Toupie Lowther (1874 – 1944) Part I: sporting champion and war service

Part I: sporting champion and war service
Part II: The Well of Loneliness

May Lowther, her elder sister Aimée (1869-1935) and elder brother Claude (1870-1929) were scions of the Lowther dynasty, which features the Earls of Lonsdale (see also, more) and many Conservative Members of Parliament.

May's father, William Francis Lowther (1841-1908), was a naval office who rose to the rank of Commander. When his father, William Lowther, the 2^nd Earl of Lonsdale, died in 1872, he retired and lived on an inherited trust fund. He did not inherit the title as his parents, his mother being the opera singer Emilia Cresotti, had never married. The 2^nd Earl also had two illegitimate daughters with different mothers. May's mother was Louise Beatrice de Fonblangue from Toronto (? -1922).

May was educated at Le Pensionnat Les Ruches, a private boarding school at Avon, near Fontainbleau in France. Natalie Barney and her sister also attended the same school. Lowther became fluent in French and gained a baccalaureate in sciences.

Using the name Toupie, she took up fencing at age 15. She preferred the Italian rather than the French style, and declined to fence in a skirt on grounds of practicality. She fenced with both men and
women.

In 1898 at a widely publicised fencing competition and display held at The Military Gymnasium of the Army Camp in Aldershot, Toupie vanquished not only her lady opponents but also the army’s Sergeant instructor. At a display in Paris 1902, billed as “The Lady Champions of England and France,” she opposed (and worsted) the famous Mme Gabriele before a crowded salon. In 1903 she engaged and held her own against the Maître, or Prof. Yvon at the Civil Engineers Hall in Paris.

She was an accomplished singer and composer. She set poems by Oscar Wilde and Alfred Tennyson to music, and her music was performed at the Wigmore Hall in London. The Waifs and Strays Society held a fancy Grand Benefit on 3 June 1899 with royalty in attendance. The program included "Incidental music by Miss Toupie Lowther".

At this time, brother Claude was with the British Army in the Boer War. He became a Conservative MP in 1900.

Toupie was also a keen tennis player and participated in championship games, especially those held at Homburg 1896-1901, and at Wimbledon where she reached the singles semi-final in 1903. She did win the British Covered Championships in 1900  and then again in 1902 and 1903. She also won the German Championships, 1901, the Monte Carlo Championships, 1903, the Homburg Cup, 1904, the Cannes Championships, 1906 and the Championships of the South of France, 1906. She was large, renowned for her lobs and said to have a man's stroke and a man's strength.

She was one of the first women to own a motorbike and lift weights.

Toupie was a friend of Mabel Batten (Ladye) (1856-1916) and John Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) and is frequently mentioned in Mabel's diaries, 1910-5.

In 1917, at age 43, with Norah Desmond Hackett, Toupie sent a petition to General Petain at the Grand Quartier General to organise

“an ambulance section on exactly the same lines, subject to the same conditions as the allied men’s section … we should be allowed to do front line work under the same conditions as the men’s Units”.

This being approved the Hackett-Lowther Unit with 20 donated vehicles was incorporated into the French Army with permission to do front-line work. The drivers and the canteen women were ranked as private soldiers and paid 5 sous a day; Toupie Lowther and Norah Hackett as sous Lieutenants at 10 sous a day with one stripe on the sleeve. The drivers were all women, and some had already done similar work in Serbia, Romania, Greece and Russia.

They were heavily involved in the battles at Compiègne, in June 1918. They were then incorporated into the 1^st Army for the final advance into Germany. The Unit was twice mentioned in dispatches.

Several members of the unit, including Lowther, were awarded the Croix de Guerre. The Unit was disbanded 19 March 1919.

After Mabel's death, John Radclyffe Hall and Mabel's cousin Una Toubridge (1887-1963) became a couple. Again Toupie and her brother Claude were friends of John and Una, who were taken with Toupie's war record. In 1920, Una said that she thought that Toupie was a hermaphrodite. In 1922 in Brighton with Una Toubridge and Radclyffe Hall she bought an “Overland Tourer” and taught them to drive.  They referred to her as 'Brother'.

In the 1920s Toupie ran a lesbian salon, and writers such as Radclyffe Hall, Ida Wylie, May Sinclair and Vere Hutchinson (popular at the time) attended. Toupie loved to tell how, while motoring, she was stopped at the Franco-Italian border for masquerading as a man. On the return journey she wore a skirt and was arrested for masquerading as a woman.

