Dante Gill (1930 - 2003) sex entrepreneur, mobster

Lois Jean Gill was raised in Pittsburgh, and was first arrested at age 18. By the late 1950s Gill was an accomplished horse-rider, was working as a blacksmith.

From 1963 Gill worked as a prostitute, and was arrested for it the next year. Otherwise Gill was a retailer, running a baby furniture shop and a frozen foods store. By 1968 Gill was giving his name as Dante, and explained that he was a man.

He became involved with George Lee, the Pittsburgh mobster involved with pornography and prostitution. Gill’s mother Agnes died in 1973 after a struggle with cancer. Afterwards Gill became manager of one of Lee’s massage parlors (where sexual services were available). Here Gill learned the sex business: how to deal with johns and vice cops, how to run a legitimate cover business.

George Lee was gunned down in 1977, which set off a battle for his assets. Nick DeLucia, a former fireman, took several of the parlors, and for a while Gill was his business partner. However not without a struggle: one employee was murdered at home; a parlor was destroyed by a package bomb received at Christmas and one sex worker was killed. Amidst this, Dante found the time to marry Cynthia from Texas on a vacation in Hawai’i. They lived together in Pittsburgh, although the marriage did not last.

In November, the gay bar in Tampa, Florida run by an associate, Frank Cocchiara, burned down. Gill gave him a job running one of the parlors in Pittsburgh. Cocchiara became a regular at Pittsburgh’s drag balls, befriended local gay activist Herb Beatty and was one of the first to become HIV+.

In 1980 an arson attack destroyed one of Gill’s parlors, killing three men who were sleeping on the top floor. The partnership between DeLucia and Gill had degenerated to antagonism. DeLucia and some associates were even charged with an alleged plot to kill Gill (although due to a key witness’ attempt to extort money from the defense, nothing was ever proven in court).

Dante was tough enough to hold on. He got both his adversaries and the police to refer to him as Mr Gill. He expanded into gay bars, and into supplying anabolic steroids. He dressed expensively, traveled the world and collected rare animals. He was known for reciting Irish poetry.

Dante & Cynthia 1984

DeLucia was jailed for tax evasion in 1981. Then Gill attempted to re-introduce Lee’s old monopoly by chasing the competition out of town. However he claimed to earn only $60,000 for income tax purposes, but the tax authorities were able to demonstrate that he was spending much more than that. They also found that each of his parlors brought in more than $500,000 each year.

In 1984 he was arrested, convicted and jailed for tax evasion. He was sentenced to 7 years, but paroled in 1987. The tax authorities filed a $12.5 million claim against him. However he no longer had much money.

Also he required dialysis. He died in hospital aged 72.

• Torsten Ove. “Obituary: Dante ‘Tex’ Gill / Sexually ambivalent rub parlor owner”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazett, January 09, 2003. Online.
• “The complex and tough Dante ‘Tex’ Gill. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 17, 2014. Online.
• “Revealed: The incredible life of transgender gangster Mr Gill who controlled a criminal empire of brothels in 1970s Pittsburgh and will controversially be portrayed by Scarlett Johansson in her latest movie”. The Daily Mail, 6 July 2018. Online.
• Furio_from_naples. “Dante ‘Tex’ Gill vs Pittsburgh Mafia”. Gangsterbb.net, 07/23/18. Online.
• Richard Gazarik. Wicked Pittsburgh. The History Press, 2018: 123-5.

EN.Wikipedia

Regina Adams (1952 - ) widow, performer

Prior to the June 2016 shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the deadliest attack on gay people was the 24 June 1973 arson attack at the Up Stairs Lounge, 141 Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The prime suspect is a gay man who had been ejected from the bar earlier in the day. He was never charged and killed himself 17 months later.

On 24 June, the Metropolitan Community Church was having a social after its religious service on the final day of Pride Weekend. Just before 8PM the door buzzer from downstairs rang, and the door was opened revealing the stairs to be on fire, along with the smell of lighter fluid. The bartender led some 20 patrons out through the back entrance and to safety. However others were accidently locked in. 29 died, and another 18 were injured, of whom three later died.

Among the dead was Reginald Adams, an Afro-American from Dallas who had been studying at Loyola University in New Orleans, initially with the aim of becoming a Jesuit priest. At the Up Stairs lounge he had met the still young Ricky Soleto, who did drag acts, and was trying out some feminine personae. They became a couple, one of the few inter-racial gay couples in New Orleans at that time. The ambition to become a priest was being abandoned.

It was Reginald who suggested that Ricky become Regina, not so much from his name, but because she was his queen, which is what ‘Regina’ means. He started to wear Ricky’s high-school ring, and they shared an apartment in the French Quarter.

