Rachel Humphreys (1952 - 1990) hairdresser, muse to Lou Reed

++confirmation of death added April 2020

Humphreys was raised in Bridgeton, New Jersey and San Antonio, Texas. It was said that the family were of part Mexican Native descent. An apparent trans child who played with dolls, and wore girls’ clothes, Humphreys wanted to do people’s hair. As Rachel she graduated in hair-dressing at a cosmetology school in Bayonne, New Jersey (north of Staten Island, across the river from Manhattan).

She was a regular at Max's, Kansas City, the hip and glam rock nightclub on Park Avenue South. She also frequented the 82 Club on E 4th St which was in transition from a transvestite performance club to a glam rock and then punk club. The New York Dolls did their first show there on April 17, 1974, when they performed in drag, except for Johnny Thunders who refused. They were followed by Wayne County (not yet using the name Jayne) and short-lived glitter bands like Teenage Lust and Harlots of 42nd Street. 

It was there at this time that Rachel met Lou Reed, the musician. Lou described Rachel in an interview with Bambi magazine:

"It was in a late night club in Greenwich Village. I’d been up for days as usual and everything was at that super-real, glowing stage. I walked in there and there was this amazing person, this incredible head, kind of vibrating out of it all. Rachel was wearing this amazing make-up and dress and was obviously in a different world to anyone else in the place. Eventually I spoke and she came home with me. I rapped for hours and hours, while Rachel just sat there looking at me saying nothing. At the time I was living with a girl, a crazy blonde lady and I kind of wanted us all three to live together but somehow it was too heavy for her. Rachel just stayed on and the girl moved out. Rachel was completely disinterested in who I was and what I did. Nothing could impress her. He’d hardly heard my music and didn’t like it all that much when he did. Rachel knows how to do it for me. No one else ever did before. Rachel’s something else.”

She moved in with him right away. He was then living in a modest one-bedroom apartment at 405 East 63^rd street. Lou had already written a few songs about trans women, and with the single “Walk on the Wild Side” (which referred to the Andy Warhol-sponsored trans stars, Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis) had his biggest hit. Rachel was at this time oscillating. Some days she was Ricky, and others he was Rachel. People who knew Lou and Rachel used either pronoun. One journalist referred to Lou’s ‘boyfriend named Rachel’. Both Lou and Rachel enjoyed the confusion and further muddied the water by wearing each other’s clothes. She was street-wise and spunky in a way that Lou only pretended to be. She was said to always carry a knife, and was good in a fight – which proved useful when a concert at the Pallazzo dello Sport in Rome turned into a riot 15 February 1975.

Lou had been working on his fourth solo album, Sally Can’t Dance – the title track and spin-off single assumed to refer to trans woman, Sally Maggio, who was manager at the 220 Club, another trans bar where Lou went drinking. Sally would in the 1980s open Sally’s Hideaway, and then Sally’s II, again a bar for trans persons and with trans performers. However it was Rachel whose image was on the obverse of the Sally Can’t Dance LP sleeve, drawn as if reflected in Lou’s shades.


She supported him on some of his tours. In New York, they lived for a while in the Gramercy Park Hotel, and then an upscale apartment on East 52^nd St at FDR Drive where Henry Kissinger, Greta Garbo and John Lennon had lived. In 1975 they began to frequent the rather grimey but seminal punk club, CBGBs. Lou was recording Coney Island Baby, released January 1976 and several tracks refer to Rachel. At the end of the follow-up tour, Rachel was mugged and assaulted. A doctor was called, who inevitably referred to Rachel as ‘she’, even though Lou was saying ‘he’. As Aidan Levy says:

“Rachel had been contemplating gender reassignment surgery, but the transgender rights movement had not yet solidified, and not fully understanding the nature of the decision, Lou was adamantly opposed to any operations, a growing source of conflict in their relationship”.

Despite this, a friend commented: ““I think that Rachel was the glue holding Lou together, or at least keeping him in the public view in many respects … I know that he doted on her. If there was a light shining, it was the two of them together. It doesn’t mean it was the healthiest relationship in the world.” The cover of Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed, 1977 is of photographs of the two of them.

Rachel acted as road-manager on the next tour, managed the money, and watched over the road-crew. They were in London for their third anniversary and ordered a three-tier cake to celebrate, and Lou gave her two diamond rings. He said:

"Rachel knows how to do it for me, no one else before ever did”.

However by the end of 1977, Lou and Rachel were fighting more and more, and frequently it was about the issue of transgender surgery. She had a date for surgery but backed off as Lou said:

“Well why are you doing that? I love you because of the way you are”.

The title track of Street Hassle, 1978 is about her, and an article in Rolling Stone referred to Rachel as the raison d’etre of the album, although in fact it marked the end of their relationship. Lou moved on, having met Sylvia Morales, who became his third wife in 1980.

Reed completely refused to talk about Rachel after 1978. He desisted and decided to go straight. Both his later marriages were with cis women.

There is a rumor that Rachel died in the early 1990s, possibly from HIV complications.

Rachel died in 1990 age 37 at St Clare’s Hospital, which specialized in treating AIDS patients, and she was interred in the gigantic pauper burial site on Hart Island off the Bronx coast (which contains over a million corpses).

Lou died in 2013, aged 71, from liver failure.