In 1926, Toupie Lowther was elected a member of the French Academie d’Armes, the only woman to that date to be so.

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There is no mention that Toupie ever met either Joe Carstairs or Violette Morris.  With their shared interests in sports and motor vehicles and experience with ambulance uits in the war, they would have had a lot in common.

There are Wikipedia pages for both Toupie and Claude.   Claude's does not mention Toupie at all.   Toupie's - mainly about her as a tennis star, with a brief afterword about the ambulance unit, and no mention of The Well of Loneliness - returns the favour.

Joe Carstairs/Tuffy de Pret (1900 – 1993): Part I: youth and war

Part I: youth and war
Bibliography
Part II: powerboat racer
Part III: Lord of the island

Jabez Bostwick (1830-1892) of New York was the Secretary of Standard Oil (ruled to be an illegal monopoly in 1911) and, along with his partners the Rockefellers, became very rich. He and his wife, Nellie, had two daughters and a son (genealogical tree).

The younger daughter, Frances Evelyn (1872-1921) mainly lived in England and eventually had 4 husbands: the first was Captain Albert Joseph Carstairs of the Royal Irish Rifles, the legal father of Marion Barbara Carstairs, born 1900. The Captain disappeared shortly after the daughter's birth.

In 1903 Evelyn married her second husband, Captain Francis Francis, with whom she had Evelyn and Francis Francis Jrs. Five-year-old Marion was thrown from a bolting camel at London Zoo, and afterwards renamed herself 'Tuffy'. She would later say

"I was never a little girl. I came out of the womb queer."

At age eight, Tuffy was caught stealing her step-father's cigars, and seeking to punish her by making her sick, Francis Francis, Sr, ordered her to sit down and smoke one, which, already being an accomplished smoker, she did with no problem.

Evelyn, dependent on alcohol and heroin, was variable as a mother. She fired a nanny for being too close to Marion. Even as a child Tuffy loved boats and had her own dinghy. At age eleven, she was put on an ocean liner bound for New York, and had been enrolled in Low-Haywood, then a girls' boarding school in Stamford, Connecticut. Tuffy loved the school uniform and used her pocket money to buy boys' clothes, a hobby shared by her room-mate.

In 1915 Evelyn married Count Roger de Perigny, a sub-lieutenant in the 19^th French Dragoons. To his stepdaughter's delight he treated her as a boy, adapted his racing car so that she could drive it, offered her cigars, introduced her to his mistresses, and even took her to a Parisian brothel.

At age 16, using Nellie Bostwick's influence, Tuffy went to Paris as a ambulance driver for the American Red Cross, arriving shortly before the US joined the war. Tuffy had an affair with Dolly Wilde, niece of Oscar. Dolly was a popular member of the expatriate lesbian scene on the Left Bank dominated by Natalie Barney, but Tuffy was left at the periphery.

In 1917 Evelyn met Serge Voronoff (1866-1951) who rejuvenated old men by transplanting monkey glands and who briefly inspired Harry Benjamin. Evelyn became his laboratory assistant and financial investor, and by dint of this, the first woman admitted to the Collège de France. With Evelyn's money, Voronoff was able to continue his research despite the skepticism of the medical establishment.

In 1918 Evelyn summoned her daughter to her rooms at the Paris Majestic Hotel, told her that she knew that she was a lesbian: "If you don't do what I want you to, just walk out that door". "Thank you, mother", said Marion, and walked out. However, later that year, she married a childhood friend, Comte Jacques de Pret, and they split the $10,000 dowry. They then parted amicably, non consummatum.

The War over, the Comtesse de Pret, as she now was, went to Dublin and joined the Women's Legion Mechanical Transport Section which served as drivers to British officers. The Comtesse was referred to as Tuffy de Pret, and took up with the Coleclough sisters, Bardie and Molly. She cut her hair short (and kept it so for the rest of her life). She also took to wearing men's boots and puttees.

In 1919 as the Irish Independence War (Cogadh na Saoirse) was beginning, a dozen of the drivers, including de Pret, volunteered for work in northern France clearing battlefields, burying the dead, driving troops, labourers and prisoners-of-war. They did their own repairs. They became friends with Joan MacKern who had been driving under fire since 1917. They worked alongside the remnant of the Chinese Labour Corps who had been recruited after China entered the war in 1917.

Tuffy completed his transition to Joe, wearing only male clothes, including a beret, which he continued to wear throughout the twenties. "Joe” was his father's middle name, but he claimed not to know that.