Regina and Reginald were both at the Up Stairs social on the fatal night. They realized that they did not have enough money for a dinner arrangement afterwards, and, having finished her drink, it was Regina who went home to get some, and also a borrowed hat to be returned. As she returned she saw the flames and fire engines were arriving. She could not find Reginald, and searched at Charity Hospital, where the victims were taken, but without success.

She was in shock. She continued to lay out Reginald’s clothes each day, even after her mother moved in to take care of her. Reginald was one of the last to be identified, being burnt beyond recognition. He was finally identified by dental records and by the high-school ring on his finger.

After her recovery, Regina became well known performer in New Orleans, first as a drag performer, and then as a woman. In 1980 Regina legally changed her name to Regina Adams, honoring the man who should have been her husband.

Because of Hurricane Katrina, there was no Southern Decadence in 2005. Therefore joint Grand Marshalls Lisa Beaumann and Regina Adams reigned in both 2005 and 2006.

• Johnny Townsend. Let the Faggots Burn: The Upstairs Lounge Fire. BookLocker, 2011: 302-4.
• Clayton Delery-Edwards. The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-Two Deaths in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973. McFarland & Company, 2014: 29, 36, 38, 45, 49-50, 52, 73, 88, 108, 121.
• Diana Anderson-Minshall. “Book of the year: Biography Documenting Worst Mass Killing of Gays in U.S. History”. Advocate, March 03 2015. Online.
• “Transgender Mormon Survives Mass Murder“. Main Street Plaza, October 6, 2015. Online.
• Robert L Camina (dir & scr). Upstairs Inferno, with Regina Adams. US 96 mins 2015.
• Jim Downs. Stand by Me The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation. Basic Books, 2016: 28.
• “Deadly 1973 hate crime recalled in new documentary”. Washington Blade, February 9, 2017. Online.
• Robert W. Fieseler. Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation. Liveright, 2018: 36 -7, 59-60, 68-9, 87, 123, 150, 225, 235, 267n62.

Celebrazzi 2006


IMDB

Case of Sheffield and Horsham v. The United Kingdom, 1998

Rachel Horsham (1946 - )

Horsham was raised in a small village in Surrey, with a father who had been born in India, and a mother from Ireland. Horsham knew from an early age that she was not really male. As Rachel she emigrated to the Netherlands in 1974 because that country recognised trans women as women at a time when the UK did not.

She became a patient of Professor Dr Louis Gooren at the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) of Amsterdam, wrote the first version of her autobiography in 1991, and completed transition in 1992.

She applied to the UK Consulate for a re-issued UK passport in her new name and gender:

“During an interview with the Consul, I was informed that it was not possible to be issued with a new passport reflecting my current status, at the time. Nor would they accept a letter of Deed Poll from a Solicitor for a change of forenames. Their reasoning: that the issuing of passports to transsexuals in the United Kingdom, showing their female status, on production of a letter of Deed Poll from a Solicitor, and a letter of acknowledgement from a qualified doctor, that the bearer was a transsexual, was not legal outside of the United Kingdom.” (Plaintiff’s Observations)

She was told that she needed an order from a Dutch Court. This was obtained and the passport re-issued. She became a Dutch citizen in 1993, and obtained a ruling in a Dutch court that her UK birth certificate should be amended. As this did not happen she initiated legal proceedings in the UK. This was appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 1994.

Kristina Sheffield (also born 1946)

Sheffield was a pilot with Brittania Airways, and had 34 years experience when she transitioned in 1986.

Kristina divorced from her wife as was almost always required in the 1990s (in retrospect she felt that she had been coerced into it underhandedly), and a judge also granted an injunction banning Kristina from seeing her daughter as “transsexuals are not suitable company for children”.

She applied to every UK airline, but was always obliged to show her birth certificate which said that she was born male, which resulted in her not getting employment.

While her passport was re-issued in her new name, she was still unable to obtain a US visa, and twice in court to stand surety for a friend, was obliged to reveal her previous name. A misunderstanding with the police with regards to a replica firearm indicated that they were aware of her gender change although the topic had not come up. A request under the Data Protection Act 1984 would have required her to state all previous names.

She also appealed through the UK court system and then to the ECHR.
 

And then

 
Both cases were initially accepted by the ECHR in 1994. Kristina met with Rachel in Amsterdam. Following advice from Rachel, Kristina revised the statement of her case. This made the two cases rather similar although the circumstances were different, in that Rachel wanted to marry and Kristina to find employment. The ECHR decided to couple both appeals.

