew, and by the 1950s Finnie’s Balls attracted thousands both gay and straight, black and white, and was featured in Jet and Ebony magazines. Apart from the balls, Alfred worked as a club doorman and street hustler. He was killed in a gambling brawl in 1943, but the balls continued in his name. GVWW.

1939 - 1945 WWII Prisoner-of-war camps

As in WWI, all-male POW camps had theatricals and needed persons to play female roles - some of whom stayed in role off-stage. A major example was Bobbie Spong in Changai camp, Singapore.

1939-1972 The Jewel Box Revue, touring US

The Revue toured for 30 years, was racially integrated and was the best known drag show of its kind in the US. GVWW.

Mid 1940s - 1975 The Phil Black Funmaker Balls, Manhattan

The precursor of the later Voguing balls. GVWW.

1944 - mid 1950s Soldiers-in-Skirts Revues, England touring

About the only option in England at the time where assigned males could wear female clothes outside their homes. You had to have some inclination, if not actual talent, towards singing and dancing, although you did not have to have actually served in the forces. The first such show was actually a US import, Irving Berlins' This is the Army, which played the London Palladium for four nights in 1944. The initial idea had been to put men into dresses to make them look dreadful, but that soon started to change because the audience liked the prettiest ones best - which much suited the performers.  GVWW.

1947 - 1985 Le Carousel and Madame Arthur, Paris

Two clubs owned by Marcel Ouizman. While originally the performers had been the type who changed to male clothing before leaving, increasingly they were replaced by trans women who lived as women full time, took hormones and went to Casablanca for surgery. They were a community that shared advice and support, and exchanged addresses of doctors and electrolysists. Hormones were available in pharmacies without a prescription at that time. They also toured five continents, bringing an inconceivable example to countries where transgender surgery was not at all available.

1946 - 1956 The Garden of Allah, Seattle. 1946-1956

Seattle's most popular gay cabaret and one of the first gay-owned gay bars in the US. Local talent was encouraged. Unlike Finocchio’s in San Francisco, local queers were encouraged to attend, and amateur night contestants were often encouraged to become performers. GVWW.

1945 - 1981 Marie Schwidenhammer, Paris

After release from a German concentration camp and a forced resignation from the French Army, Schwidenhammer started living as female. She obtained diplomas in para-medical specialities and practiced as a masseuse therapist nurse, mainly in Paris. She was in contact with most French transsexuals and transvestites. It was she who happened to meet La Carousel star Coccinelle by chance on a train, and informed her of hormones, and of the possibility of transition. GVWW.

1944 - 1978 Louise Lawrence, San Francisco

The mother of trans organizing in the US. She networked with the performers at Finocchio’s, the homophile Mattachine Society, and educated professionals Karl Bowman, Alfred Kinsey and Harry Benjamin, and put trans women in touch with each other. GVWW.

1949 -1972 Club My-O-My, New Orleans

A performance venue in the West End of the city on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. This was far enough out to avoid city rules and police harassment. For several decades it was a popular tourist stop. In 1972 the building was destroyed in a fire.  White performers and audience only. 

1945 -1969 the Dew Drop Inn, New Orleans

Renowned for music, drag and cross-dressing by performers, bar staff and customers. Patsy Vidalia hosted the Gay Halloween Ball each year. Unlike Club My-O-My not racially segregated.

1946 - 1973 Justice Weekly

A Toronto Tabloid that was published weekly with accounts of international criminal trials, but also accounts of and letters from readers re homosexuality, cross-dressing and fetishism.

195? - 1963 Chevalier D’Eon Resort, NY State

A country home in the Catskills, owned by Susanna Valenti and her wife Marie. It was an isolated 150 acres with a main house, a barn and several snug but unheated bungalows. For $25 ($200 in 2022 money) a weekend visitor from the city got food and board and lessons in passing as female. Of particular note is the gathering there of 71 transvestites at Halloween 1962 dominated by Virginia Prince. GVWW.

1958 - 2008 Chez Nous, Berlin

A nightclub at Marburger Straße 14 in Charlottenburg, the oldest surviving Travestietheater in West Germany. It was featured in the Michael Caine/Harry Palmer espionage film Funeral in Berlin, 1966. GVWW.

1959 - 1967 National Pageants, 1959, US touring

Jack Doroshow/Flawless Sabrina, drag performer and organizer of pageants. Through his company, The Nationals Academy, Jack organized 46 pageants a year from 1959-1967. As local laws almost always prohibited cross-dressing, he would meet with officials and propose a charitable donation, and in return the town would pass a variance to permit the pageant. Usually the town officials did not understand that local people would be performing. The 1967 finals held in New York was a much bigger affair. The Muscular Dystrophy Association was announced as the charity, and Lady Bird Johnson, the President’s wife, and Robert Kennedy as co-sponsors, but they quickly dropped out as the nature of the event became clearer. The event was filmed as The Queen, 1968, which was a sensation at the Cannes International Film Festival. GVWW.

1959 - 1986 Transvestia Newsletter

Published by Virginia Prince and sold by subscription and later in adult book stores. It would become influential in introducing heterosexual transvestites to each other.

1960 Hose and Heels Club, Los Angeles

The first group organized by Virginia Prince.

1962 Full Personality Expression (FPR), Los Angeles and then nation wide.

Virginia Prince attempted to organize Transvestia's readership into a nationwide group. FP (from FemmePersonator) also stood for Full Personality. What was needed was Full Personality Expression (FPE). That was Hellenized into Phi Pi Epsilon in the fashion of university sororities. The Hose and Heel Club became the Alpha Chapter. Homosexuals, transsexuals and fetishists were not admitted. Soon afterward there were three other FPE chapters: Beta in Chicago, Delta in Cleveland, and Theta in Madison, Wisconsin. GVWW.

