Frédé Baulé (1914 - 1976) club owner

In 1936 Marlene Dietrich was in Paris for the opening of a new Maurice Chevalier musical at the Casino de Paris. Erich Maria Remarque, an ex-beau of Dietrich, also came to the show and the reception afterwards. His date for the evening was a 20-year-old woman, Frédérique Baule (born Suzanne Baulé). But it was Dietrich that Baule left with.

Frédé, as she preferred to be known, spent much of the next few years with Marlene who kept returning to Paris as often as her Hollywood career would allow.

In 1938 Marlene set Frédé up in business with a nightclub that was officially called La Silhouette (after Marlene's favourite bar in Berlin), but was generally known as Chez Frédé. It catered to lesbians and cross-dressing women, but also to celebrities.

Frédé's dress and haircut became quite masculine. Errol Flynn describes her in his autobiography:

"She dressed better than any man I had ever seen. … her over-all effect that of a sophisticated English schoolboy. Her man's haircut looked better on her than on any man."

Apparently La Silhouette was able to stay open during the German occupation. The club did so well that in the late 1940s Frédé moved to a larger place, Carroll's. Marlene, of course, was present for the opening, and also Erich Maria Remarque and Maurice Chevalier.

• Kenneth G. Mclain. "The Untold Story Of Marlene Dietrich". Confidential, July 1955. Online at: http://lastgoddess.blogspot.ca/2012/11/marlene-dietrichs-confidential-file.html.
• Errol Flynn & Jeffrey Meyers. My Wicked, Wicked Ways. NY: Berkley Publ. Corp, 1979. NY: Cooper Square Press, 2003: 221-3.
• Axel Madsen. The Sewing Circle: Hollywood's Greatest Secret : Female Stars Who Loved Other Women. New York: A Birch Lane Press Book published by Carol Publishing Group, 1995: 150. 
• Diana McLellan. The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood. New York: LA Weekly Books, 2000: 227, 244-5, 327-8, 355, 358.

• Denis Cosnard. Frede. Des Équateurs, 2017.

Washington yachting party, 1950

In the late 1940s and for a long time afterwards there were no reliable guides for gays and trans.  In the US the closest were a series of books by Hearst newspaper reporters Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer: New York Confidential, 1948 (which sort of became a film in 1955), Chicago Confidential, 1950, and Washington Confidential, 1951 and U.S.A Confidential, 1952.  These book were somewhere between exposé and travel guide, and provide no footnotes or sources for their claims.

The Washington edition makes the following claim:

“Black Washington has its share of deviates, too.

During the summer, groups of colored fairies make up "yachting" parties and cruise the Potomac on the steamer Robert E. Lee. One Saturday night, last summer, over 100 cops were dispatched to the docks when the "Society of Female Impersonators" was to have a midnight sail. They found one thousand seven hundred Negro men, all dressed as women, on the boat, and as many more trying to get on. A riot was in the making, but the cops busted it up and kept it quiet when they hauled away two wagon loads. The ship finally got off at 2 A.M. . . .”

1,700 on the boat, and as many more trying to get on!!!

I can find no confirmation of this anecdote in GLBT histories of Washington.   I am inclined to reject the tale as a fabulation based on the improbable large numbers alone.

It would seem to be a sarcastic touch by the authors to put a negro (that being the term then used) outing on a ship named for the prominent Confederate General.   There was a steamship with that name.  But it sailed on the Mississippi, not on the Potomac.

The practice of cops seizing a random sample at a a gay event, and then leaving, was actually a common practice.

• Passage cited on page 277 in Neil Miller. Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Raoul Hurpin (189?–?) soldier, housewife.

Raoul Hurpin was a noted ladies’ man. He was in the French Army during the Great War. His trench was demolished by a shell, and he was buried alive. He was rescued, and was then three years in hospital. By this time he had become a women.

One of Hurpin’s ex-girlfriends sued for breach-of-promise to confer legitimacy upon her son, so that he could take up a provincial government post. Hurpin admitted responsibility, and medical testimony was taken. Hurpin was declared the father of the child, but it was now obviously impossible for her to marry the women.