Rachel, with Kristina’s assistance researched the Ewan Forbes-Sempill case and the Corbett divorce case. They obtained the birth certificates for April Ashley, Roberta Cowell, Michael Dillon and Georgina Turtle, and the marriage certificates for Georgina Turtle and April Ashley. Only April had not had her birth certificate amended re her name and sex. From this they were able to conclude that the Corbetts’ divorce trial could have been quickly concluded in that April was still legally male and thus the marriage was invalid according to the law at that time. There was no need for the detailed medical examinations that were done. Unless, of course, something other than an annulment of marriage was being enacted.

The original birth certificate for Ewan Forbes-Sempill proved impossible to obtain, however a copy specifying his male sex and name was available. The Sempill and Corbett cases had been more about establishing the boundaries of aristocratic privilege than of determining the best governance of transsexuals.

“It was also found, that there had been prior knowledge of these birth certificates by the plaintiffs of former cases that had gone to the ECHR. They were the cases of Rees and later Cossey. None of the fact that it was possible to amend a birth certificate, within existing statute law, was ever presented to the ECHR in those cases. They were based on a demand that the UK government must change the law. The court in those cases was not prepared to demand that a government must restructure its laws. Both cases lost and this created a case law in the ECHR upon which any further cases from the UK would be accepted and judged. The ECHR works on the basis of creating its own case law upon which to judge a case presented to them and where they have none they create it. If a case challenges existing case law, then the court can examine the situation.” (Rachel Horsham .4)

In May 1996, Rachel wrote an anonymous article that was published in The Independent, "Trapped in a man's body with a woman's mind". She detailed the then lack of human rights for transsexuals in the UK; explained how HRT and reconstructive surgery have a 97% success rate and attributed the condition to an incongruence of pre-natal hormones (a theory that was accepted in the late 1990s). She rightly points to the 1970 Corbett v Corbett divorce case as the point where things went wrong.

“All that is required is for government to accept a return to the pre-1970 status quo, a move that is supported by medicine, a large section of legal opinion and many parliamentarians. There is no need for new legislation or new administrative systems; the Birth Certificate still contains a column where errors at registration can be corrected as they were before 1970. Time has shown that there were no practical complications with those corrections, and thus there is no realistic argument for not reinstating the practice. Indeed, there is every reason for regarding it as an urgent necessity.”

The ECHR gave its judgement 30 July 1998. By 11 to 9 it voted that the Article 8 right to respect for a private life was not violated (although the court noted “no steps taken by respondent State to keep need for appropriate legal measures in this area under review despite Court’s view to that effect in Rees and Cossey judgments — Court reiterates that view”). By 18 votes to 2 it voted that the Article 12 right to contract lawful marriage was not violated. Unanimously it voted that Article 14, the right not to be subjected to difference in treatment was not violated. The judgment does not address Horsham’s argument that Corbett vs Corbett was a bad judgment and a simple reversal would solve the problems.

As Rachel summarises the result on her home page:

“The United Kingdom rejected [the plaintiffs’ plea] on the grounds that under British law a person’s sex is fixed at birth and cannot be amended or changed and argued that the Court of Human Rights had given two Judgments in their favour upholding this contention in two previous cases, Rees and Cossey. The plaintiff, in her submissions, proved that the government had lied to the court in those previous cases, and that English Statute law did have the required legislation to amend a person's birth certificate, in such cases. In 1998 the court decided to uphold its case law based on Rees and Cossey and the case of Rachel Horsham was never judged on the facts presented to them.”

Rachel expanded her autobiography to include the appeal to ECHR, and published it, also in 1998.
Kristina won an employment discrimination case in 1998 at an industrial tribunal in that she was unable to obtain even an interview with Easyjet to be a pilot despite her 34 years’ experience.

Context

In 1997, after 18 years of homophobic Conservative misrule, the Labour Party became the new government. Initially it continued the Conservatives’ homophobic policies, one of which was to oppose appeals such as that by Horsham & Sheffield. The GLBT censorship known as Section 28 was not repealed until 2003.

While government lawyers were in Strasburg arguing against the petitions of Horsham and Sheffield, Petra Henderson, British but resident in Germany, had completed surgical transition and wished to be recognised legally as female, which the government quietly permitted. She had threatened to go to the ECHR and the Government wished to keep her out of the newspapers. It was insisted that this was a one-off exemption and did not set a precedent. There were some other similar one-offs, such as the UK citizen in Paris who was able to obtain a similar result with Petra's assistance. Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of ‘joined-up government’, but this was one area where it was definitely not so.