1960s Stella Minge was running the last Molly House in Silvertown, London.

A queen herself, she often encouraged younger queens. GVWW.

1964 - 1969 Casa Susanna, NY State

In 1963, Susanna and Marie sold their resort property as it was unprofitable. In early 1964 they bought another 150 acre property with a large house, close to Hunter, New York. This became Casa Susanna, and like the Chevalier D’Eon Resort was frequented by the transvestite crowd. GVWW.

1964 - 1977 Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF)

Reed Erickson, trans man, scion of wealth, philanthropist, founded the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), financed entirely by himself. He employed Zelda Suplee to run the EEF. She met with transsexuals and others who asked for help, and Erickson made the final decision whom to donate to. The EEF financed gay and trans organizations, and research into New Age activities such as acupuncture, homeopathy, dolphin communication and altered states of consciousness. The EEF published booklets on various aspects of transsexuality, sponsored addresses to various professionals, and sponsored two of John Money’s books, and three of Vern Bullough’s. It donated money to the Harry Benjamin Foundation, until Erickson fell out with Benjamin in 1968. It subsidized the transsexuality program at the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic. It sponsored three symposia that grew into the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA).         GVWW.

1965 l'Aide aux Malades Hormonaux (Amaho), Paris

Marie Schwidenhammer managed to register under the French law re voluntary associations.

1965 Dewey’s Coffee Shop, Philadelphia

Dewey's was a Philadelphia chain restaurant. The Dewey's at 208 S 13th St was the 'fag' branch where drags queens, hustlers, lesbian and cops ate and drank side by side. The other branches, especially the 17th St branch wanted it that only the 13th St branch be so. They started refusing service to known homosexuals and "persons wearing non-conformist clothing". 150 protesters staged a sit-in and the police were called. 3 protesters were arrested. At a second sit-in a week later the police declined to take any action, and the management agreed to end discrimination.

1965 onwards. Beaumont Society, England

Alice Purnell, Alga Campbell from Dublin, Giselle, a US expatriate, and Sylvia Carter, met in 1965 and agreed to found the Beaumont Society which was initially much the same as Prince’s FPE.

1966 Compton’s Cafeteria, San Francisco

This branch of Compton's was one of few places in the city where trans persons could go. However the staff started calling the police to arrest trans persons. By August a picket was launched. One night friction exploded into riot, dishes were smashed and the windows were smashed. The next night was a repeat.

1967 Change: Our Goal

A peer-support group in San Francisco. However it lasted only a year or so.

1968-1973 National Transsexual Counseling Unit

A peer-run counseling service established in San Francisco. Funded by EEF.

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

Of course, after Stonewall, many peer support groups were founded. 

Seattle-Portland-Spokane Timeline - Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956.

As I have commented before, there is now so much trans history, that a universal timeline is futile, and most that I encounter are badly done. I have already discussed which are the better universal timelines.

Which brings us to regional timelines. The rough story is the same everywhere: initial oppression, some resistance, some success, more success. But the details and the persons involved are quite different, and the local issues can also be very different. Some months back I did an Atlanta-Savannah timeline.

Now here is what happened in Oregon and Washington. Apologies for the lack of native two-spirit content. It should be included, but I was unable to find a summary of such.

The early years are dominated by pioneer trans men and female impersonators.   Of the trans women discussed in Part I only Alice Baker and Hotcha Hinton passed well off stage.   Trans women as we today think of them, will appear in Part II.   In the circumstances before the mid-1950s, those with the yearning to be trans women settled for stage performance or the occasional private party - that was all.  Of course many others yearned but suffered in silence.

The significance of Albert Ellsworth will become apparant in Part II.

Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956.
Part II – to the Buckwater & Kotala decisions 1996.

Part III – to now.

Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956

1579

Francis Drake made his way to Nehalem Bay in 1579 and spent five weeks in the middle of summer repairing his ship. He claimed the land between 38–48 degrees north latitude as a Symbolic Sovereign Act for England. 

1811

New Yorker John Jacob Astor financed the establishment of Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River as a western outpost to his Pacific Fur Company.

British explorer David Thompson conducted overland exploration. In 1811, while working for the North West Company, Thompson became the first European to navigate the entire Columbia River. Stopping on the way, at the junction of the Snake River, he posted a claim to the region for Great Britain and the North West Company.

Thompson who had met Kaúxuma Núpika/Manlike Woman in the upper reaches of the Columbia River, now met him and his wife at Fort Astoria. Kauxuma had been passing, but Thompson outed him. Kauxuma’s prophesies on the downward journey had so scared the Lower Columbia River inhabitants that the locals were intent upon killing Kauxuma, who now approached David Thompson to seek his protection during the journey upriver. 

 

1812

In the War of 1812, the British gained control of all Pacific Fur Company posts. 

1818

The Treaty of 1818 established joint British and American occupancy of the region west of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. By the 1820s and 1830s, the Hudson's Bay Company dominated the Pacific Northwest from its Columbia District headquarters at Fort Vancouver (built in 1825, across the Columbia River from present-day Portland). 

1843

The first law code for Oregon was a copy of Iowa’s simply because someone present had a copy. Sodomy was not a crime in Iowa, so it was not specified for Oregon either. 

1846

The border between the United States and British North America was set at the 49th parallel. The Oregon Territory was officially organized on August 13, 1848. 

