Sydney, NSW - 1942

Neville McQuade (18) and Lewis Stanley Keith (19).
 
A photograph of this same pair appears in the newspaper Truth, of 14 June 1942, taken after they had appeared at North Sydney Police Court on charges of being idle and disorderley persons, having insufficient means of support, and with having goods in their possession - including a military uniform and an American dollar bill - believed to be stolen. After being remanded in custody for a week, both were released on bonds. Of the photographs, McQuade later said to a Truth correspondent: 'We were bundled out of the police cell, and snapped immediately. My friend and I had no chance to fix our hair or arrange our make-up. We were half asleep and my turban was on the wrong side.'

McQuade told the paper of his ambition to be a professional female impersonator, and spoke of his admiration for his mentor, Lea Sonia, who had been killed not long before getting off a tram in the wartime 'brownout'.

I have copied this from http://www.flickr.com/photos/hab3045/1087993211/in/set-72157601380954383/

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.

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (1857 - 1941) 1st Baron Baden-Powell OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB.

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. hero of the siege of Mafeking, the founder of the Scouts, and thus of a new type of drag, was also an amateur female impersonator.


He had a very distinguished career with the British army in India, southern Africa and elsewhere, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-General.


All through his life Baden-Powell was keen on amateur theatricals, from Charterhouse public school where among other roles he played female operatic roles. With his music master at school he shared the ability of being able to sing in a convincing female soprano. In the army he made a speciality of female roles and would often make his own dresses. His stage specialty was what he called his skirt dance.


From 1881, he had a particularly close friendship with a younger man, Kenneth McLaren, whom he would call 'the Boy', and, after comforting him after McLaren's mother died, the two men became very close. They took a bungalow together and Baden-Powell's letters home were constantly referring to his new friend. They shared many activities, in particular polo and pigsticking.


At this time Baden-Powell wrote a short story 'The Ordeal of the Spear' about two officers, 'an unusually good pair of friends' who both wanted to marry the same woman. They decide that whoever inflicted the first wound in a bout of pigsticking would be the one to propose to her. The 'boy' drew first blood, but before he has a chance to propose, the young woman was thrown from the back of an elephant and trampled underfoot. This allowed the friendship to continue unchanged.


In addition to his drag shows, Baden-Powell balanced his love of manly activities with sketching, choosing fabrics and furnishings and designing embroidery patterns. He was quite uncomfortable with women in a context where he might be considered a prospective husband, but could get on with them quite well where all hints of sex were removed, e.g. in considering fabrics and embroidery.


He maintained a number of correspondences with girls, but let them lapse as they matured into women. He did not marry until the age of 55, when he chose an androgynous 23-year-old, Olave Soames.


At a time when British officers were very conscious not to socialize with their men, and hardly treated them as human, Baden-Powell spent much of his free time with the men under his command. He took them scouting, of course he participated in theatricals with them, he also joined them in gymnastic displays involving physical contact, and he gave them counselling. On the other hand this was only extended to young men; middle-aged men where more likely to experience his snobbery.

• Tim Jeal. The Boy-man: the Life of Lord Baden-Powell. William Morrow and Company, Inc 1990: 35,54,66-71,73,chp 3,144.

EN.Wikipedia

There was previously a Wikipedia page called "Robert Baden-Powell's sexual orientation", but which has since been removed.    Here is its Archive.  

Micky Jacob (1884 - 1964) A forgotten major novellist

Micky Jacob (1884 – 1964). Pen name: Naomi Ellington Jacob. Aka Jake. Born: Ellington Gray in Ripon, Yorkshire.

Jacob began her working life as a teacher, but left after six years when the school board objected to her wearing trousers, and she found them to be authoritarian. Then for seven years she was secretary/companion to her lover Marguerite Broadfoote.

She went on the stage as a comic actress. Later, in her 40s when tuberculosis prevented continuation of her career as an actress, she became a prolific author, writing 75 novels. She also wrote advice books, women’s magazine serials and a biography of Marie Lloyd, the Music Hall singer.

Jacob claimed that she served as a seaman--successfully passing as a male in WWI. She also served in the Women's Legion in WWI.

She was a suffragette, and converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism.

Upon two occasions her domestic arrangements involved a menage a trois with two other women.

She won the Eichelberger Prize (1935) for "services to humanity", but when Jacob learned she shared the prize with Adolf Hitler for "Mein Kampf", she refused it. Many of her novels were best-sellers in the 1930, and she wrote many volumes of autobiography.

She survived 2 bouts of tuberculosis and a struggle with malaria. In 1929 she moved to Italy for her health.

During WWII she worked for the Ministry of Information, and then served with ENSA in North Africa where she caught malaria.

She usually wore male clothing as ‘more practical’.

Today her books are out-of-print and she is largely forgotten.

• Naomi Ellington Jacob. Me, a Chronicle About Other People. London: Hutchinson 1933.
• Naomi Ellington Jacob. Me – Again. London: Hutchinson 1937.
• Naomi Ellington Jacob. More About Me. London: Hutchinson 1939.
• Naomi Ellington Jacob. Me –looking Back. London: Hutchinson 1950.
• Naomi Ellington Jacob. Me – and the Stags. London: William Kimber 1964
• Naomi Ellington Jacob. Naomi Jacob: The Seven Ages of Me. London: W. Kimber 1965.
• Paul Bailey. Three Queer Lives: An Alternative Biography of Naomi Jacob, Fred Barnes, and Arthur Marshall. Penguin 2004.
• Claire M. Tylee. “'Ticketing oneself a Yid': Generic fiction, antisemitism and the response to Nazi atrocities in Naomi Jacob's 1936 Novel, Barren Metal”. Working Papers on the Web. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/wpw/thirties/thirties%20tylee.html.