Proceedings were then taken to secure legal recognition that Hurpin was a women, and later she married a labourer.

• Roberta Cowell. Roberta Cowell's Story. London: Heinemann. London: W.Heinemann. New York: British Book Centre, 1954: 105.

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This story is found only in Roberta Cowell's Story.  I attempted to check it in relevant book such as Peter Farrer’s Cross Dressing between the Wars: Selections from London Life, 1923-1933, Maxime Foerster‘s Histoire des transsexuels en France and Alice Dreger’s Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, but to no avail.  Obviously we have insufficient detail.  Most likely Hurpin had an unspecified intersex condition, but that Cowell read a popular account that did not give details.

Cowell does not give Hurpin’s female name.

Hagnodike (3rd century BCE) physician.

Gaius Julius Hyginus (64 BCE - 17CE) was an author and superintendent of the Palatine library in Rome. While he wrote many books on topography, biography, the poems of Virgil, agriculture and bee-keeping, almost all are lost. All that survived are two works: one a poetical astronomy, and the other providing summaries largely of myths taken from other writers. The latter was also almost lost. A single copy from the 10th century survived at the abbey of Freising. In 1535, Jacob Micyllus uncritically transcribed the one copy and made a printed version. He probably gave it the name Fabulae, by which we now know it. By the standard practice of that time, the manuscript was pulled apart during the transcription, and only two small fragments have turned up, used as stiffening in book bindings. Section 274 is titled “Inventors and their inventions”. Some of the inventors are plausibly historical, while others would seem to be legendary. In the middle of this section we find the following (translation by Mary Beard):

“The ancients didn’t have obstetricians, and as a result, women because of modesty perished. For the Athenians forbade slaves and women to learn the art of medicine. A certain girl, Hagnodice, a virgin desired to learn medicine, and since she desired it, she cut her hair, and in male attire came to a certain Herophilus for training. When she had learned the art, and had heard that a woman was in labour, she came to her. And when the woman refused to trust herself to her, thinking that she was a man, she removed her garment to show that she was a woman, and in this way she treated women. When the doctors saw that they were not admitted to women, they began to accuse Hagnodice, saying that he was a seducer and corruptor of women, and that the women were pretending to be ill. The Areopagites, in session, started to condemn Hagnodice, but Hagnodice removed her garment for them and showed that she was a woman. Then the doctors began to accuse her more vigorously, and as a result the leading women came to the Court and said: “You are not husbands, but enemies, because you condemn her who discovered safety for us.” Then the Athenians amended the law, so that free-born women could learn the art of medicine.”

• Helen King. “Agnodice”. In Simon Hornblower & Antony Spawforth (eds). The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Gaius Julius Hyginus translated by Mary Grant. “Fabulae”. Theoi E-Texts. www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae5.html.
• “Gaius Julius Hyginus”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyginus.

EN.WIKIPEDIA.

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Herophilus (Greek: Ἡρόφιλος) (335-280 BCE) was born in Chalcedon (now Kadiköy, Turkey) and taught and practiced medicine in Alexandria.  However Hagnodike is said to be in Athens, and Herophilus  is not recorded as ever teaching in Athens.

Agnodice is the Latin form of the name; ‘Aγνοδίκη=Hagnodike the Greek.

The accusation that, while taken as male, Hagnodike  was seducing and corrupting his female clients, resembles the Christian transvestite saint stories of some centuries later.  The Christian saints are discussed in several books, but there is no one web page that summarizes them.  I have featured very few of them on this site in that it is usually impossible to pin their story down to a specific time and place.

The tale of Hagnodike  was used from the Renaissance onwards as a precedent justifying female medical workers.

Juliet Griffiths (1930 - 1960) performer.

(The following is a summary of the Oakley book.  But see my comments below).

Julian Griffiths and his elder brother were raised by a prosperous stockbroker and his wife. At age 12 Julian was discovered trying on girl’s clothing by his brother, but was encouraged to continue by Sandra, a family friend.

He was sent to boarding school where he was feted by older pupils for their midnight parties. One of them obtained female clothing for Julian from his sister, the headmaster caught them and Julian was expelled.