The four were demobilised on 23 April 1920. On arrival in London Joe took them to the theatre, and put them up in a hotel. Four days later Joe's grandmother Nellie Bostwick died aged 77, leaving an estate of $30 million (over $350 million in today’s money). Until the will was executed, Joe had no money, and for the only time in his life, had to work for income. However his inheritance income was $145,000 in 1921 and $200,000 in 1922 (this at a time when the average male wage was less than £2 a week or £100 a year). Joe, Molly, Bardie and Joan set up a chauffeuring business in London, The X Garage, based in Kensington, and they lived in the flat above. They bought 'a handful' of Daimler landaulettes.

Later in 1920 Evelyn and Serge married. That year her English translation of his Life: a means of restoring vital energy and prolonging life was published in New York by Dutton. Evelyn died aged 48 in March 1921. Carstairs would always maintain that Voronoff had murdered her and arranged for a doctor friend to sign a death certificate saying 'natural causes'.

Following Evelyn's death, the marriage with Jacques de Pret was annulled, and Joe changed his legal surname back to Carstairs by deed poll.

The X Garage prospered, driving clients all over Europe and North Africa. The fashion in the 1920s was for women to be boyish in their dress and hairstyle. This of course suited Joe who took it further than most: navy-blue jackets, ties, cufflinks, dinner jackets, the extra wide Oxford Bags. A barber came regularly to Joe's home to crop his hair. His suits and jackets were from the best men's tailors.

He was frequently seen at the best parties. He would pose, three fingers inside his jacket pocket, thumb and little finger outside. He imitated photographs of Rudolph Valentino. He usually posed with a cigarette, and sometimes a pipe or cigar, but said that it was merely for effect: that he never inhaled.

Joe liked impersonations and disguises. He turned up at the house of his lover, variety star and horsewomen, Gwen Farrar, as a workman and plastered the front with posters; he arrived at the flat of Norah Blaney, Gwen's stage partner, and examined all the light fittings before being rumbled. He had a brief affair with Tallulah Bankhead when when she was the darling of the London stage in 1923.

Joe bought and developed a secluded estate near the Coleclough farm in Hampshire, which he named Bostwick. He bought a yacht, Sonia, and became so proficient that by 1924 he was winning yachting prizes.

Both Nellie's and Evelyn's wills were settled. Francis Francis Sr, Voronoff and Joe had contested Evelyn's. Voronoff received all the income from the residue of the estate, $325,000 a year, to be redistributed between Joe, Sally and Francis Jr on his death.
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Probably just as well that Frances Evelyn Bostwick preferred to be known as Evelyn, given that she married Francis Francis.   However Evelyn Waugh’s first wife was Evelyn Gardner – a marriage that lasted only one year.

Joe avoided his birth name of Marion although it was/is a unisex name: note especially Marion Morrison who acted under the stage name of John Wayne.

Evelyn died at age 48, an early age even in the 1920s.   However we should remember her heroin habit.   Also her sister Nellie died age 38, and her brother Albert aged 35.   See genealogical tree. So she was actually the survivor.   On the other hand Joe lived to be 93, and Albert’s two children lived to be 101 and 79.

The key text for the life of Joe Carstairs is Kate Summerscale's The Queen of Whale Cay, 1997.    As you may deduce from her title, she regards Carstairs as an eccentric woman.  Although she mainly refers to him as Joe rather than Marion, she persists in using female pronouns and nowhere in the book raises the question whether Joe should be regarded as a trans man.    In this period, and until after the Second World War, there was no clear distinction between lesbian and trans.   They were both types of 'inverts' - a term that Summerscale does not use.    Some inverts designated others, ones that they did identify with - for example for being working class - as perverts.   To some extent inverts were regarded as having been born that way, and perverts as having been corrupted, as having made a sort of choice.    Actually things have not changed that much.

To simplify a little, we can identify three groups of female trans persons.   There were the working class ones, often referred to as 'female husbands' (although not all took wives).    Some feminist writers deny that these persons were trans, and maintain that they transvested only to earn a man's wage.   However many of  these lived as men outside work and stayed in the role for many decades.   Generally they passed, even without any access to male hormones (which did not become avialable until the 1940s).  They had to - otherwise they would lose their jobs.  A good book on these is Alison Oram's Her Husband was a Woman!, 2007.  Some examples that we have already discussed are Ernest Wood, Harold Lloyd, Michael Johnson. 