Press for Change had been founded in 1992. It engaged with lawyers and Members of Parliament. Inevitably a slow process. A private member's bill was introduced in 1996, but as the then Conservative Government refused to endorse it, it was without success. In 2002, another appeal to the ECHR finally met with success, and two years after that the Labour Government passed the Gender Recognition Act – not perfect, but the best in the world at that time.

Comments

Rachel’s book is not listed in either Amazon or Abebooks. It is on the Dwarf Empire web page.












In recent years Rachel has self-identified as HBS, although independently of the two major strands thereof.   In 1998 the only Benjamin Syndrome movement was the Association du Syndrome de Benjamin in Paris run by Tom Reucher, Diane Potiron, Hugues Cariou, and which was inclusive unlike the HBS movement which developed after 2005.

• "Trapped in a man's body with a woman's mind", The Independent, 1 May 1996. Online.
• Rosa Prince. “Transsexuals in test case”. The Independent, 22 February 1998. Online.
• “British Pilot Wins Discrimination Case”. NewsPlanet, June 1, 1998. Online.
• Case of Sheffield and Horsham v. The United Kingdom. European Court of Human Rights, 30 July 1998. Online.
• “UK Transsexuals lose court case”. BBC News, July 30, 1998. Online.
• Christine Burns. “Court Judgement Criticises UK Government's Lack of Action”. PFC, 9^th August 1998. Online.
• Rachel Horsham. Release of the Dove. Dwarf Empire, 1991 and 1998.

Rachel Horsham’s Home Page

The geography of Charlotte McLeod in New York, 1957

Charlotte McLeod:
Part 1: Youth and Copenhagen
Part II: fame and marriage
Part III: The geography of Charlotte McLeod in New York, 1957

1.   45 East 68th Street.  The home of Dorothy Kilgallen and Richard Kollmar.  “I got tired of Dorothy Kilgallen chasing me around and writing things about me that I have never thought of doing. And I went to her house one day and knocked on her door and the butler recognized me, it was strange, he said, ‘aren’t you Miss Charlotte?’ And I said, yes. And he said, don’t go away. I said, well I have no intention, that’s why I’m here. So I met Dorothy. And I said, well Dorothy, I’m tired of this, this business and I need a job. If you’ll help me get a job, I’ll tell you anything you want to know."

2.  44 East 67th Street.  The then office of Harry Benjamin. 

3.  318 51st Street.   The Washington-Jefferson Hotel where Charlotte lived.   This is still in business. Its rooms are now $126 a night and up. Charlotte says: it “was a place for retired show people who lived there” which probably means that even after adjusting for inflation it was cheaper in 1957, particularly if you paid by the month. 

4.  723 7th Ave.   Maxie's.  A restaurant close-by that Charlotte sometimes visited.   There she ran into Ralph Heidal, whom she had met in Bergen, Norway, and had stayed in touch with by mail. They married in 1959.

5.  309 West 50th Street.  The West Bank Club, owned by Richard Kollmar, where Charlotte worked as a hostess and hat-check girl.   It was there that she met Harry Benjamin, who came in as a customer.   

Willi Pape/Voo Doo (1893 - 1967) performer

Willi Pape was raised in the Berlin suburb of Spandau.  His father owned a wooden-shoe factory and his mother was a dressmaker. He had said from an early age that he did not want to be a boy, and took pleasure in female clothing, and in working with his mother as she made dresses.   

In teenage he had seen a female impersonation on the stage of a Berlin variety theatre, and very much wished to do the same. His parents had arranged for Willy to study to become an artist, and he was engaged to a young woman, Emma, whom he loved and with whom he had been intimate.  

Reading in the newspaper that a male-impersonator in Hamburg was looking for an opposite-sex partner, Willi, who was then 17, stole 300 marks from his parents and travelled to Hamburg, where firstly he purchased female clothing.  The project did not realize, and Willi further travelled to Stettin and then back to Berlin.  This was done while presenting as female, travelling in the women’s section on trains, and registering in hotels as Selma Bruegge.   Not knowing how to continue, Selma took a hotel room in Friedrichstadt and cut the arteries of her left hand.   

Pape was rescued by the hotel staff and taken to the Urban hospital.  Given the circumstances of her dress, the head physician contacted Magnus Hirschfeld, who visited on the third day after admission.  Willi confided in Hirschfeld, and also mentioned that he did not find men attractive, and could not understand that such was possible.  Hirschfeld contacted the parents, explained the situation and led them to understand that the best solution was to allow Willi to become a performer.  

Using the stage name of Voo-Doo, Pape became a Travestiekűnstler,  Pape is discussed in the Suicide chapter of Hirscheld’s Die Transvestiten as P. from Standau, and is pictured under the name of Willy Pape in Hirschfeld’s Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb (Tafel XVI), where he is described as a “highly successful Variété artist who performs as a Snake Dancer”.  