A family doctor took the attitude that damage might be done to his state of mind if Julian were not allowed to follow his tendencies. At age 17, he was prescribed folliculin and luetin, and oestradiol monobenzoate with strenuous exercise, steam baths and cold immersions. His brother took Julian to live in a flat in London.

The brother qualified as a psychologist and opened a practice in Harley Street. It became more difficult for Julian to pass as male, and his brother agreed that he could dress as female. When their parents came to visit, they met their daughter Juliet for the first time. They died while motoring on the continent some months afterwards. Sandra and Juliet continued their affair, and Juliet experimented with various drugs.

Dr Hermann Maxfield (1897 - 19??) of St ______ Hospital, Casablanca, took over Juliet’s case. He proclaimed Juliet’s case “as genuine a case as I have ever seen”. However Juliet would have to wait until the age of 20 before she could be operated on. The operation would cost three million Francs, 1 million in advance. The Specialist, who would perform the operation, flew to London to inspect Juliet. He said to her:

“Young man .. you could, as a transvestite, make your fortune on the stage and in society. Tell me - why do you want to be a woman?”

To which Juliet replied:

“ I was born a woman. But nature robbed me of her attributes and gave me the body of a man. I just want to rectify that mistake. I do not find it pleasant to live in a man’s body, I wish to be released.”

Juliet enjoyed dancing and tennis, and often went out with Sandra. One day two men looking for pickups fell on Juliet and Sandra, and in a scuffle, Juliet’s panties came down. The two men informed a London journalist who demanded a story. Juliet decided to turn the situation to her advantage, and to tell her story to the press.

She became an overnight sensation and shortly afterwards a nightclub star at the Golden Dome, Piccadilly at £50 a week, and was advertised on television. She compered the show, wearing different clothes in each of her six appearances.

The operation was in April 1950. Her brother flew with Juliet to Casablanca, Juliet in male clothing for the last time. Reporters saw them off, and others were waiting in Casablanca. The operation lasted four days, Juliet being unconscious all that time, and recuperation at the clinic took several months. Sandra flew out and joined them. They returned home to much press attention and Juliet started an engagement at the Midnite Spot.

She started to avoid Sandra, and became involved in an affaire with Michael, a well-known portrait painter who rarely went into London and paid no attention to gossip. Not until Michael’s next exhibition, which featured his paintings of a nude Juliet, did he find out about her past.

Juliet started to get invitations from the rich and titled. She performed on the continent and in Las Vegas. She rode her fame for five years.

Sandra then disappeared, and then Juliet cancelled everything and roamed about Europe. She found Sandra in a French fishing village, but left her with her new girlfriend.

Juliet consulted a famous sexologist in Paris who told her that she was really a man.

In Rome she met and had an affaire with Antonio, who, knowing nothing of her past, top-billed her in his club. However she had pains during sex. She saw a specialist who concluded that regular sexual activity had caused the inverted penile skin to atrophy and it was now cancerous.

She sought out Sandra again who was by then the wife of a Norwegian man. Juliet then went to the English Lake District and drowned herself. She was aged 30.

• Eric Gilbert Oakley. Man into Woman: The Amazing account of a male’s change into female, with full psychological and medical Case History and Personal Analysis Questionnaire. London: Walton Press, 1964.

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How much was 3 million francs in 1948?

The French currency was devalued several times between 1945 and 1960 when the New Franc was introduced.  In 1945 £1=480fr and in 1949 £1=980fr.   So Juliet’s operation cost a bit over £3000.  According to this calculator, £3000 in 1948=£86,000 now.  No wonder the Specialist was willing to fly to London as part of the package.  No wonder that there were very few sex change operations at that time.

How good a wage was £50 a week?

In addition to her inherited wealth, Juliet would have been able to save up for the operation in two years. 

According to this site, the average wage in 1948 was £3/18/- (£3.90).  Juliet’s wage was more than 12 times as much.

Who is Eric Oakley?

Oakley (1916 – ?) wrote books on sex and psychology in the 1950s and the 1960s. Others of particular interest are Sane and Sensual Sex, 1963, The History of the Rod, 1964, Sex change and dress deviation,1970.
He puts ‘D.Psy’ after his name, presumably Doctor of Psychology.  However he lists his higher education as Skerry’s College (which prepares for civil service exams) and the Glasgow School of Art, neither of which presumably would award a D.Psy.