Secondly there were upper-class lesbians, some of them fabulously rich, who played with gender.   Some of these are famous:  Natalie Barney, Dolly Wilde, John Radclyffe Hall, Colette.   Transvestism was a game.   And in the early 1920s women wearing men's clothes became the height of fashion, for those who were rich enough to follow fashions - that is, not for serving maids, mill girls or shop girls.   See Laura Doan's Fashioning Sapphism, 2001, for a good account of this fashion.   This group did not need to pass, and usually were seen as women in men's clothes.   They did not need to worry about laws against transvestity for they were rich and had special privileges.

The interaction between the female husbands and the rich lesbians was almost nil.  Unlike amongst gay men it was not the done thing to take a lover from the lower classes.

Thirdly we can also pick out, not a group because they did not network, but individuals who were not simply transvestites, but took their masculinity much more seriously.   We have already discussed Mathilde de Morney, Madelaine Pelletier, Violette Morris.  These persons, like the female husbands, stayed in a masculine role for decades, but were either professionals or had inherited wealth.   One wants to label them as trans men avant le lettre, but annoyingly (to us) they did not take a masculine name - thus when I wrote about them I decided, with reservations, to stick with female pronouns.    Joe Carstairs has much more in common with de Morney, Pelletier and Morris than he does with Barney, Wilde, Hall and Colette.   And he took a male name.  Each of the four made their own way through life without any trans role model to follow.   They were real pioneers.   Of these only Carstairs lived beyond the Second World War into an era when surgical ftm operations became available.  But he was quite old then, and set in his ways.

In watching de Morney, Pelletier, Morris and Carstairs we are watching the social construction of 'trans man' emerge from its birth pangs.

In Jack Judith Halberstam's Female Maculinity, 1998, he pretty much ignores the working class female husbands and under that term mainly discusses the aristocratic Gentleman Jack (Anne) Lister.   He also discusses the rich lesbian transvestites of the 1920s such as Radclyffe Hall, but has almost nothing to say about de Morney, Pelletier, Morris and Carstairs.   

Violette Morris (Gouraud) (1893 - 1944) Part I: sports champion.

Emilie Paule Marie Violette Morris was born into a family with military connections on her father's side back to the Revolution.

Her paternal grandfather was Louis Michel Morris (1803–1867), a cavalry officer who rose to General for his part in the French conquest of Algeria, and was made a grand officer in the Légion d'honneur. He married a Jewess from the Algerian city of Constantine after already having three children with her. Altogether they had two daughters and three sons:

Paul Louis Morris (1846-1901) who like his father became a General and a chevalier in the Légion d'honneur;

Louis Napoléon Morris (1865-1935) who never knew his father;

Jacques Pierre Morris (1849-1918) who also was a cavalry officer, mainly serving in the colonies, but never rising above the rank of Captain. He was a prisoner-of-war during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and later suffered from what might have been epilepsy, as well as from yellow fever. He was also cautioned and served 30 days hard labour for gambling. In 1888 he was put on sick leave, and effectively retired. In 1889 he married the 20-year younger Elisabeth Sakakini (of the prominent Levantine family) in Belgium. Elizabeth brought a significant dowry to supplement Jacques' army pension.

Their first child, Paul, died in his first year. They then had two daughters: Louise (1891-1986) and then Violette. Both daughters were educated at the 12^th-century convent Abbaye de Solières close to Huy in Belgium by English nuns.

Even as a teenager Violette was a notable pugilist, and also outstanding in swimming, cycling and water polo. In 1913 Morris came 5^th in the 8 km French swimming contest – she was the only female competitor.

The next year, three weeks after war was declared, Violette married Cyprien Gouraud (1886-?) the son of a paper maker. Three days later he was mobilized. In 1915 she joined the Red Cross, and later was a motorcyclist for them. However she came down with bronchitis and pleurisy and was six months in hospital.

In 1917 La Morris returned to championship athletics and set the first French record in shot put. Both her parents died in 1918, and shortly afterwards Morris started to wear male clothing, using the excuse that it was her wartime uniform. She never applied for a permission de travestissement.

Her inheritance provided a living, and gave her time to train. That year she also played in the first official women's football match in France. In goal, she played with her head bare (as men did) rather than wearing the prescribed beret. In 1919 she was admitted to the Fédération française de sports féminins (FFSF), and participated in the first Women's World Games in Monte Carlo in 1921 establishing new records for shot-put and javelin. In 1922, at the second female olympics she set records in athletics, and came second in 1,000 m swimming, and won a cycling race. She also took up motor racing, and, the only woman entered, came 4th in the Bol d'Or.