• LegsMcNeil & Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Penguin books, 1997: 154-5, 206.
• Marc Campbell.  "Rachel: Lou Reed’s transsexual muse".  Dangerous Minds, 02.06.2013.  Online.
• Howard Sounes. Notes from the Velvet Underground: The Life of Lou Reed. Doubleday, 2015: 182-4, 187, 189, 191, 192, 194, 195, 202, 203, 205, 208, 212, 213, 214, 215-6, 221-2, 226, 229, 235, 248, 269.
• Simon Reynolds. Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its legacy, from the Seventies to the Twenty-First Century. William Morrow Publishers, 2016: 271-2.
• Aidan Levy. Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed. Chicago Review Press, 2016: 221-2, 227, 233, 244, 251-3, 264, 285.
• Corey Kilgannon.  "Dead of AIDS and Forgotten in Potter's Field:  In an untold chapter of the AIDS epidemic, scores of unclaimed bodies were buried in a remote spot on Hart Island.  How many exactly remains unclear".  New York Times, July 3, 2018.  Online.  

EN.WIKIPEDIA(Lou Reed)

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Many books and articles say that Lou Reed married three times, but of course he and Rachel were prohibited by the regressive laws in force at the time.    If they had been married legally, Lou would have had to pay alimony.   While separation from Lou left her free to pursue transgender surgery, the rumors are that she descended into poverty and homelessness.

It is of course the case that most of the New York music and movies trans women of this period opted against surgery:  Candy, Holly, Jackie, Chrysis, Kim Christie, Jayne County.

Harry Allen (1882 – 1922) musician, bartender, barber

Nell Pickerell was raised in Seattle. At age 16 Pickerell gave birth to a child by a father who was not recorded. Pickerell had already inclined to masculine interests and dress, and now adopted them full time. The child was raised by its grandparents.

Two years later Pickerell, who had taken the name Harry Livingstone, was being featured in the press as far away as Philadelphia, “A Woman By Nature – A Man By Choice”. Livingstone had been arrested several times by the Seattle police. The reason given was creating a disturbance, but really for wearing the wrong clothes.

Livingstone 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. Also 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 was not really a man, and anyway he loved another. In August 1902, Harry, drunk, punched a cop, which led him to the jailhouse. In November 1903, Pearl Waldren in Seattle attempted suicide by gunshot, declaring her love for Harry. In 1906, Harry 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.

Harry was said to have worked at all kinds of male jobs: bronco busting, bartending, barbering, long-shoring. He sang well in a deep voice, and played piano, violin, guitar and slide trombone.

By 1911 Harry was mainly using the name Harry Allen. He was arrested and charged with selling alcohol to Native Americans.

In June 1912 Harry 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 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 Pickerell as an energetic and independent woman for whom modern society (unlike many aboriginal tribes) had no place.

By 1917 Harry was working as a police informer after Washington State introduced alcohol prohibition.

In 1919 Harry 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. In 1920 he was busted for opium. Harry did die two years later at age 40 of syphilitic meningitis.

• “A Woman By Nature – A Man By Choice”. Philadelphia Times, May 6, 1900: 18. Online.
• “Dolly Quappe’s Suicide. Loved a Masquerading Girl”. Los Angeles Times, Dec 26, 1901. Online.
• The Notorious Nell Pickerell in Town”. The Ellensburgh Capital, Feb 13, 1907. Online.
• “How Catherine Madden Fell a Victim to Strong Drink; Why Nell Pickerell Will Not Wear Women’s Clothing”. The Spokesman Review, Oct 22, 1911: 24. Online.
• “Nell Pickerell Returning to Jail”. The Spokesman Review, Nov 15, 1911: 5. Online.
• “Nell Pickerell Denies Her Sex; Woman Who Dresses in Male Attire Starts Story She Is a ‘Real Man’; Rumor Causes Sensation”. The Spokesman Review, Nov 22, 1911: 6. Online.
• “Fighter, Bootlegger and ‘Bad Man’ is Miss Pickerell For Love of Whom Three Women Have Killed Themselves”. Tacoma Times, April 12, 1912. Online.
• Miriam Van Waters. The Adolescent Girl Among Primitive Peoples. PhD Thesis Clarke University, 1913: 107-110.
• “Nell Pickerell May Die of Wounds”. Seattle Star, Sept 27, 1916. Online.
• Nell Pickerell Dead:. Seattle Star, Dec 28, 1922. Online.
• Peter Boag. Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011: 23-31, 35, 45, 46, 48, 50, 52, 53-4, 57, 117, 202n2, 203-4n14.
• Knute Berger. “Meet Nell Pickerell, transgender at-risk youth of yesteryear”. Crosscut, June 29, 2014. Online.
• John Mackie. “This Week in History: 1906 The notorious Nell Pickerell returns to Seattle”. Vancouver Sun, February 24, 2017. Online.

EN.Wikipedia
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Boag is, probably rightly, skeptical of the tales of young women who killed themselves. Sometimes it is two, sometimes three. The waitress who drank the carbolic acid is sometimes named Dolly Quappe and sometimes Hazel Walters.


Miriam Van Waters' dissertation, published 1913 was The Adolescent Girl Among Primitive Peoples. Far from seeing Allen as an invert, she heterosexualized Pickerell and even claimed that Pickerell had been married to the father of the child, and cross-dressed only to earn a better wage. She referred to Pickerell as Case I and as HA.

Aurora (1873? - ?) hairdresser, sex worker

Aurora arrived in Buenos Aires, from Paraguay, in the late 1890s.