1850

A new code of law adopted by the Oregon Territorial legislature did not include sodomy as a crime.
Settlement increased with the Donation Land Claim Act of 1850 and the forced relocation of the native population to reservations in Oregon. 

1853

A new criminal code in Oregon makes sodomy a crime for the first time, with a penalty set at 1 to 5 years in prison. 

Washington became a US state. 

1859

Oregon became a US State. 

1866

Election code of Washington State said that “all white citizens” could vote. It was said on the floor of the house that this included women. However women were turned away at subsequent elections. Litigation followed. See 1909. 

 

1886

First person sent to the Oregon State Penitentiary for Sodomy. 

1889

Ray Leonard and his father Joseph arrived in Lebanon, Oregon, and set up a cobbling business. 

1894

Joseph Leonard died. Ray continued the business. He lived in the back of the shop, and went fishing and hunting with other men from the town. The men would gather in his shop in the evenings to tell stories. 

1898

Harry Allen, then 16 and still living as female, gave birth to a boy. The father had already deserted. This confirmed to Allen that he should be a man. The boy child was raised by his grandparents.

1900

Harry Allen, then using the name Livingston, came to the attention of Seattle and national newspapers, which constantly gave his female name. He had been arrested several times by the Seattle police. The reason given was creating a disturbance, but really for wearing the wrong clothes. He left town and got a job as a bartender in Washington’s Tunnel City, a railway camp at Stevens Pass in the Cascade Mountains, where a tunnel was approaching completion. Edward ‘Black Jack’ Morse, a felon from Alaska, was shot dead during an attempted robbery in Seattle in 1900. In his pocket was said to be found a photograph of himself and Livingstone taken in Tunnel City 

1901

In Tunnel City, it was reported, a waitress named Dolly Quappe, killed herself on Christmas Day, 1901, by drinking carbolic acid. This was said to be because she discovered that her Harry, Harry Allen, was not really a man, and anyway he loved another. 

1902

August: Harry Allen, drunk, punched a cop, which led him to the jailhouse. 

1903

November: Pearl Waldren in Seattle attempted suicide by gunshot, declaring her love for Harry Allen. 

 

1906

Harry Allen was arrested again on a trumped-up charge – it was said that the police wanted to tie him in to train robberies by the infamous Bill Miner. 

1909

The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition put Seattle and Washington State in the national spotlight. Both the Washington Equal Suffrage Association and the National American Woman Suffrage Association held their annual conventions in Seattle in July 1909, and July 7 was declared Suffrage Day at the A-Y-P Exposition itself. 

1911

Harry Allen was arrested and charged with selling alcohol to Native Americans.

Ray Leonard, now 62, was found wandering at night and was disoriented. He was taken to the state hospital, where, on being stripped for a bath, was declared to be a woman. Ray recovered and returned to Lebanon, but the authorities made him wear dresses (although he wore trousers underneath). The men no longer gathered in his shop. 

1912

June: Harry Allen and a prostitute friend, Isabelle Maxwell, travelled to Portland, Oregon, and took a room. As Maxwell was a prostitute, Allen was charged under the 1910 Mann Act for transportation across state lines for immoral purposes. The arrival of a cop who knew Allen and his gender history resulted in the dropping of the Mann Act charges, although – Oregon having no law against cross-dressing, he was convicted of vagrancy and sentenced to 90 days in the city jail.

It just so happened that while Harry Allen was in jail, Miriam Van Waters, a Portland native, an anthropology student at Clark University, Massachusetts and a future prison reformer was in town doing research on female inmates at the city jail. Waters perceived Allen to be an energetic and independent woman for whom modern society (unlike many aboriginal tribes) had no place.

November 8: 19-year-old Benjamin Trout was arrested in Portland for only petty theft. But was so frightened that he confessed to participation in local homosexual culture. The story dominated local newspaper headlines for several weeks, over 50 men were implicated, those who fled to California, Washington and British Columbia were arrested there. Most charges were dismissed due to lack of evidence, however seven pled guilty or were convicted, and one committed suicide in his room at the YMCA. The newspapers contained numerous lists of suspects along with spicy details about drag parties, men with female names, secret codes of communication, male brothels, nationwide networks of perverts, and local sites where men met for sex.

December 12: physician Harry Start was charged with sodomy, and convicted. The prosecution entered into evidence accounts of drag parties.

Julian Eltinge’s Vaudeville Review played the Metropolitan Theatre in Seattle.

Oregon suffrage extended to women on the 6^th attempt. 

 

1913

Alice Baker arrived in Portland in the spring. She arrived in men’s clothes but found refuge at the women’s Peniel Mission, where she explained that she had had to leave home in Idaho after a disagreement with her parents, and had traveled as a man with a fake moustache. Donations were made to her of feminine attire and a ‘transformation’ wig. There were even rumors that a local evangelical minister had proposed. However the wife of the Peniel Mission’s superintendent became suspicious and a short stay in hospital resulted in the physician reporting to the superintendent and to the local authorities that she was a man. Baker quickly left town, on a ship sailing to California, with a man friend.

The Oregon legislature, responding to claims during the 1912 trials that fellatio was not forbidden by the 1853 Sodomy law, broadened the 1853 law to forbid both oral sex and “any act or practice of sexual perversity”.

Harry Start appealed on the grounds that it had been improper to introduce evidence regarding activities for which he had not been charged. The prosecutor argued that this was to establish that Start was a congenital invert. In May 1913 the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that “To admit testimony...making it appear that the accused has the bent of mind adapted to such actions, would cloud the issue and confuse the jury” and overturned the conviction. However Start had lost his Oregon medical license. Start moved to Hong Kong, his wife Mary to follow later, but she died of a drug overdose. Start moved on to the Philippines, where he was still working as a urologist during the Japanese occupation after 1941. After WWII he returned to the US and died in a mental hospital in California in 1946. 