Douglas Bing (1893 - 1987) The first drag show on television

Douglas Byng was born in Nottingham. His father was managing director of the Midland Counties Bank. He started in show-biz as a theatrical costumier in London. His first professional engagement was in Hastings in 1914 as part of the Periodicals Concert Party. He appeared at the London Gaity in 1917, and from 1922-4 toured with the Revue 'Crystal'.

In 1921 he did his first dame role in Aladdin. He was well known in the 1920s for his female impersonations in cabaret and pantomime. He was regarded as more sophisticated than other impersonators of the time. His big breakthrough came with Noel Coward's 1925 review On With the Dance where he played a drag double act with Ernest Thesiger. He was a top-ranking star of London cabaret in the 1930s, and played in 26 Christmas pantomimes, usually in a dame part, before retiring.

He was the first drag act to have a starring show on BBC television -- in March and April 1938. His act was distinctive in that he played several different personalities including Minnie the messy old mermaid and Boadicea.

During the Second World War he was billed as 'Bawdy but British', the bawdiness being double-entrendres in the lyrics of his songs.


However he achieved his greatest fame in the mufti role of Martin in the stage play and later film of Hotel Paradiso, 1966. Many of his songs were originally banned on BBC radio.

His stage career lasted 72 years. He retired to Brighton where he died at the age of 94.

• Douglas Byng. As You Were: Reminiscences. London: Duckworth 1970.
• Douglas Byng. One of the Queens of England. CD complied from 78s recorded 1928-1935.
• “Douglas Byng”. Internet Movie DataBase. www.imdb.com/name/nm0125957.
• J.D. Doyle. “Douglas Byng”. Queer Music Heritage. www.queermusicheritage.us/drag-byng.html.

Sporus - (? - 69CE)

Poppaea Sabina

In the Roman year AUC 818, the year that in the later Christian calendar would be numbered 65, Nero, in the 15th year of his rule, had a row with his second wife, Poppaea Sabina, who was pregnant with their second child. This led to his kicking her in the stomach, as a result of which, she died. He had already honoured her with the title of 'Augusta' after their first child. Nero was devastated. Her body was embalmed and put in the Mausoleum of Augustus; she was given a state funeral; and she was proclaimed to be a goddess.

He also resurrected her in a way that would fit a horror b-movie. One of his slaves had the misfortune to resemble Poppaea. Nero had Sporus castrated, dressed as the empress and addressed as ‘Sabina’. He paraded her through Rome, and publicly embraced her. They were publicly married in Greece in 67.

In AUC 821 (68 CE), as Nero's rule fell apart, he retreated to the suburb of Via Salaria with a few of his loyal servants and slaves. Sporus was among them, as was Marcus Epaphroditus, Nero's secretary, who actually helped Nero to commit suicide, or perhaps killed him.

Subsequent emperors.

Otho (Poppaea Sabina's previous husband whom she left for Nero), on becoming emperor, took Sporus as consort under the name Poppaea.

His successor, Vitellius, ordered Sporus to act on the stage as a woman being ravished, a final humiliation that lead to her suicide.

Notes:

None of the ancient sources says anything of what Sporus may have felt.

Sporus is definitely a male name. The feminine would be Spora, but is never used.


Not the Greek mathematician and astronomer.

Nero was somewhat of a drag queen himself. He composed songs, sang and danced in public, and sometimes appeared in drag.

• Dion Cassius. Ixii. 28, Ixiii. 12, 13, 27, Ixiv. 8, Ixv. 10 ;
• Suetonius. Nero. 28, 46, 48, 49 ;
• Sextus Aurelius Victor. De Caesaribus. 5, Epit. 5 ;
• Dion Chrysostom. Oratio. xxi;
• Suidas, s. v. “Sporus”

EN.WIKIPEDIA
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The Christian connection

Poppaea Sabina was probably the first proto-Christian in Rome. Josephus visited Rome in 817/64 to obtain the release of some Jewish priests and found that Poppaea was always ready to facilitate Jewish petitions towards her husband. He succeeded in his mission, and returned home bearing gifts. He described her as θεοσεβής (theosebioi) which is usually translated as 'God-fearer'. See the entry in the Jewish Encyclopedia. It is ironic that she became a Roman goddess but not a saint.

Marcus Epaphroditus, the secretary who killed Nero, was also a colleague of Paul the Apostle, and the sponsor and publisher of two of the works of Josephus. See Philippians 2:25: "Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellow soldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants".    There are those who say that Epaphroditus is the Marcus who gave his name to the second Christian gospel.

Thus Sporus links two of the key early Roman Christians.

Megillus - second century CE

A wealthy woman from the island of Lesbos who lived in the second century CE. His name is really Megilla, but he prefers the masculine form. He sees himself as really a man, and regards Demonassa as his wife. He has his hair short in the masculine style, but wears a wig over it for social occasions. We know of Megillus from the account of a woman Leaena who was seduced by Megillus. Leaena will not discuss the details of the sexual encounter but hints at some kind of substitute male organ.

• Lucian. Dialogues of the Courtesans. # 5.

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There is controversy about which characters in Lucian's works are real, fictional or fictionalized rewrites of real people. Megillus feels real. He is similar to some modern persons in that some readers refer to him with masculine pronouns and grammatical forms and regard him as a FTM transgender. Others see a butch lesbian and use feminine pronouns and grammatical forms.