Morris in front of the shop

Cyprien and Violette were divorced in May 1923, and he remarried in October. She opened a car/motorbike accessories shop, Spécialités Violette Morris, at 6, rue Roger-Bacon, using the inheritance from her mother. The rent was 8,000 francs per annum, and the 41,000 franc valuation was all in the stock. She lived in the flat upstairs.

Morris was temporarily suspended for giving performance-enhancing drugs to her football team, for questioning the referees and for doing nothing when the referee was hit by a member of her team. In 1926 Morris was indefinitely suspended from football. She used her name to recruit female athletes for a film. She refused to transfer her licence to another club.

In 1927 the FFSF notified Morris that she was suspended for these violations, and for wearing male clothes. Her smoking and drinking did not help. The FFSF also banned shorts that were too short, playing without a bra, and costumes that were too tight.

A journalist from Paris Midi who questioned Morris apropos the new regulations thought that he must be meeting her husband or brother, "mais non, c'était bien elle, en chair plus qu'en os, habillée d'un complet veston, avec pantalon - comme vous et moi, monsieur - faux col et cravate (but no, it was her in the flesh, dressed in a full jacket with trousers - like you and me, sir - collar and tie)".

Morris in a Benjamin

In 1927 Morris won the motor-racing Bol d'Or, and practised boxing, sparring with Raoul Paoli (1887-1960), the Olympics athlete, champion boxer, wrestler, and rugby player for France.

Morris attended a meeting of the FFSF, and issued a defense of her dress style: "L'habit masculin n'a, à ce que je sache, rien de malséant. J'y suis tenue de par mes obligations professionnelles et tant que les lois de la République française ne m'en empêcheront pas, rien ni personne ne peuvent m'interdire un costume qui, vous en conviendrez, est toujours décent (There is nothing, to my knowledge, unseemly about male clothing. I am bound by my professional obligations and by the laws of the French Republic, but they do not prevent me, nothing and nobody can forbid me to dress in a way that you will agree, is still decent)". However this argument did not convince, and Morris was expelled from the FFSF, and thereby from all French championships and the French team for the Olympics where she was expected to win gold medals.

The 1928 Olympics were held in Amsterdam, although only a few women's events were included; Morris was not on the French team.

In 1929 Morris went further, and using the excuse of fitting into a racing car, publicly had a double mastectomy (what today we would call top surgery) at the clinic of Dr. Cazalis in the suburb of La Garenne-Colombes.

during the trial

Morris sued the FFSF for reinstatement and 100,000 francs in damages. While her case was against the arbitrary use of power, the trial focused on the right to wear male clothing. Her male lawyer defended the inherent decency of trousers, and questioned why trousers had been okay with the FFSF for ten years, but no longer. He contrasted Morris with Victor Barker in England who had attempted to pass as male. The FFSF had two female lawyers, one of whom, Yvonne Netter, was a noted feminist, divorced and an advocate of planned parenthood. They explained that because of their responsibility to the government (which provided grants) and to parents, they must set good examples. Morris was accused of cross-dressing to attract attention. They noted how female clothing had evolved from the long skirts and corsets of the pre-war era. They portrayed Morris as being a moral danger in female locker rooms, and criticized her in that she had never applied for a permission de travestissement. Morris' lawyer produced a letter from the Commissioner of Police giving assurance that they no longer pursued women in trousers.

The court ruled: "nous n'avons pas à nous occuper de la façon dont se vêt à la ville et dans ses autres occupations Mme Violette Morris, mais nous estimons que le fait de porter un pantalon n'étant pas d'un usage admis pour les femmes, la FFS avait parfaitement le droit de l'interdire. En conséquence, le tribunal déboute Mme Violette Morris et la condamne aux dépens"(we do not have to deal with how Mme. Volette Morris dresses in the city and in her other occupations, but we believe that to wear trousers is not permitted by custom for women, FFSF had every right to prohibit it. Accordingly, the court dismisses Mme. Violette Morris and awards costs)".

Continued in Part II.
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EN.WIKIPEDIA says that Violette was "the youngest of six sisters", which is definitely wrong.

Genealogy sites: MyHeritage would seem to be the best on the Morris dynasty. Geneanet has Jacques Pierre as father of Violette only, but does not connect him to Louis Michel, although it traces Louis Michel's ancestors back to 1620. Webtrees denies that Jacques Pierre had any children at all. There is an FR.WIKIPEDIA page for Louis Michel Morris, but it does not mention any children.