1915

++Anarchist Emma Goldman, as part of a national tour in which she spoke about birth control, homosexuality, anti-war topics etc., was due to speak in Portland.  There had been no police interference elsewhere, but the Portland police arrested her before she spoke, citing the law against distributing information about contraceptives. She had spoken about homosexuality the evening before.  The case was dismissed because she had been prevented from speaking about contraception.  

 

1916

Robert Gaffney, 44, head janitor, was arrested in Seattle under the 1913 ‘Lazy Husband’ Act for deserting his wife, and sentenced to hard labor (for which his wife would gain $1.50 per day). However he revealed that he had been born female, and had lived as male for 18 years. He had married a woman, deserted by her husband with one child and another on the way, to help her. When she became pregnant again, he considered their agreement broken and left. The judge dismissed charges, and declared the marriage void. 

1917

Harry Allen was working as a police informer after Washington State introduced alcohol prohibition.
Alberta Hart, the only ‘woman’ in her class, graduated from the University of Oregon Medical Department in Oregon (now the Oregon Health Sciences University School of Medicine) with the highest honors in her class, and consulted a physician-psychiatrist, Dr J. Allen Gilbert of Portland, Oregon. Dr Gilbert established that the real problem was connected with her sex. He had initially tried hypnosis to get her to accept a conventional female role, but she had refused to continue in that. 

1918

In February, using the name Robert Allen Bamford, Jr., Hart married Inez Stark in California. Otherwise he was now Allen Hart. He requested a hysterectomy from Dr Gilbert, and the operation was done late in 1918. This is a remarkably early cooperation of a doctor to supply as much of a sex change operation as then technically feasible. 

1919

Harry Allen got into a quarrel with his 79-year-old father and was stabbed in the lungs from the back. The city hospital managed to save him. 

1920

Harry Allen was busted for opium

• Joshua Allen Gilbert. “Homosexuality and its Treatment”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 52, 4. Oct 1920: 297-322. Identified the patient, Alan Hart, only as ‘H’. The article is a mix of the patient’s and the doctor’s writing. In line with the practice of the time, the patient’s condition is labeled ‘homosexuality’.

1921

Ray Leonard died, age 72. 

 

1922

Harry Allen died at age 40 of syphilitic meningitis. 

1923

Alan Hart, MD had obtained a hospital position, but was outed after a chance encounter. Inez Stark left him. 

1925

Alan Hart and Inez were divorced. Later he married a school teacher. He obtained positions out of state.

 

1926

A speakeasy was opened in the basement of the 19^th-century Arlington Hotel in Seattle's Pioneer Square. It was called The Garden of Allah after the popular 1904 novel by Robert Hichens, which had been adapted as a play in 1911, and filmed in 1916 and 1927. 

The teenage Francis Blair already has a trunk full of female clothing, and passed easily on Seattle streetcars. 

1928

Albert Ellsworth was born in Yakima, Washington State, to a teenage mother, Mildred Sweet (1911-1955) and her husband Albert Ellsworth (1906-1990). They were told that the child was not expected to live, and relocated to Redmond, Washington. Subsequent enquiries to the hospital re the child went unanswered.  Neglected, the baby was cared for by a French aristocrat, Germaine Bonnefont (1894-1983) a teacher of French and Spanish, and her US husband, Robert Brown,  

1929

“Sam Jarvis” found guilty of second degree burglary after being arrested in stolen female clothes.

1930

In the 1930 census the Brown-Bonnefont family listed Ellsworth as their son Bobby Brown. They took the young boy to France, although without the formality of adoption.

18-year-old Vilma arrived in Seattle. While he had previously done quite a bit of female impersonation, he desisted as he grew older. 

 

1930s

The Casino was the main gay bar in Seattle. "the only place on the West Coast that was open and free for gay people”. Same-sex dancing was allowed. It was nicknamed: Madame Peabody's Dancing Academy for Young Ladies.

Hanna Banna had come to Seattle with the Alaska Gold Rush in the late 1890s. Sometimes dressed as female, but not always, Banana was often found at The Casino, where she was the local gay historian.
Chicago Marge was one of the few who always wore female clothing. She also hustled. One night she was chased by a policeman, but got away. The next day the local newspaper ran a cartoon of the incident and complained of police wasting time and money,

The Spinning Wheel cabaret featured female impersonators.

Female impersonators were also featured at the State, Rialto and the Palm. The public were not told which dancers were trans. 

Francis Blair was in the chorus line of the Rivoli Burlesque. Her gender was known and her dressing space was separated from that of the cis women by a screen. She sometimes played the organ for the show. 

1942

Skippy Larue from Texas moved to Seattle and worked at Boeing for 72¢ a hour, and then on a ferry lunch counter. He met Jackie Starr, first at a party, and then because they lived in the same building. 

1946

In the chaos following WWII, Albert Ellsworth came to the attention of the new government in Paris, and after scrutiny of his documents, it was determined that he was a US citizen and he was sent back to Yakima, Washington on the SS Argentina in 1946. He met the birth mother of whom he had no memory. She was still only in her mid-30s. They had sex and a sister-daughter Rosalyn was born, although by then Albert had left and did not know about the child.