Who is Juliet’s brother?

The brother is never named.   The book is composed of extended quotes from Juliet’s diary, the brother’s writings, Dr Maxfield’s writings etc. 

However there is also a a mysterious narrator who is not any of these.

It is very unusual for a newly graduated psychologist to open a surgery on the prestigious Harley Street.  To do so requires both money and connections.

Is Oakley Juliet’s brother?

The brother says that he is writing a book about Juliet, and the only book about her is Oakley’s.   However in the book it says that the brother is five years older than Juliet, which would mean born in 1925.   Oakley gives his birth year as 1916!

‘Trans-sexualist’ used in 1940s?

By the time that Oakley’s book was published in 1964 ‘transsexual’ and its variants was fairly well known.   However the book has both Dr Maxfield and the unnamed Sunday newspaper using the term in 1948.  The term was starting to be used in an experimental way:  Kinsey used it in 1948 for homosexuals considered as an intermediate sex.  Cauldwell coined ‘Psychopathia transexualis’ in 1949.  I have previously written on the term.  However I gave no examples of British usage.  It could be that the term was more in use in the UK at that time, and that it has not been recorded.

Television advertising?

On p136 it says that Juliet’s appearance at the Golden Dome was advertised on television.  British television, that is the BBC, was closed down during the war, but quickly revived afterwards.  However there was no commercial television in 1948.  The first commercial channel, ITV, did not open until 1955.  So where were these advertisements shown?

National Service?

War time conscription in the UK continued, under the name National Service, until 1960.  All persons considered male were expected to serve for 18 months.   It is not mentioned how Julian managed to avoid this.

The nightclubs, The Golden Dome and Midnite Spot.

Google either of these names, and you will find nothing.  I also checked in The London Encyclopaedia – to no avail.

Is The Specialist Dr Burou?

P98 describes The Specialist as ”tall, well-built, foreboding man without, it seemed, a trace of a sense of humour”.  This is hardly how Coccinelle described Dr Burou: “excessively tanned, eyes of blue porcelain, a seductive man in his 40s, he was more like a playboy than a medical luminary (Coccinelle par Coccinelle, 1987, page 141)”. 

More to the point, Burou did not perform his first sex change operation until 1956, almost a decade later than Juliet was accepted by Dr Maxfield.

Were there sex change operations in Casablanca before Dr Burou?

According to this book, yes.  However no one else seems to know about it.

Other early transsexuals:

P137: “Julian now took his place on the short list of famous personalities who had changed their sex, such as Roberta Cowell, Christine Jorgensen, Coccinelle, April Ashley, and so on.”

The tense is wrong in this sentence.  All the others are later in time: Cowell in 1951, Jorgensen 1952, Coccinelle 1958, Ashley 1960. 

After the unnamed army sergeant who may have had surgery in 1945, Juliet is presumably the first named British surgically confirmed trans woman.

Who is Dr Hermann Maxfield?

I am unable to find out anything else about him.

P104: Dr Maxfield: “Out of the 48 chromosomes ...”. An egregious error for a doctor and sexologist to make.

Where else is Juliet mentioned?

Almost nowhere.  In this pdf on transsexuality in Iran, in footnote 5, several early transsexuals are mentioned including “Juliet (formerly Julius, no last name given in report)”.   I have tried checking most of the books by the other early British transsexuals, and find no mention of Juliet.  This, of course, is highly unlikely if she had the showbiz success that Oakley says that she did.

Who was Michael, the painter prominent in the early 1950s?

Suggestions are invited.

Who was the famous Parisian sexologist?

 Suggestions are invited.

Does regular sexual activity cause the inverted penile skin to atrophy and turn cancerous?

 If so it is a well-kept secret, or happens - as the book claims - to only 1 in a million of transsexuals.

Is Man into Woman a fraud?

That is the question.

Bellino (1732 - ?1790) castrato impersonator.

Angiola Calori was raised in Bologna, where her mother took in lodgers. 