Several of the men in the Morris dynasty were named Jacques, and they usually anglicized it to James. However there is no indication of any relationship to the Somerset/Welsh James Morris who transitioned to become Jan.

FR.WIKIPEDIA, as do most of the books, has Violette Morris as the winner of the 1927 Bol d'Or driving a Benjamin.

However the FR.WIKIPEDIA article on Bol d'Or lists the 1927 winner as "Lempereur" driving an FN. No first name is available for this mysterious winner who otherwise is unknown to history.

Did Morris and the very young Robert Cowell ever drive in the same race? Cowell did drive in the 1939 Grand Prix in Antwerp, but Morris, then 46, was no longer driving.

Almost all writers accept Morris' explanation that racing car cockpits were so tight that breasts got in the way. The transsexual perspective is that this was merely an excuse. See the photograph above of Morris in a Benjamin. It does not at all look cramped.

Like Madeleine Pelletier, we have somebody who looks, walks and talks like a trans man (and in Morris' case has had top surgery), but does not take a male name.   Morris does not attempt to pass as does Victor Barker in England, but she was already famous from her sporting achievements and thus passing was not really an option.

Morris did not care to use her first name Emilie, which she shared with her aunt, the wife of Paul Louis. The name she used, Violette, has connotations in that 'viol' means 'rape' (compare the English 'violate') and was associated with lesbians in early 20^th century France in that several were Violettes: Violette Leduc, Violet Paget (who used the pseudonym Vernon Lee), Violette Murat, Violet Trefusis, Vivienne Renée wrote of her unrequited love for Violet Shillito. There was also the convicted non-lesbian parricide, Violette Nozière (who had been violated by her father).

What do the Wikipedia authors think that they are doing? While accepting that Morris was a life-long male-dresser who had her breasts removed, both FR.WIKIPEDIA and its almost copy EN.WIKIPEDIA choose to include a frontal photograph of Morris the swimmer that emphasises her then more than ample breasts, and a photograph of her in women's clothes – in effect in drag. There is no shortage of Morris in her preferred male clothes. So what is Wikipedia doing?

As with Madeleine Pelletier, Halberstam's Female Masculinity has nothing to say about Violette Morris. Likewise the lesbian cross-dressing set of Anglo-American expatriates that included Natalie Barney and Gertrude Stein, although they did invite a few token French women: Collette and Mathilde de Morney, did not invite Violette despite her prestigious lineage. (Obviously Pelletier was not invited for, despite being a doctor, she was a child from the slums).

Ross Hamilton (1889-1965) female impersonator.

Ross Hamilton was raised in Pugwash, Nova Scotia.

In the Great War he enlisted as a private and worked as an ambulance driver in France. He was then selected to be part of the Dumbells, an army entertainment unit that became the most famous of the 30 or so Canadian army shows. Although formally part of the regular army, the show was entirely funded and organized by the YMCA.

Ross had a remarkable soprano voice, and his Marjorie character was an opera diva. He continued this act with the Dumbells Canadian and US tours until 1932.

In 1939 he was re-engaged with the rank of lieutenant to organize entertainment units. In 1940 his act was was featured as a talent show in a National Film Board production about new recruits, Letter From Camp Borden.  However he was caught doing more with the new recruits than he was supposed to. He was quietly discharged by the medical board ‘for reasons other than medical’.

He continued as an entertainer and retired to Nova Scotia. He died of heart disease.

• Raymond Spottiswoode (dir). Letter From Camp Borden. With Ross Hamilton. Canada. NFB. 17 mins 1940.
• Max Braithwaite. 'The rise and fall of The Dumbells,' Maclean's, 1 Jan 1952.
• “Ross Hamilton, World War I Dumbell, Dies”. The Montreal Gazette. Sep 30, 1965. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1946&dat=19650930&id=eaUtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=h58FAAAAIBAJ&pg=7029,6530343.
• Paul Jackson. One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military during World War II. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2009: 72-3.
• “Ross Hamilton, entertainer (1889 - 1965)”. The Virtual Gramophone: Canadian Historical Sound Recordings. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/4/4/m2-1011-e.html.
• “Ross Hamilton”. Ambisextrous. http://scaa.sk.ca/gallery/genderimpersonators/ross_hamilton/hamilton_index.htm.