He quickly drifted into prostitution, however was arrested only when found brawling in cafes, or when dressed as a female. He was persuaded to become a women’s hair stylist, and as such found work in bordellos. He was arrested several times, but there was never enough evidence for a conviction.

One time Aurora was placed in ‘preventative arrest’ after clients at a costume ball in a bordello became angry in that she was too realistic as a woman.


Aurora’s life history was taken by Dr Francisco de Veyga, and published in 1903. In it she asserts that she was born a marica. De Veyga avoided referring to Aurora as a prostitute: he called her a ‘professional’. He regarded Aurora as having an acquired mental disorientation caused by a misunderstanding of female sexuality.

• Francisco de Veyga. "La inversión sexual adquirida. Tipo de invertido profesional. Tipo de invertido por sugestión. Tipo de invertido por causa de decaimiento mental", Archivos de Psiquiatría y Criminología aplicadas a las ciencias afines. Medicina Legal. Sociología. Derecho. Psicología. Pedagogía, año 2, 1903: .193-208.
• Donna J Guy. Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina. University of Nebrasca Press, 1991:86.
• Jorge Salessi. “The Argentine Dissemination of Homosexuality, 1890-1914”. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4,3,Jan 1994: 356, 359-363. .
• Osvaldo Bazán. La historia de la homosexualidad en la Argentina: De la Conquista al siglo XXI. Marea, 2006: 127.
• Kristen Loehr. Tranvestites in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Poverty & Policy. MA Thesis, Georgetown University, 2007: 30.
• Matthew J Edwards. Queer Argentina: Movement Towards the Closet in a Global Time. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017: 13-7.
• María Belén Ciancio & Alejandra Gabriele. “El archivo positivista como dispositivo visual-verbal. Fotografía, feminidad anómala y fabulación”. Mora (Buenos Aires), 18,1, ene/jul 2012. Online.

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Francisco de Veyga writing in 1903, several years before Hirschfeld's Die Transvestiten, 1910, uses the word 'travestida' (tranvestite). 

Peggy Wijnen (1945 – 1967) barmaid.

Jean-Marie Wijnen, Antwerp, was the only boy in a family of several girls. Wijnen always preferred to play with girls, and later quit technical school after being deemed too frail to work in a steel mill, and then was discharged from military service.

As Peggy, Wijnen worked as a hairdresser and as a barmaid.

Peggy approached a clinic in Uccle, Brussels and was assigned three doctors: Andre Fardeau, plastic surgeon, Jean Slosse, endocrinologist and Victor Leclarc, urologist, and with the consent of the Wijnen family, they agreed to supply transgender surgery. This was done 13 October 1967. However 11 days later, Peggy died of a blood clot.

The three doctors were charged with inflicting fatal blows and wounds with premeditation and willingly but without intent to kill. Dr Leclarc died before the trial ended. Drs Fardeau and Slosse were acquitted in that consent, both of Peggy and her family, had been given, and that no medical mistake was noted.

• “Two Doctors Are Acquitted in Death Case”. Associated Press, Sep 28, 1969. Online
  
• Internacional Areco: entre o sítio e as eleições Bélgica Um Julgamento Transexual. Online

__________________

The Internacional Areco article tells us that the going rate for transgender surgery in Belgium in 1967 was 100,000 Belgian francs, which at that time was about £725, which this site says would be the equivalent of £11,870 now.

Ja'Von Crockett (1965 - ) cosmetologist, barber, drag queen, pastor, changeback.

Javon was raised in South Carolina. He had 6 elder brothers. His twin sister died a crib death. His father left one day and never came back. At age 8 he was seduced by a gay preacher.

Ja'von earned a Master of Cosmetology from The Chris Logan Pivot Point Beauty College and Shabazz Barber College in Rock Hill, S.C. He placed and won in several barbering competitions.

After moving to Atlanta he became the drag performer Mother Cavali.


At age 45 he entered a dialogue with Pastor Willis Graham, accepted Christ and was ordained. In January 2011 he was featured on the religious talk show, Atlanta Live.

• "Meet the Ex-Gay, Ex-Drag Queen Pastor". Advocate, Jan 14, 2011. http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/01/14/Meet_the_Exgay_ExDrag_Queen_Pastor.
  
• "'Former Homosexual' Pastor Ja'von Crockett Appears on Better Days Radio". Living Out Load with Darian, February 17, 2011. http://www.loldarian.blogspot.ca/2011/02/former-homosexual-pastor-javon-crockett.html.
  

changed-transformed     StyleSeat

Joanne Cassar SG (1981 - ) hairdresser, activist

Cassar, a hairdresser resident in Cospicua, Malta, achieved transgender surgery in January 2005. In June 2006 she successfully applied under Article 257A of the Maltese Civil Code and her sex and name were changed on her birth certificate.

Subsequently Joanne and her boyfriend, T. applied for a marriage licence. However they were refused in that the Marriage Act prohibited unions between persons of the same gender.

Joanne sued and in February 2007, a Justice noted that the proposed union did not contravene any provision of the Marriage Act. He upheld her request and ordered the director of Public Registry to issue the marriage banns. The marriage registry appealed. In May 2008, another Justice observed that Maltese Law offered no legal definition of either gender, but took into account an affidavit by the former chairman of the parliamentary bio-ethics committee, Dr Michael Axiak, who wrote: "after gender reassignment therapy, a person will have remained of the same sex as before the operation".