The Garden of Allah, previously a speakeasy and then a tavern, re-opened, this time as a gay cabaret. It was Seattle's most popular gay cabaret in the late 1940s and 1950s and one of the first gay-owned gay bars in the United States. Acts were primarily female impersonation, though some male impersonators also performed. The opening night act was the Jewel Box Review. Local performers included Wanda Brown, Michael Phelan, Francis Blair, Jackie Starr, Robin Raye, Hotcha Hinton, and Paris Delair. Unlike the female impersonator nightclub, Finocchio’s, in San Francisco, local gay men and lesbians were encouraged to attend.

Hotcha Hinton, raised as a circus performer, worked each winter at the Garden of Allah and did many of the costumes for the show until it closed. Her act involved live snakes to the consternation of the other performers. In summer she would leave to work in carnivals. She lived as a woman full-time, was quite pleased to be taken as a woman, and she would get upset if she failed to pass on the phone, or if show-biz rival like Ray Bourbon or Liz Lyons referred to her as a man. She had electrolysis but apparently did not take the new hormones.

Jackie Starr, previously with the Jewel Box Review, was signed as the headliner at the Garden of Allah.

Francis Blair was known for her singing, but also danced, stripped, produced shows and designed costumes. Syndicated columnist Walter Winchell wrote about Francis as ‘the boy with the million-dollar legs”.

Bernie Carey (born 1922) was an impersonator at the Garden of Allah, on and off, 1946-1952. Later he became a hairdresser.

1947

Ricky Reynolds (born 1933) singer, dancer, female impersonator, had been with the Jewel Box Revue, since the age of 11. He performed at the Garden of Allah 1947-9, bluffing his way through the age barrier.

Bill Plant/ Peewee Nattajon (born 1929) won the amateur night at the Garden of Allah several times. The older performers encouraged him, and he took the name of Nattajon in homage to an older performer who helped him and others. Bill was mainly a dancer, but later also a stripper.

Skippy Larue started going to the Garden of Allah, Jackie and others encouraged her to perform, and helped with costumes, makeup and how to a do a gaff. She sometimes performed as Madame Fifi. 

1948

Kim Drake (born 1932) already knew Ricky Reynolds and other impersonators at the Garden of Allah. In November, when he turned 16, the others dressed him, gave him false ID and his performance at amateur night led to a contract. He stayed, on and off, for four years. He left when he found a husband.

Robin Raye came to the Garden of Allah. With the help of a female friend, entered the amateur night as a stripper, and won. Later he worked with Lee Leonard before she became Liz Lyons. Start of a 20-year career. He later performed at Finocchio’s and with the Jewel Box Revue. He married a female stripper in 1958. And the marriage lasted 30 years,

Lee Leonard from Seattle also performed at the Garden of Allah as an impersonator. The act was more raunchy than most. Later Leonard likewise performed at Finocchio’s in San Francisco, and toured with Robin Raye. 

 

1950

Paris Delair had begun performing as a female impersonator during her teenage in Vancouver, BC. She toured with the Jewel Box Review and did gigs at the Garden of Allah.

Jackie Starr married preacher-trucker Bill Scott. 

1952

Francis Blair did shows for the United Service Organizations (USO) which provided entertainment for the US Military during the Korean War. A rather prim hostess of the show had a fit when Francis stripped down to only a G-string. 

1954

16-year-old Betty, after winning first prize at a local Halloween ball, sent photographs to the friend at Jewel Box Review, and got back a wire from the manager offering a job. Later she became a successful female impersonator in New York, and found a mentor to finance her transition. Her autobiography was included in Harry Bemjamin’s 1966 book. 

1956

Seattle’s The Garden of Allah closed for financial reasons, after a rate raise from the musicians' union and a raise in city taxes on locales that provided both entertainment and alcohol. The military had made the Garden off limits to servicemen. New rules obliged female impersonators to wear male underwear, and the system of payoffs to the police was an extra burden. 

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

The following were consulted in compiling this section of the timeline.

• Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Warner Books Edition 1977
• Peter Boag. Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest. University of California Press, 2003.
• Peter Boag. “Go West Young Man, Go East Young Woman: Searching for the Trans in Western Gender History”. Western Historical Quarterly, 36, 4 (Winter, 2005): 477-497.
• Peter Boag. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. University of California Press, 2011.
• Mara Dauphin. “ ‘A Bit of Woman in Every Man’: Creating Queer Community in Female Impersonation”. Valley Humanities Review, Spring 2012.
• Ross Eliot. Babette: The Many Lives, Two Deaths and Double Kidnapping of Dr. Ellsworth. Heliocentric Press, 2014.
• Joshua Allen Gilbert. “Homosexuality and its Treatment”. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 52, 4. Oct 1920: 297-322. Identified the patient, Alan Hart, only as ‘H’. The article is a mix of the patient’s and the doctor’s writing. In line with the practice of the time, the patient’s condition is labeled ‘homosexuality’.
• Chrystie Hill. “Queer History in Seattle, Part 1: to 1967”. History Link, April 2003. http://www.historylink.org/File/4154.
• Don Paulson with Roger Simpson. An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle. Columbia University Press, 1996.
• Don Paulson and Skippy LaRue photograph collection, 1903-2000. http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv08840#ID2IKKWE2WIFAHGDYOPTQOQJOI2D1SP3S3E5IWOL1ZA01PAY42LBE.
• Danni/y Rosen and Ampersand Crates. “Oregon Trans Timeline”. The Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest (GLAPN), 2017. www.glapn.org/6031TransTimeline.html. Lists Alan Hart in 1917, but then no other transsexual until the 21^st century.

Wikipedia (History of the LGBT community in Seattle) contains no trans content whatsoever, except to mention that The Spinning Wheel in the 1930s and the Garden of Allah in the 1950s had female impersonation shows.

