La Forest Potter (1855-1951), an early 1930s witness to queer New York

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  La Forest Potter. Strange Loves: A Study in Sexual Abnormalities. Robert Dodsley Company/ National Library Press, 1933.
  

Trigger warning: Some of the quotations from Dr Potter include words and opinions relating to sex and/or race that are today considered objectionable.

1933 was not a good year for being queer. The ending of alcohol prohibition in the US (good in itself) unfortunately led to the end of the Panzy Craze, and increased police raids on queer bars and nightclubs. In Germany, Hitler’s Nazi Party took control of the government. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s OGPU started a reversal of the decriminalization of homosexuality that had resulted from the Revolution by arresting 198 gay men, and claiming that there was a link between homosexuality and fascism.  In England and France trans men and masculine women had been shaken after Victor Barker, John Radclyffe-Hall and Violette Morris had each lost in their very different law trials.

The New York that La Forest Potter describes falls in between that found in the earlier publications, Mowry Saben/Jennie June’s three books and the psychological study of five transvestites by Bernard Talmey, and the later study Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns (1941) attributed to George Henry but based on the research of Jan Gay. 

George Chauncey’s Gay New York: Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, published 1994 mentions Potter in its notes as a source for details, but he is not in the book’s index, and there is no mention of him or his book in the text. 

The term ‘fairy’ was commonly used in this period for effeminate gays, trans feminine persons and drag performers. Chauncey’s book goes into a lot of detail on this.

Two anecdotes referring to the book’s influence

David K Johnson’s “The Kids of Fairytown: Gay Male Culture on Chicago's Near North Side in the 1930s” in Brett Beemyn’s Creating a Place for Ourselves: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories, p111 tells us:

“Although most Chicagoans had never read a medical text on homosexuality, Harold's list of the books that introduced him to gay life did include one work by a medical expert. La Forest Potter's Strange Loves: A Study in Sexual Abnormalities was an attempt to bring medical expertise on the nature, causes, and curability of homosexuality to a general audience to help eradicate ‘the problem.’ But by outlining the prevalence of homosexuality — how America had ‘Gone Pansy;' as he titled one of his chapters — he inadvertently suggested that it was normal. Potter asserted that ‘homosexuality ... is diffused not only through all the anthropological forms of mankind — savage and civilized life — but also throughout every strata of society, and among every class of population.’ ” ... “To Harold and undoubtedly many others, Potter's line of argumentation intrigued more than it dissuaded.”

Robert Darby. “The Censor as Literary Critic”. Westerly, 31,4, December 1986: 37 tells us:

“Genuine scientific texts on sexual abnormality might be allowed in serious libraries for research use by approved scholars, but popular works were a different matter. Garran read Strange Loves, by La Forest Potter MD, as professing to be "a serious study of homosexuality", but he found its general style suggesting that it was, rather, "a book to excite curiosity". American authors, he remarked, "show no squeamishness in an open discussion of this subject; but I think its discussion in this way offends against present standards of decency in Australia." Allen agreed: ‘This book is not desirable for public bookshelves, and I should not regard it as in any way a serious contribution to medical science. It is a popularisation of information regarding sexual abnormality ... It is not well written: and in places is incorrect. For instance, it repeats mere garbled gossip about Socrates; and I do not believe that the author has read a word of the Symposium.’ ” 

Who was La Forest Potter?

La Forest Potter graduated from Boston University School of Medicine in 1884 and contributed articles to Physical Culture, the food faddist magazine run by Bernard MacFadden. He was apparently interested in 'cancer cures'; at one time he was associated with a proponent of the so-called 'grape juice cure' for cancer. Strange Loves was banned in Australia in 1936. He also wrote The psychology of health and happiness, 1897; A new treatment of cancer and chronic diseases, 1929 and various other popular medical texts. He lists membership in the New York County Medical Society, Massachusetts Medical Society, Boston Gynecological Society, Associate Professor of Rhinology, Laryngology, and Otology, New York School of Clinical Medicine, and Surgeon, Malden Hospital.

Potter's other books as listed on page opposite title page

The Advertisement

This is the advertisement that ran several times in the magazine Broadway and Hollywood Movies.

The chapters of interest:

Chapter IV THE “INTERMEDIATE SEX"

“For while admittedly there are mental hermaphrodites and mental deviates in uncounted numbers, the true “third sex, if we are to be really accurate in our description, consists only of individuals who are anatomically bisexual. … These individuals are unquestionably atavistic or retrogressive in their biological status. Nevertheless, true hermaphrodism is an extremely rare phenomenon. I stress the anatomical basis of this condition at this time in order to differentiate true hermaphrodism from pseudo -hermaphrodism -- or what I might term " mental " hermaphrodism.” 

So far, not too bad. 

However, Potter then has a sub-heading, REAL WORLD PROGRESS MADE BY HETEROSEXUALS where he proclaims that the “[homosexual] abnormality should be considered anti-social, anti-racial, and anti-biologic”.

Then still in the same chapter WHEN MEN DON WOMEN'S CLOTHES, where he writes: “To the average person it would seem that all this bother is ‘much ado about nothing’. For it would be rather difficult to see what particular harm can come to the police force, or to society in general. … However, it may be because these transvestites, as they are called, suggest abnormality (whether they are abnormal or not) that they are arrested, hailed into court and fined.” 