In 2010 Joanne was assaulted and had her bag stolen as she left the dance floor at a carnival party. She was frequently insulted and pushed around by strangers.  

Joanne then opened a case in the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, claiming a breach of human rights. She won in April 2011, but then lost on appeal a month later.

Joanne, at some financial cost filed a case against Malta in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The then Attorney General filed submissions arguing that the reassigned gender on Cassar's State-issued identity card was intended only to "spare her embarrassment", and was not meant to entitle Cassar to legal privileges associated with the female gender.

The Maltese General Election of 2013 returned the Labour Party after 15 years of rule by the Nationalist Party.

The new government then relinquished the case in the European Court and presented amendments to the Civil Code under which transgender people re now considered as individuals of the acquired sex with full rights, including the right to marry. Furthermore Joanna Cassar was awarded compensation and also honoured by being accepted into the Xirka Ġieħ ir-Repubblika Society which is limited to 20 members.

* Not the academic at the University of Malta

• Claudia Calleja. "‘I’ve been fighting for a human right for seven years’: Transsexual is still facing abuse from strangers because of who she is". Times of Malta, January 20, 2013. www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130120/local/-I-ve-been-fighting-for-a-human-right-for-seven-years-.454050.  
• "Malta: Transgender woman wins legal right to marry after government drops case". Pink News, 2013/04/03. www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/04/03/malta-transgender-woman-wins-legal-right-to-marry-after-government-drops-case.
  
• "Joanne Cassar loses transsexual marriage case". Times of Malta, May 23, 2011. www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110523/local/joanne-cassar-loses.366791.
  

• "Transgender who challenged government’s intransigence to be honoured". Malta Today, 13 December 2013. www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Transgender-who-challenged-government-s-intransigence-to-be-honoured-20131213.
  
• "Settlement between Joanne Cassar and government signed". Malta Independent, 08 January 2014. http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-04-16/news/settlement-between-joanne-cassar-and-government-signed-1402109962/?___c=___c.
  

Gayle Sherman (1940 - 2019) performer.

Original September 2010; revised September 2013.  My original version was based simply on a reading of Gayle's autobiography.   Since then more information has emerged, particularly in the Chicago Whispers book and on Queer Music Heritage.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Gary Paradis, from Ohio, was raised by an aunt after both parents died in a car crash. At age 16, Gary went to live with relatives in New York, and based on appearance alone was able to get a job, using the name Gayle Sherman, in the chorus line at the Jewel Box Revue.

Later she worked at the 82 Club and then at a small club in Toledo featuring 4 strippers and 2 female impersonators, but the club did not say which was which. A customer fell in love with Gayle, and then killed himself in a car accident when he finally realized that that she was one of the female impersonators.

Gayle moved to Chicago and became a star at the Nite Life, Chicago's longest-running drag bar (early 1940s – 1981). She was mentored by Tony Midnite. Nightlife magazine ran with a cover photograph of Gayle in July 1963 advertising the show at the Nite Life with Vicki Marlane. She was said to be a twin for Sophia Loren.

In 1963 the National Insider ran a 4-part series on her life that was reprinted as a Novel paperback the next year. 

Gayle replaced Tony at the Blue Dahlia, a straight club. She was able to charge $100 just to

accompany business men on dates and no more. On her own time she dated women. She was working off the books and therefore could not have a bank account. She always paid cash, even when on one occasion she bought $2,400 of furniture.

After surgery Gayle was not allowed to work any more as a female impersonator, and so changed her name to Brandy Alexander and became a stripper. With implants her breast measurement was 48" (122 cm) and she performed as Alexandra 'The Great 48'.  She often worked between films in porn cinemas, but when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley pulled their licenses, she got a gig in Hawai'i, and was featured in Confidential Magazine three years later.

She retired from performing at age 48.

She became a cosmetologist.

Gayle died in 2019 at age 79.

*Not Gayle Sherman the 1990s stuntwoman, nor the harpist, nor the wife of Pastor Paul Sherman.

Not the Brandy Alexander of New York, also a drag performer, and mentioned on p157-8 of Randy Shilts' And the Band Played On.

• Gayle Sherman. "I Want to be a Woman". National Insider, 3,17, Oct 27, 1963. Reprinted in I Want to be a Woman!: The True Autobiography of Female Impersonator Gayle Sherman. Chicago: Novel Books 1964. 
•  Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States.  Harvard University Press. 363 pp 2002: 184, 199, 323, 325.
• Sukie de la Croix. " Talking to Viki St. John about the 1960s Part 6". Windy City Media, 2001-01-10. www.windycitymediagroup.com/m/APParticle.php?AID=24378&i=22&s=News.
• Sukie de la Croix. "Whispers". Windy City Times, 2001-04-04 and 2001-04-25. www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=32850.    www.windycitytimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=24912.
• St. Sukie De la Croix. Chicago Whispers: A History of LGBT Chicago Before Stonewall. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012: 240-2.

 BURLESK    QUEER MUSIC HERITAGE
__________________________________________________________

Gayle’s autobiography is only 36 pages long.  She was not even 20 when she wrote it.  The book also contains a similarly short account by a British trans man, and an essay ‘As the Experts See It’, by the then ubiquitous hack writer Carlson Wade, which will strike modern readers as particularly badly informed.  The next year, 1965, Novel Books put out a similar collection, I Was Male: two autobiographical accounts by trans women, one in regret, and an ‘expert’ essay by Carlson Wade and George Griffith.