I couldn’t find which years Liz Lyons was in Oregon/Washington.


Who was the elder Nattajon? Bill Plant says that he was in 13 Hollywood movies, including Beauty and the Beast and The Picture of Dorian Gray. However there is no Nattajon listed in IMDB. He is probably listed under another name – but which?

Skippy LaRue (1921-2003) sex worker, performer

Skippy LaRue was born in Port Arthur, Texas. His father was a boilermaker and bootlegger; his mother ran a house of prostitution where they all lived. His mother beat him frequently.

He was drinking whiskey from age 5; having sex with boys from age 9. He was expelled from school at age 11 for hustling merchant seamen.

He discovered the whorehouses across the tracks and was introduced to a madam called Evelyn Hardtimes. He lived there a couple of years. He tended bar and did other chores, and when a customer wanted a boy there he was. He was able to charge 50¢, while the girls charged only 25¢. He was also the only one giving fellatio. His customers included judges, lawyers, police, doctors, military, executives.  He was frequently taken as a girl, even in boys clothes. 

He was 18 before he was introduced to the gay scene.

As he grew older Skippy tried straight jobs: retail and delivery. However he kept drifting back into working as female. Skippy (as such) worked a roadhouse serving customers in their cars, and then as a carhop. She went with men but French (oral) only unless they were in the know.

During WWII, LaRue was excused military service because of an ear injury from his mother’s beatings. He moved to Seattle and worked at Boeing for 72¢ a hour, and then on a ferry lunch counter. He met Jackie Starr, first at a party, and then because they lived in the same building.

When Skippy started going to the Garden of Allah, Jackie and others encouraged her to perform, and helped with costumes, makeup and how to a do a gaff.  She sometimes performed as Madame Fifi.

Skippy supplemented the income from performing with running an after-hours bottle club where

Jackie and Skippy, 1946

customers pretended that they had brought their own drinks to get around the licensing laws.

Later Skippy went on the road with Hotcha Hinton and Jackie Starr working carnivals, performing in girlie shows. The other carnies knew what they were, but not the customers. In addition to the show they had a blowoff (sideshow) act where they did a striptease and even, being very confident of their gaffing, they had men pay to touch their genital area.

They were busted in Oxnard, California and had to prove their male sex to the police chief. However word got out, and the chief simply told them to get out of town.

In later years, Skippy lived in a mobile home in south Everett, north of Seattle, and worked at a gay bathhouse in Seattle, where he was known as Seattle’s oldest female impersonator. He kept in touch with others, and when Don Paulson was researching his book on the Garden of Allah, Skippy acted as a major resource.

He died at age 82.

• Don Paulson & Roger Simpson. An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996: Chp 7.
• Gary L. Atkins. Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging. University of Washington Press, 2003: 63.
• Mara Dauphin. " ‘A bit of Woman in Every Man’: Creating Queer Community in Female Impersonation”. Valley Humanities Review, Spring 2012.: 11, 14. Online.
• Don Paulson. “South End Steam Baths”. Seattle Gay News. Online.

Obituary

Don Paulson and Skippy LaRue photograph collection, 1903-2000

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The 1930s were rather different.  On p126 of Paulson & Simpson, Skippy says "a twelve-year-old boy was no different than a a twelve-year-old girl.  At that time, many girls became prostitutes at twelve or thirteen,"

 72¢ a hour does not sound much, but at that time one could rent an apartment for $10 a week.

Francis Blair (1913–?) performer

Charles Schultz was born in West Seattle. By early teenage, Schultz had acquired a trunk full of female clothing, and often rode on the city streetcars where she passed easily.

She got work at the local Florence Theatre. Her family and friends were aware, and proud of her professional photographs. She took the stage name of Francis Blair.

In the 1930s Francis was in the chorus line of the Rivoli Burlesque. Her gender was known and her dressing space was separated from that of the cis women by a screen. She sometimes played the organ for the show.

She was in the dishwashers’ union in case no theatre work was available; she was an officer in the performers’ union.

Very unusually for the time, Francis wore her hair long, and did not have to wear a wig. When out in male persona, he concealed it under a hat.

Francis was one of the first performers to join the Garden of Allah in 1946. Syndicated columnist Walter Winchell wrote about Francis as ‘the boy with the million-dollar legs”. She was known for her singing, but also danced, stripped, produced shows and designed costumes.

During the Korean War, Francis did shows for the United Service Organizations (USO) which provided entertainment for the US Military. A rather prim hostess of the show had a fit when Francis stripped down to only a G-string.

She was also a comedian and in contrast to her usual glamor act did a double act with Kenny Bee as ‘Two Old Bags from Tacoma’ where they wore old clothes with holes in their stockings. They took that act to Finocchio’s in San Francisco as ‘Two Old Bags from Oakland’.



Years later, Francis and her husband of 20 years took a vacation in San Francisco, and they were attacked in Golden Gate Park. The husband and their dog were killed. Francis was left to drive home to Seattle alone, and was killed in a car crash in Oregon.

*Not Charles Schultz the cartoonist.

• Don Paulson. “Gay History: Francis Blair - Seattle's quintessential female impersonator”. Seattle Gay News, no date. Online.
• Don Paulson & and Roger Simpson. An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle. Columbia University Press, 1996: 135-141.
• Gary L. Atkins. Gay Seattle: Stories of Exile and Belonging. University of Washington Press, 2003: 63.
• Melissa Gohike. “San Antonio’s Drag Culture of the 1930s and 40s”. The Top Shelf, October 22, 2012. Online.