According to Giacomo Casanova's memoirs, she had an early affair with the renowned opera castrato Salimbeni, and that Salimbeni suggested that she pass as a castrato (a male soprano who had been  gelded before puberty to retain his vocal range) to avoid the attentions of men, and promised that he would get her a job with the Elector of Saxony, but died before he could do so. 

Nevertheless she became the castrato Bellino, and thus was able to sing on stage in the Papal States. She claimed that she had been able to pass the examination (carried out by an elderly priest) with the aid of an addition taped to her body in the appropriate position. 

Casanova felt that Bellino could not be a castrato, and seduced him to be sure. He refers to her as Teresa Lanti and claims that she raised his son as her supposed brother. 

Angiola apparently married Cirello Palesi circa 1760, and became a famous soprano. Some books, following Casanova, refer to her as Teresa Lanti Palesi. 

Heriot points out that Bellino's meeting with Casanova took place in 1744, but that Salimbeni's death is recorded as 1751. He thinks that Casanova perhaps confused two singers, and that the castrato in question was Giuseppe Appiani, who was born in the same year and place as Salimbeni, and who did die in Bologna in 1742. 

More to the point, if her birth year was 1732 as given by Willard Trask, it is highly unlikely that Bellino was an established performer in 1744 as she would have been only 12. 

Nettl assumes that the tale is largely false, but also tells us that a portrait of Teresa may be seen in a Milanese theatrical museum, but does not specify which one. 

Bellino is a character in the Simon Capet film, Evirati, 2000, and the 2005 Russell T Davies BBC mini-series Casanova, but not in the Hollywood film of 2005, nor in Fellini’s film of 1976.

• Giacomo Casanova. Histoire de ma vie jusqu'à l'an 1797. Manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
• Giacomo Casanova edited by Willard Trask. History of my Life. New York, Harcourt, Brace & World 1966-1971 . Vol 2, Chps I, II, Vol 7 Chp VII, VIII, Vol 10 Chp IX, n29, Chp X, n36.
• Paul Nettl. "Casanova and Music". The Music Quarterly. 15,2 Apr 1929: 212-232.
• Angus Heriot,. The Castrati in Opera. New York: Da Capo, 1956. paperback. 1975: 277, 182.
• "Giacomo Casanova". Wikipedia: L'enciclopedia libera. it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Casanova.

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There is a continuing debate among Casanovistas to what extent Bellino  was a literary construct by Casanova, even if Angiola Calori was a real soprano.  I did consider putting this article in my arts blog, but on balance decided to go with a historical Bellino.  

The en.wikipedia article does not even mention Bellino, so I used the it.wikipedia article instead (with my husband’s assistance).  For a summary of the argument re whether Bellino is a literary construct see footnote 11 of the it.wikipedia article.

Not even the it.wikipedia site has an entry on Angiola Calori.

A female-impersonator impersonator

Penny Arcade is the stage name of Susana Ventura (1950 - ), performance artist and playwright. She has worked with many female impersonators and transgender actors. She performed with the Ridiculous Theater Company with Charles Ludlam, in the Jackie Curtis play Femme Fatal, and was in Women in Revolt, 1972, with Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn. She worked with Jack Smith, and was a friend of Quentin Crisp with whom she did a performance piece.

Her major drag performance is Margo Howard-Howard (1935- 1988 ) born Robert Hesse a New York drag artist who describes his adventures as a transy hooker in 1950s and 1960s New York, and his encounters with James Dean, the Windsors and Truman Capote. He was kept by a bigshot heroin dealer for four years, and after escaping the dealer and his drug addiction he met Judy Garland, Andy Warhol, Jackie Curtis, Tallulah Bankhead, Madonna and Elizabeth Windsor. He published his memoirs in 1988 as if an autobiography shortly before dying. The copyright page says: "This is a fictionalized memoir".

Most reviewers did not realize that Penny Arcade was performing Howard-Howard in her act, and took the autobiography at face value.

It is not known who posed as Margo in the photographs for the book, but here he is with Penny.

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

*Not Margo Howard, aka ‘Dear Prudence’, the daughter of ‘Ann Landers’.