I obtained I Want to be a Woman through interlibrary loan.  The copy is stamped IFGE on the title page and the side, although it is now owned by a university library.

Joanne Meyerowitz (How Sex Changed:184) mentions Gayle merely to quote her as an example of transsexual separation: ‘I wasn’t then and I’m not now a transvestite. I don’t get sexual pleasure out of dressing as a woman.’   This has been repeated (e.g. Robert Hill, ‘As a man I exist; as a woman I live’: 141).  Whatever Gayle’s opinions may have been later in life, it is a bit much for academics to build generalizations on casual comments by persons hardly out of teenage.

Not to question Gayle’s narrative, but the tale of a parviscient punter at a drag revue who falls in love with a drag performer and comes to a bad end is an old tale.  The classic telling is Honoré de Balzac’s Sarrasine, 1830.  This of course was over-analyzed to death by Roland Barth in S/Z, 1970.

$2,400 in the mid 1960s would be $17,000 today.   To pay that amount in cash today would probably initiate a criminal investigation.

Thank you  Morgan Stevens.

Nancy Valverde (1932–) barber.

Nancy was raised in East Los Angeles. She normally wore men’s clothing and short hair. Most week-ends in 1955, when she was a student at barber school, she was arrested for ‘masquerading’. She often ended up in the Daddy Tank at Lincoln Heights Jail, and sometimes was not booked in, so that friends could not find her for days or even weeks.

Lavender Los Angeles p47

In 1959 she visited the Los Angeles County Law Library and found rulings from 1950  that wearing men’s clothing was not a crime in Los Angeles. She informed her lawyer of this and he was able to use it in her defense. Finally the police stopped arresting her, but harassment did not. The beat policeman made a habit of knocking loudly on her Brooklyn Avenue barber shop window with his nightstick.

Nancy lived with the same woman for 25 years and they raised four boys. After a lifetime as a barber, Nancy moved into assisted living, where she was found by lesbian historians and playwrights, and became a Chicano butch legend. The Butchlalis de Panochtitlan wrote The Barber of East L.A. based on her life.

• Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons. Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. New York: basic Books 430 pp 2006: 94-5.
  
• Glenne McElhinney (dir). On These Shoulders We Stand, with Nancy Valverde and 10 others. US 75 mins 2009.
  
• Raquel Gutierrez, Claudia Rodriguez & Mari Garcia (scr). The Barber of East L.A. Performed by Butchlalis de Panochtitlan. 2009.
  
• Deborah Martin. "Tales of identity and culture at Jump-Start". MySA, 04/30/2009. http://blog.mysanantonio.com/artbeat/2009/04/tales-of-identity-and-culture-at-jump-start.
  
• Tom De Simone, Teresa Wang, Melissa Lopez, Diem Tran, Andy Sacher, Kersu Dalal, Justin Emerick. Lavender Los Angeles. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub, 2011: 47.
  
• Karen Tongson. Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries. New York: New York University Press, 2011: 187,193.
  

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Nancy was butch rather than trans.  Her clothing style would hardly be noticed today, but the prohibition on transvestity in1950s Los Angeles had an extra twist in going after female as well as male cross dressers.   Fletcher Bowron, who had been mayor of Los Angeles 1938-53, had a particular antipathy to women in trousers.  In 1942 he declared to the city council that he loathed "to see masculine women much more than feminine traits in men" and got them to pass a regulation barring female employees at City Hall from wearing pants.  This was re-inforced by William Parker (played by Nick Nolte in the film Gangster Squad) who was Police Chief from 1950 until his death in 1966 who repeatedly sent his men to raid gay and lesbian bars and to treat gays and lesbians as if they were criminals.

It seems that Edward D. Wood and Virginia Prince, Los Angeles' most famous transvestites in the 1950s, avoided the police by avoiding gay bars, but Nancy was arrested several times simply walking on the street.  It was particularly insensitive of Prince to claim that women could wear whatever they wanted.

Of course the Los Angeles police did not apply the same rules to the stars of Hollywood even off-screen.  In 1953 Warner Brothers had starred Doris Day in the transvestic classic Calamity Jane, and she had sung a song that went to number 1 and became a lesbian anthem, Once I Had a Secret Love.

Diane Baransky (193? - ?) hairdresser

Diane Baransky apparently had surgery at the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in 1963.  Her brief moment of fame was in February 1967 when she and John Money were interviewed by Alvin Davis on the CBC program This Hour Has Seven Days.  Her purpose was to demonstrate how convincing as a woman a transsexual could be.  It was not stated whether she were Canadian, or whether she had come from the US with John Money.

As John Colapinto summarizes her appearance:

‘At this point the camera cut from Dr, Money and his questioner to a a blond women who walked out onto the set.  Dressed in a narrow skirt, high heels, and a matching close-fitting jacket, she took a seat in the chair across from the two men.  A close-up shot revealed that her round, pretty face was expertly made up, in the style of the mid-1960s, with heavy eyeliner, mascara, and foundation, her mouth thickly painted with lipstick.

“This is Mrs. Diane Baransky,” the show’s announcer said.  “Until four years ago, her name was Richard.” …

Now she was accepted as a woman and had recently married her husband, a fellow hairdresser. ‘

The show was watched by Mr and Mrs Reimer in Winnipeg, who wrote the next day to John Money for advice about their son who had been left without a penis after a botched circumcision by cauterization.