Queer Music Heritage     David de Alba     

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As with Jackie Starr, there is no mention of Francis in either Lawrence Senelick's The Changing Room or F Michael Moore's Drag! Male and Female Impersonators on Stage, Screen and Television.


It is odd that we do not have a date, not even a year, for Francis’ unfortunate demise.

Jackie Starr (1912 – 1986) performer

Jack Starr grew up on a farm in the US Midwest. His parents encouraged his desire to be an actor, and he studied voice, acting and classical ballet. His elder sister was dressing him in female clothing from age five.

By the age of 14 he was doing drag in mob-controlled speakeasies in Chicago: both solo and in the line of chorines. He played the drag circuit in the 1930s, and did a tour of South America, and of Europe. Jackie met a Prince who wanted to take her home.

“I was tempted but I’m glad I didn’t because he was killed in a coup and I’d have been killed too.”

In Washington DC Jackie went out with senators. Later she moved to Greenwich Village, and tried acting and singing. She also did ballet, both as male and as female. She was one of only a few men in the US who could dance en pointe. She was a fill-in for the noted stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, and she also danced as a Rockette at the Radio City Music Hall (and was also married briefly to another Rockette).

In the late 1930s, Starr was one of the first artists to join the Jewel Box Review. Starr was one of only a few Jewel Box Revue artists to be dating a woman. He married a second woman, and they had a child.

Starr was in the merchant marine during WWII.

Jackie on the cover 

When the Garden of Allah in Seattle opened in late 1946, Starr was quickly signed up as the headliner. By this time Starr was in her mid-30s, and was regarded as past her peak, although she gave class to the show. She stayed for the full ten years of the club’s existence. She could make a striptease last twenty minutes, finishing in a g-string. Walter Winchel, the syndicated columnist called Jackie "the most beautiful man in America".

Bill Scott and his wife, known as Sister Faye, were street preachers, although most donations to their mission went to Faye’s heroin habit. Bill was devastated when she left town without him (she later died in a car accident, while high). Bill was both bisexual and homophobic, and also worked as a trucker.

He was in recoil from a sex-only affair with a gay man, when he found himself in the Garden of Allah and Jackie was on stage. They married. They had a formal wedding and reception, in the home of a friend who played the part of a minister. Performer Skippy LaRue was the maid of honor and a lesbian the best man. They partied till 9am, and afterwards the couple had a big fight.

However the marriage persisted. Jackie, as the woman, ran their daily affairs and the apartment, however sexually she was the top.

Jackie & Bill's wedding

Later Scott also married a woman who was supposed to inherit, with the idea of spending the money on Jackie. The inheritance never happened, and the second wife died. Scott moved back in with Jackie, and they ran a restaurant together.

Towards the end Scott had to have both legs amputated, and Jackie took care of him till he died in the late 1960s.

Jackie lived the last ten years of her life in a mobile home near the Seattle-Tacoma airport. She was as meticulous as ever in her appearance, and when she and her friends went to the Golden Crown drag bar in Seattle, the younger generation of drag performers would crowd around.

She died age 74.

• Don Paulson & and Roger Simpson. An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle. Columbia University Press, 1996: 151-163.
• Mara Dauphin. “ ‘A Bit of Woman in Every Man’: Creating Queer Community in Female Impersonation”. Valley Humanities Review, Spring 2012. PDF.

_________________

Jackie Starr was a pre-eminent female impersonator 1930s-1950s, and yet there is - until now - no web page for her.  Queer Musical Heritage has a page but it only reproduces a few show bills; Lawrence Senelick's The Changing Room says not a word about her; likewise F Michael Moore's Drag! Male and Female Impersonators on Stage, Screen and Television.  

A miscellany of unknowns

The Garden of Allah, a gay-owned cabaret was open in Seattle 1946-56. It featured mainly female impersonation, though some male impersonators also performed.

Bill Plant took the name Peewee Nattajon in homage to an older performer called Nattajon (born 1895, died late 1960s). The elder Nattajon had been a character actor. Bill Plant says that he was in 13 Hollywood movies, including Beauty and the Beast and The Picture of Dorian Gray. However there is no Nattajon listed in IMDB. He is probably listed under another name – but which?
____________________________

Finocchio’s, the famous San Francisco nightclub that featured female impersonators, was owned by Joe and Marjorie Finocchio. Marjorie died in 1956, and Joe remarried to Eve. Rachel Harlow in Philadelphia was also born with the Finocchio name. No relationship has been established between them.

Concetta Finocchio Jorgensen (1941 – 2012) daughter of Joe and Eve Finocchio had a short failed marriage that left her to raise four children alone. She worked doing publicity for her parents’ nightclub, but later was afflicted by MS, and became a disability activist. The husband who left was called Jorgensen. Surely not a relative of Christine? Probably not, but it is intriguing to find two of the most famous names in TG history born by the same person.

____________________________

Who is Gregory G Bolich?

The Amazon Author Page lists only the following:

Karl Barth and Evangelicalism, 1980
Authority and the Church, 1983
Christian Scholar: An Introduction to Theological Research, 1985
God in the docket: The problem of good and evil, 1992
Psyche’s child: The Story of Psychology, 2000
12 Magic Wands: The art of Meeting Life’s Challenges, 2002

WorldCat tells us that Bolich did a Ed.D, at Gonzaga University in Spokane in 1983: On dating James : new perspectives on an ancient problem, and a PhD at the Union Institute in Cincinnati in 1993: Serving human experience : the boundary metaphor.

He also has several book published through Lulu, but not listed in Amazon.