Pape actually presented himself in female clothing when summoned for military service in 1914.  

By 1918 Willi had a male lover, Emile Schmidt, but never set foot in a gay establishment until ten years after that.    

Willi became a prominent figure in Berlin’s sexual subculture.  In 1927, by which time Voo-Doo was celebrated across Europe, the lesbian magazine Die Freundin featured a photograph of Voo-Doo alongside an article about women’s fashion (fig. 5.16). The article, introduced by the magazine’s editor as an “Open Forum regarding Questions of Fashion,” launched what she hoped would be a “lively discussion regarding this timely issue.”

·         Magnus Hirschfeld translated from the German by Michael A. Lombardi-Nash. Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress Prometheus Books. 1991: 316-8.

·         Magnus Hirschfeld and Max Tilke, Der erotische Verkleidungstrieb (Der Transvestiten), Illustrierter Teil (Berlin: A. Pulvermacher, 1912: Tafel XVI..

·         Anonymous, “Meinungsaustausch über Modefragen: Ein Mann über Damenmode,” Die Freundin, Jg. 4, 14, 1927: 27-28.

·         “(Photo Gerlach) Der Transvestit Voo-Doo, einer der bekanntesten internationalen Tanzsterne.” Die Freundin, Jg. 3, 4, 1927: 27.

·         Jens Dobler. Der Travestiekünstler Willy Pape alias Voo-Doo. Invertito 6, 2004:110-21.

·         Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Gesch-lechts. Transvestitismus und Trans-sexualität in der frühen Sexual-wissenschaft. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2005: 76, 93. 
·         Julie Nero. Hannah Höch, Til Brugman, Lesbianism, and Weimar Sexual Subculture. PhD Thesis, Case Western Reserve University, 2013: 234-5.

RT has to go to Arizona to find 3 regretting trans persons

RT (Russia Today) sometimes produces intriguing documentaries well worth thinking about.   This is not one of their best.  They interview three persons, raised as boys, who transitioned to female, and live in Arizona.  Two, Billy Burleigh and the perennial Walt Heyer, have reverted, and the third, Rene Jaz (who continues to present as female) has written a book Don't get on the plane: Why a sex change will ruin your life.  Jaz and Heyer were patients of Dr Biber.

The documentary also includes a brief interview with a sex-change surgeon.   As they actually went to Arizona, the expectation would be that they would interview Drs Toby Meltzer and Ellie Zara Lay, both well regarded surgeons in Scottsdale, Arizona.   However the documentary goes to Belgrade instead to interview Dr Miroslav Djordjevic (or is it recycled footage from another program?).   Again a well-regarded surgeon, but why go to Serbia when making a film about Arizona?

There are several points that can be made.   Nowhere is it stated that the vast majority of trans (97% or so) persons who have surgery are pleased and remain pleased with what they have achieved.  On the other hand Heyer is allowed to spout his dubious statistics claiming that 40% of trans suicides are post-transition.

The infrequency of reversion is demonstrated by the repeated use of the same few persons, in this case Walt Heyer.  Neither the narration nor the final credits say so, but I suspect that the RT film-crew went to Heyer who introduced them to the other two.   Heyer actually says that he was in contact with Billy previously, and in this article  by Heyer discusses Jaz and her book.   Heyer has been in so many programs of this type.


Let us return to Jaz's book,  Don't get on the plane: Why a sex change will ruin your life.   The summary on Amazon contains an enormous clunker:  "medicine is operating in the same ignorance and arrogance as it did when Magnus Hirschfeld killed Einer Wegener (The Danish Girl) with his experimental surgery in 1930".    As we know, but apparently Jaz does not, Lili Elvenes (whose pen name was Lili Elbe) was a patient of the Dresden Doctor Kurt Warnekros, not of the Berlin Doctor Magnus Hirschfeld.   Also Hirschfeld was not a surgeon.  The three trans women who were patients of Hirschfeld, Carla van Crist, Toni Ebel and Dörchen Richter, all survived their operations and two of them lived into the 1960s.  Bad fact checking like this makes one think that the book is not worth reading.

It is important to read one's enemies.   If you are building up to gender surgery, it may be useful to watch this documentary to know what one is not.   There is much diversity among trans women, and you will probably be aware of how different you are from these three.

Skippy LaRue (1921-2003) sex worker, performer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jackie and Skippy, 1946

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

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

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

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

He died at age 82.

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

Obituary

Don Paulson and Skippy LaRue photograph collection, 1903-2000

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

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

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