• John Colapinto. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl.  HarperCollins, 2000: 21-6.

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There are a couple of problems with this account.  The standard account is the first transsexual to have surgery at Johns Hopkins was Phyllis Wilson in 1966, and in February 1967, Johns Hopkins was claiming to have done only two such surgeries.  From the ‘four years ago’ it is implicit that she transitioned in 1963.  However transition may take some years.  It is possible that Diane was the second patient after Phyllis in late 1966, or that she had gone to Europe or Morocco like so many transsexuals at that time.  The account in Colapinto’s book does not clarify the issue.

The second problem is that according to Colapinto the CBC program was This Hour Has Seven Days.  According to CBC Archives page This Hour Has Seven Days was a satirical news program, and most importantly, it ran from October 1964 to May 1966.  That it, it was no longer being broadcast in February 1967. Nor is there an Alvin Davis listed as one of its interviewers.  Very likely Mr and Mrs Reimer mis-remembered the name of the program – that is very easy to do. Again Colapinto’s account does not clarify the issue.   However the BBC documentaries were able to find the relevant clip, but do not give the broadcast details.

“Diane Baransky” was probably, according to the customs of the time, a pseudonym.  Certainly the one woman of that name who is found in a Google search is too young to be the same person.  Like Agnes, who was in the news a few years earlier, she successfully managed to stay out of the news for the rest of her life.

Colette Berends (1934 - 2012) performer, beautician, fabric artist.

Berends was raised in Zwolle, Overijssel, Netherlands. After a few years of window dresser, she went to Amsterdam and found work in a nightclub as a travestie, and later appeared at Madame Arthur in Amsterdam and Paris.

She had breast augmentation in 1956, and made the transition to regular night clubs, and sang and danced in clubs all over Europe and North Africa. She completed transition to Colette with surgery from Georges Burou in 1971. Two Moroccan gynaecologists certified that she had all the external characteristics of a woman. Three months later, with the help of the noted endocrinologist, Dr O de Vaal, she was able to have her birth certificate re-issued.

“Some people said: the most remarkable fact is that you remained precisely the same person, but now it looks more natural. Indeed, I remained the same. Some transsexuals totally reject their past. They tear apart old photo albums in order not to be reminded by the past. However, I have also lived before my surgery and in some way I was happy too. This is not bothering me too much. I am as I am, I do not impose anything on myself. Sometimes they say: as a woman you have to behave such and such. Nonsense. Even should I have a male characteristic. I don’t know if I have one - then it is like that and that makes me not unhappy.”.

She continued as a performer until she was 48. This gave her the money and the time to take holidays all around the world. Colette then returned to Zwolle, despite the fact that she and her past were known there. At first she opened a beauty salon, but became known for her artistic work with tapestries, for which she has won many awards.

She spent the last 30 years of her life with the same boyfriend, Ton. She died at age 77.

• Colette Berends. "Van jongen tot vrouw met allure". Zwolsche Courant, 21 maart 1986. Online at: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/Colette/Web%20Files/Van%20jongen%20tot%20vrouw%20met%20allure.htm. English translation: “From boy to women with style”. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/Colette/Article1/Article1-English.html.
• Jolanda Jansen. “Colette houdt ons voor het lapje”. Telgraaf, 9 februari 1991. Online at: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/Colette/Web%20Files/Colette%20houdt%20ons%20voor%20het%20lapje.htm. English translation by Puck Berends: “Colette creates unexpected delights”. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/Colette/Article2/Article2-English.html.
• Taarna. “Fiber art - Colette Berends”. Pinterest. http://pinterest.com/taarna/fiber-art-colette-berends.
• “Colette Berends - Textielkunst van Colette Berends “. www.coletteberends.exto.nl.
• I Am a Woman Now. Michiel van Erp (dir) with April Ashley, Marie-Pierre Pruvot, Colette Berends, Jean Lessenich, Corinne van Tongerloo. Netherlands 80 mins 2011.
• Berthi Smith-Sanders. “Colette Berends 13.10.1934 – 23.4.2012”. Berthi’s Weblog, 11-05-2012. http://berthi.textile-collection.nl/2012/05/10/colette-berends-13-10-1934-23-4-2012.

TS Successes

Dominic Bash (1946 - 1993) monk, hairdresser, AIDS activist.

Dominic was raised Catholic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an obvious sissy from early childhood. He was a Franciscan monk for some years, but left because he was gay.

He became a hairdresser. He called his shop: The Abbey. He gave free haircuts to nuns. He also gave free haircuts at homeless shelters.

He became friends with Jeannine Gramick, a nun who was starting to organize a Catholic ministry for lesbians and gay men. Dominic was a co-founder in 1973 of Dignity of Philadelphia for Catholic gays, and from 1980 he was co-ordinator of the group’s AIDS ministry.

He was irreverent and outrageous. He would go to the 5th floor of the Graduate Hospital which was prominently gay Catholic priests with AIDS, and tell them what he thought of the Church and its homophobia. His drag persona was Madominic, based mainly on Madonna. In 1989 he tested positive for HIV.

In 1991 he was part of Act-Up when they sprinkled condoms on the altar of SS Peter and Paul while the Cardinal was preaching. In 1992 he led the Philadelphia Pride Parade in a purple-and-pink sequined leotard and a lavender feathered boa.