Scripture Study and Scholarship, 2015
Brick by Brick on the Road through OZ: Recovery from Sexual Abuse Trauma, 2007

Transgender and Religion, 2009
Transgender Realities, 2009
Transgender and Mental Health, 2013
Crossdressing in Context (5 volumes) 2007-2010
Asaph’s Dream (a US Civil War novel), 2011
Conversing on gender: a primer for entering dialogue, 2007

There is no web site for GG Bolich, and no reviews of his books. The transgender books are much more expensive than the theological ones. His books are not in the library. If I were to purchase his transgender works it would cost me hundreds of dollars. I cannot find any reason why I should do so. Does he have anything original to say, or are his books a regurgitation of the usual stuff? I do not know. How would I find out?

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Toni Ebel, post-op Hirschfeld patient in Berlin, fled Germany in 1934 after the Nazi takeover. She arrived in Czechoslovakia, claiming to be a Jewess. She settled in Prague using the name Antonia Ebelová. In 1937 she moved to Brno. Karl Giese, Hirschfeld’s lover, had also fled to Brno.

In October 1938, Nazi Germany occupied the Sudetenland; in March 1939 Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Giese killed himself before the Germans got him. Somehow Toni Ebel survived the war, and in 1949 became a citizen of the newly created German Democratic Republic (DDR). She was able to claim compensation from the DDR as a victim of Nazism. She was a minor painter and was recognized at the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin. She died in 1961 at the age of 80.

We do not know how she survived the Nazi occupation.

_____________________

In the photographs included in Harry Benjamin’s The Transsexual Phenomenon, 1966, the 6th and 7th pages (not in the PDF version) are the before and after of an actor, both in a stereotyped pose more typical of silent films than of the 1960s. This actor has never been named. How an actor can transition in stealth and keep working is intriguing.

The US trans actors of the 1960s such as  Candy Darling were non-op (however, of course, several of the stars of Le Carrousel in Paris were in films in at that time). The first US trans actor known to have surgically transitioned was Ajita Wilson who did so in the mid-1970s. The unnamed actor in the photograph is the true pioneer in her field, and we know nothing of her.

____________________

Hotcha Hinton (1915 - 1983) circus, performer.

Hayward Hinton was literally born in a theater trunk, and was raised in Daytona Beach, Florida. His mother was an aerialist with the Sells Floto Circus, and his parents separated when he was young. At the age of 7 he learned to dance in a studio run by Christian Ebsen (the father of Buddy Ebsen). The name ‘Hotcha’ came from a Broadway show, and also became a slang term for approval or delight.

Hinton first danced in clubs in Chicago when she was 16, and at 18 was working in the chorus line at a midway carnival, where Gypsy Rose Lee was the headliner, at the Chicago World’s Fair. Later in 1933 she was in the revue, The Streets of Paris, at the My Oh My Club in Miami. As the vaudeville theaters closed, she moved into burlesque. She toured the US in the burlesque musical Vogues, and became acquainted with Mae West and most of the big-time strippers.

Paulson & Simpson p 141.

By the late 1940s Hotcha had landed at the Garden of Allah club in Seattle, where she worked each winter and did many of the costumes for the show until it closed in 1956. Her act involved live snakes to the consternation of the other performers. In summer she would leave to work in carnivals.

She lived as a woman full-time, was quite pleased to be taken as a woman, and she would get upset if she failed to pass on the phone, or if show-biz rival like Ray Bourbon or Liz Lyons referred to her as a man. She had electrolysis but apparently did not take hormones.

In 1969 she had a small part in the film Lady Godiva Rides. She did charity benefits, especially for the disabled, and political fund-raisers for John Kennedy (Potus 35) and Jimmy Carter (Potus 39). She went to the Carter inauguration ball with stripper Flame Fury. In later years she often performed for college audiences.

When she checked into hospital at the end, she did so in male clothing to avoid the fuss that would otherwise happen. She was cremated in an androgynous hospital gown. She was 68.

• • “At the Carnival”. Humboldt Standard, May 2, 1953.  http://newspaperarchive.com/humboldt-standard/1953-05-04/page-18.
  • Don Paulson & Roger Simpson. An Evening at the Garden of Allah: A Gay Cabaret in Seattle. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996: 141-150.
  • Don Paulson. “Seattle Gay History: Snakes ‘R’ us”. Seattle Gay News, 33,34, Aug 26, 2005. www.sgn.org/sgnnews34/page7.cfm.

Liz Lyons (1919 - 1991) performer.

In the 1940s Rubin Elkins, in the northwest USA, became a raunchy female impersonator under the name Lee Leonard.   She performed at Finocchio’s and the Garden of Allah. 

++She took up with fellow performer Robin Raye.  They toured together, but did separate acts.  However in 1958 Raye married a female stripper and they drifted apart.

+Later using the name Liz Lyons, she became a woman in 1968 at the University of Minnesota Gender Clinic.

In the mid and late 1970s Liz put out x-rated LPs, such as Up Your Ass, Live at the Club Morocco, 1975, and Liz Lyons, Live,1979. Her later stage show often included a display that she was indeed female.

* Not the Lee Leonard, a radio/TV personality, nor Liz Lyons the social scientist nor the novelist.

• J.D. Doyle. “Liz Lyons, Aks Lee Leonard”. Queer Music Heritage.  www.queermusicheritage.com/drag-lyons.html.
• “Lee Leonard/Liz Lyons”. The Minor Luminaries. Dragstavaganza. www.blakstone.com/Dragstravaganza%20Site/Minor%20Luminaries.htm.