• Margo Howard-Howard with Abbe Michaels. I was a White Slave in Harlem. Four Walls Eight Windows. 1988. Reissued in 1991 with an Introduction by Quentin Crisp.
• “Margo Howard-Howard”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_Howard-Howard.
• ·http://pennyarcadenyc.blogspot.com.
• www.pennyarcade.tv.

The Wife of Convict SYF45, nurse.

A story was told in The Evening News on 8 September 1955. In Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, an old lag wishes to unburden his conscience. The old lag had been a sailor, and in 1887 he fell ill and was hospitalized. He fell in love with one of the nurses, and they were married before he left on a last voyage. On return he had a few drinks with his shipmates and he went off with one of the prostitutes who joined them.

His wife would no longer sleep with him. One night he found a bloodstained carving knife on the kitchen table, and a few days later a pair of his trousers hanging to dry though still bloodstained. His wife admitted that she was doing the Ripper killings: 'Both of our lives have been ruined by women of that class - and I'll see they don't wreck other people's lives!' She would dress as a man - as a sailor - but carry a nurses cloak and bonnet in a bag. The deed done she would dress as a nurse and calmly walk away. After the death of Mary Kelly, a man was suspected and almost charged. Not wanting an innocent man to be punished, she decided to stop the killings.

• Colin Wilson & Robin Odell. Jack The Ripper: Summing Up And Verdict. London: Corgi Books 1987.

Alexei Pedachenko (1857 - 1908) doctor, murderer.

In Russia Pedachenko had been a doctor, who had worked in the maternity wards in Tver (known as Kalinin 1931 - 1990). Pedachenko spent some time in Paris around 1886 and was wanted for the murder of a woman in Montmartre. In 1888, he was living with his sister in Walworth, south London, which was the year of the Ripper murders.

The Monmartre murder was presumably the cause of his flight to London, although it is also said that he was an agent of the Ochrana, the Russian secret police. Some say that they ordered the Jack the Ripper murders merely to embarrass the British police; others say that the idea was to blame expatriate Russian anarchists.

Pedachenko passed himself off as a woman when he felt like it, but on other occasions he grew a heavy moustache which he wore curled and waxed. A burnt out tea kettle was found with the body of Mary Kelly, one of the Ripper victims. It is suggested that this was used to boil water to shave off his moustache so that he could escape in Kelly's clothes.

After the murders in London, and Sir Charles Warren had resigned from the Metropolitan Police, Pedachenko was smuggled back to St Petersburg, where, after murdering yet another woman in 1902, he was committed to an asylum where he died. He was cross-dressed when arrested.

In 1923 William Le Queux published Things That I Know About Kings, Celebrities and Crooks in which he claimed that the Russian provisional government of 1917 had given him manuscripts found in the cellar of Grigori Rasputin's house. These included a manuscript in French called Great Russian Criminals which specified that Pedachenko was Jack the Ripper. As Colin Wilson comments: Rasputin lived in a fourth floor flat and did not know any French.

Donald McCormick, in his 1959 The Identity of Jack the Ripper, says that he was shown a lithograph copy of The Ochrana Gazette for January 1909 which identifies Vassily Konovalov as the Ripper, and describes his cross-dressing. The Ochrana Gazette was a real publication, but other researchers have not been able to find the entry. It also, peculiarly, refers to 'Petrograd', a name that St Petersburg would not take until 1917.

Possible aliases include: Vassily Konovalov, Mikhail Ostrog, Andrei Luiskovo.

• Paul Begg, Martin Fido & Keith Skinner “Vassily Konovalov, William Le Queux, Ochrana Gazette, Michael Ostrog, Alexander Pedachenko, Grigori Rasputin” The Jack the Ripper A to Z. London: Headline 1991.
• Tom Cullen. Autumn Of Terror 1945. Reprinted as The Crimes And Times Of Jack The Ripper. Fontana/Collins. 1966: p206-7
• Christopher J. Morley. “Dr. Alexander Pedachenko”. Jack the Ripper: A suspect Guide. E-Book. 2005. Online at http://www.casebook.org/ripper_media/book_reviews/non-fiction/cjmorley/146.html.