He wrote a Spiritual Guide for men dying of AIDS. On behalf of Dignity of Philadelphia, Dominic visited AIDS patients several times a week, hundreds of men over twelve years. "I just give a little nurturing, loving, and caring that they're not getting from mother church". He served communion, counseled patients, and helped arrange funerals. "I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, being taught to love one another. Yet [the Church] couldn't love me and I couldn't live a lie."

He died from complication of AIDS at age 46.

• Ralph Cipriano. “Dominc Bash, Hairdresser who helped AIDS victims”. The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan 27, 1993.  Online at:  http://gayhistory.wikispaces.com/file/view/dominicbashobit.pdf, and at http://articles.philly.com/1993-01-27/news/25960643_1_aids-victims-dignity-s-aids-unconditional-love.
• Angela Bonavoglia. Good Catholic Girls: How Women Are Leading the Fight to Change the Church. New York: ReganBooks, 2005: 149.
• “Bash, Bominic”. The Gay History Wiki. http://gayhistory.wikispaces.com/Bash%2C+Dominic?responseToken=0cb1343a84c30116942d66744492f82d4.
• Chris Bartlett. “Dominic Bash - Sticks and Stone Queer Memoir”. The Rotunda, 7/20/2010. Online at: www.scribd.com/doc/34822837/Dominic-Bash.

____________________________________________________________

What a shame that Dominic’s Spiritual Guide is behind a firewall at The Philadelphia Inquirer and cannot be accessed by those who need it.

The Gay History Wiki has some good pages but the name is completely misleading as it is a Wiki of gay Philadelphia only.  It has section called 'Outside Philadelphia' which contains three men in Cleveland, Ohio.  New York, London and Berlin obviously don't come under the rubric of Gay History.  The Wiki needs to be more specific in its name. 

There are a few Philadephia trans and queer persons that I have featured in this blog that are not in The Gay History Wiki: Charles Hamilton finished his life in Philadelphia, Reed Erickson was raised there, as was Gladys Bentley, Donna Delbert was from Philly and returned there after adventures in England, Flawless Sabrina organized pageants from Philadelphia, Rachel Harlow, pageant winner, nightclub owner and engaged to Grace Kelly's brother, was very much a Philadelphian, Leslie Townsend grew up there  and returned in her mature years, Tenika Watson lives there, Elizabeth Coffey, who was in John Waters' Pink Flamingoes, grew up there, Camille Paglia teaches there. In addition Dawn Langley Simmons registered the birth of her daughter in Philadelphia, and IFGE/Trans Events had most of their conferences in Philadelphia.

Holly White (194?–) performer.

Francis Rambough was born in Honolulu. When she was 21, she met Baby Martell (Freddy Figueroa) who invited her to New York and introduced her to the Jewel Box Revue, where she worked as Halle Loki. She studied voice with a jazz musician, and took ballet lessons.

As Holly White, she got a contract in Berlin, and especially after her transition to female, worked mainly in Europe. She was friends with Sonne Teal and missed being in the same plane crash in that she was booked in Israel instead. She worked at Le Carrousel with Bambi and Coccinelle. She did two seasons at Finocchio’s - they had seen photographs and sent for her.

“I wanted to face the world as a female. I was never interested in a male life. I lived on until I could reassign myself to a more female persona. I also worked in Europe after my change. If I was known as a transgendered person, it was OK, if not, OK also. I was, and am, an individual. I don't try to hide my past or my history. I am comfortable in my skin.”

She speaks German and French, and some Spanish and Italian.

Later she returned to Hawai’i and worked as a hairdresser. She did a return European tour in 2005.

*Not the Irish actress, nor the US sociologist, nor the Irish fashion writer.

 DAVIDDEALBA.

Claudia Wonder (1954 – 2010) activist, performer, writer.

Marco Antonio Abram was raised in São Paulo. She knew as a teenager that she was trans, and as Claudia began performing in nightclubs and in experimental theatre and several pornochanchada films. She also appeared as a model in men's magazines. She was regularly arrested as the police frequently raided the gay clubs. In addition, she trained as a hairdresser and makeup artist.

In 1980 she was the lyricist and singer in the punk band, Jardins das Delícias. She became an AIDS activist, and to tackle prejudice against AIDS, she developed the show, O Vomito do Mito, which she regularly staged at the legendary club, Madame Satã, in which she stripped naked in a bath full of fake blood. She and many other artists protested against the then military dictatorship which ended in 1985.

In 1988 she moved to Switzerland and stayed for eleven years, working both in clubs and as a makeup artist.

On return to São Paulo she put out two major CDs: Melopéia and Sonetos do poeta Glauco Mattoso. She also recorded electronic music and FunkyDisco. She was honoured by leading the São Paulo gay pride parade, and at the Festival Mix Brasil de Cinema e Vídeo da Diversidade Sexual. She co-ordinated Flor do Asfalto, a study group of gender identity, and wrote for G Magazine.
 
In 2008 she published Olhares de Claudia Wonder – Crônicas e Outras Histórias. In 2009 the documentary of her life, Meu Amigo Claudia, was made by Dácio Pinheiro, and premiered at the Frameline Lesbian and Gay Festival in San Francisco.

Claudia died in 2010, of cryptococcosis, brought on by AIDS.

• Claudia Wonder. Olhares de Claudia Wonder – Crônicas e Outras Histórias. Edições GLS, 2008.
• Dácio Pinheiro (dir). Meu Amigo Claudia. With Claudia Wonder. Brazil 86 mins 2009.
• skruff. "Brasil’s Claudia Wonder Dies at 55". Jonty Skrufff's Blog. Nov 26, 2010. http://skrufff.com/2010/11/brasils-claudia-wonder-dies-at-55.
• scruff. "Claudia Wonder: Sao Paulo’s First Queen Of Club Culture (R.I.P.) (interview)". Jonty Skrufff's Blog, Dec 1, 2010. http://skrufff.com/2010/12/claudia-wonder-sao-paulos-first-queen-of-club-culture-r-i-p.

PT.Wikipedia      http://meublog.meuamigoclaudia.com.br.

Jenny (198? – ) soldier, beautician.

In 2003, a plane carrying 3 US military contractors crashed in Caquetá, Columbia, and the three contractors were taken prisoner by FARC.

The Colombian government sent 147 soldiers, the troops of Vulture and Destroyer companies to find the contractors. That they never did. But while digging because of a diarrhoea outbreak, they found a FARC money deposit, millions of dollars (USD) and pesos (COP). Each soldier took a fortune.

Among them were three brothers, of whom the youngest was Lenin. Lenin was more or less known to the other soldiers for being gay. He knew what he would do with his share. He went abroad for an operation and returned as Jenny. She now  runs a beauty shop.

The other soldiers spent too much, and attracted attention. The Government arrested many of them for theft. Some others were perhaps killed by FARC hitmen. But Jenny was not noticed, and she was left alone.

• John Otis. Law of the Jungle : the Hunt for Colombian Guerrillas, American Hostages, and Buried Treasure. New York: William Morrow, 2010.

Kenneth Lisonbee (190? – ?) barber.

Katherine Wing was raised in Utah.

As Kenneth Lisonbee he moved to Los Angeles, and became a barber. In 1927, Kenneth married 16-year-old Eileen Garnett, and two years later was living as the husband of 19-year-old Stella Harper.


He was arrested for bigamy that year, and his sex was discovered and his girl name reported in the Los Angeles Times  The district attorney released him on the ground that no-one had been damaged.

Lisonbee had pleaded that he passed as a man to get more work as a barber.

• Lillian Faderman & Stuart Timmons. Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. New York: basic Books, 2006:24-5, 26.
• Tom De Simone, Teresa Wang, Melissa Lopez, Diem Tran, Andy Sacher, Kersu Dalal, Justin Emerick.  Lavender Los Angeles. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub, 2011: 23. 

Craig Russell (1948 – 1990) female impersonator.

Russell Craig Eadie, aka Craig Hurst, was born in tiny Port Perry, (map)Ontario. His parents divorced when he was 9.


In his teen years he founded the International Mae West Fan Club and on the basis of that was invited by Mae West to become her personal secretary. She fired him when she caught him trying on her clothes and makeup.

Back in Toronto Craig finished high school, worked as a typist and hairdresser, changed his name to Russell and started building a career as a drag artiste who used his own voice - one of the last to do so. He also helped Rusty Ryan to get started as a drag artist. Craig had a three-octave vocal range and could impersonate Barbra Streisand in her own key. He could perform a duet between Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

He became friends with a schizophrenic writer, Margaret Gibson, and for a time shared an apartment with her. In 1976 Gibson published a collection of short stories, The Butterfly Ward, which includes ‘Making It' about Liza, a pregnant schizophrenic in Toronto and her exchange of letters with Robin, a rising female impersonator. The collection was much praised and the story ‘Making It' was expanded in 1977 into the film Outrageous!, although the focus of the story was shifted to Robin.

The film was a great success and made Russell into the star he wanted to be. This film was the first commercial success to have a gay character played by a gay actor. He was voted Best Actor at the Berlin festival. At the Virgin Islands festival Russell was voted both Best Actor and Best Actress. The film contains Russell's impersonation of Mae West, and this, combined with West's own film, Sextette, bombing at the time, lead to a final break between the two of them.

The follow-up film, Too Outrageous! was not made until 1987, and quickly died without a trace.

As Mae West died three years after her final bomb, so did Craig Russell after his.

In 1992 Margaret Gibson published another collection of short stories, Sweet Poison, one of which is ‘Golden Boy' where the drag performer is now called Phineas and the writer friend Meg. He had once starred in a film based on her life for which she received only $2,000 and almost no credit. Phineas has changed and become mean and violent.

Although openly gay, Russell married one of his female fans, Lori Jenkins, in 1982. He had also fathered a daughter in 1973. He died of a stroke related to AIDS.

Margaret Gibson died of breast cancer in 2006.

*Not the British novelist, nor the US composer, nor the US comic book writer/artist.

• Margaret Gibson. “Making It”. In The Butterfly Ward. Ottawa: Oberon Press 1976. Toronto: A Totem Book 1979. New York: Vanguard Press 1980. Toronto: HarperCollins 1994.
• Craig Russell with photographs by David Street. Craig Russell and his Ladies. Toronto: Gage Publishing 1979. New York: Methuen 1979.
• Margaret Gibson. “Golden Boy”. In Sweet Poison. Toronto: Harper Collins 1993.
• Robert Fulford. “The 3 a.m. Craig Russell – again”. The Toronto Globe and Mail. 1994.
• “Craig Russell”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Russell_(actor).
• David de Alba. “Craig Russell”. http://www.david-de-alba.com/russell.htm.