In his next sub-heading, IS INVERSION COMMON AMONG TRANSVESTITES? Potter contrasts William Stekel who regarded trans persons as homosexuals with Magnus Hirschfeld who from a much larger sample knew otherwise. Potter attempts to reconcile this difference with the opinion of the psychoanalyst Andre Tridon who claimed that transvestites are in the majority of cases unconscious homosexuals. 

His final sub-heading in the chapter is THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE GERMAN URNING. He writes:

 “While it may not react greatly to the prestige and glory of Berlin in the minds of many people, it is nevertheless true that this highly cultured city boasts perhaps a greater number of homosexuals than any other city in the world -- not excluding Paris, which, for several centuries, has been notorious for its sexual profligacy. Of course, it may be that this seeming preponderance of abnormals arises merely from the fact that, in Berlin, and in Germany and Austria, the urning comes out into the open, so to speak. He does not find it necessary to skulk and slink in the hinterlands of society, as he does in European and American centers generally. However, we may attribute this apparent epidemic of homosexuality to the fact that there is less hypocrisy in Germany and more real science than is to be found anywhere else on the face of the earth.” 

This of course had been previously true, but it is ironic, sad and frightening that by the time Potter’s book was published, the Nazis had become the German government, and the purge of queer culture and persons was ongoing.

Chapter VII FEMALE MEN AND MALE WOMEN

This is a rather nasty chapter where the question is should his readers 

“place these individuals either in the same category with burglars, swindlers, and automobile thieves, or else it would permit them to be recognized as men and women who are mentally and morally sick — neurotics who are no more to blame for their condition than they would be for having dyspepsia, or sciatica, or a deviated septum”. 

Potter quotes Dr. W. Beran Wolfe, Director of the New York Community Church Mental Hygiene Clinic who blames the second opinion almost exclusively on Otto Weininger’s Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character), 1903. However he goes on to discuss opposite sex characteristics such as male gynecomastia and women with beards. He misleadingly connects this to homosexuals, whom he regards as having a female psyche. He has a brief discussion of the work of Eugene Steinach and his transplanting of gonads to animals of the other sex.

Chapter XI “The Drag”

I have previously written of the Hamilton Lodge Balls, the premier drag event in New York in the 1920s and 1930s, which attracted thousands each year. Potter does not mention them by name. He writes of the Philadelphia Mummers parade, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, The Rose Pageant in Pasadena, California. He quotes from Blair Niles’ 1931 novel, Strange Brother, but he wrote too early to include The Young and Evil, 1933 by Charles Ford and Parker Tyler. Both novels include scenes at the Hamilton Lodge Balls. 

He then comes to “THE DRAG BALL”. 

“These are the famous ‘Drag Balls’, held in many of our principal cities, on the average of once a year. The men, dressed in the clothes of women, are called ‘drags’. In New York City there are at least two outstanding Drag Balls yearly - one held at Webster Hall, in Greenwich Village, the other in the Manhattan Casino, up in Harlem. Of late years this place has had ‘the run’."

 And in a purple passage using terms, that no modern writer would, he refers to 

“the motley throng that surges and sways to the blood-boiling rhythm of a Negro band. Hundreds and hundreds of Negroes also- of every shade of black and brown— from the octoroon, hardly to be distinguished from a strikingly lovely brunette Caucasian girl, to the burly blackamoor, of pure Ethiopian type are crowded, cheek by jowl, into sense -maddening proximity. For the Harlem Drag Ball is a ‘mixed’ affair, attended by whites and blacks alike.” 

THE PARADE OF THE FAIRIES. 

“Finally the dancing floor is cleared by the police for the chief event of the evening. It is the big ‘kick’ for which most of the spectators have come -the ‘parade of the fairies’, with a prize of two hundred dollars to be awarded to the ‘fairy’ who displays the loveliest and most artistic costume.” 

$200 in 1932 = $4,700 today.

Reviews and comments

In December 1934, the pioneer gay activist Henry Gerber reviewed Potter’s book in his Chanticleer newsletter (as summarized by Jonathan Katz):

... I think the history of psychology is . . . damning evidence of man’s credulity and outright stupidity. The volume under review by Dr. La Forest Potter, who boasts of being a “late member of the New York County Medical Society, Massachusetts Medical Society,” etc., etc. . . . proves to me two significant facts: 1) that the medical authorities in America, of which Dr. Potter is a shining example, are about 100 years behind the times, and 2) that most psychologists in this country are mere yes-men who blindly and obediently follow the current authorized moral code without any regard to common sense or the results of modern scientific research ….

While the title of the book would indicate that the author had in view all phenomena of sex which seem strange to him and to the ignorant public alike, Dr. Potter deals mainly with homosexuality. . . . such a title is a profitable device for the sale of books, for the morons are always looking for something new and “strange” in sex matters. In other words, the book of Dr. Potter is just another instance of the morbid sex racket, a lurid description of sex abnormalities under the moral guise of condemnation of the queer sinners dealing in such “strange” loves in order to get the filthy details by the post office censors of “obscene” literature. Krafft-Ebing was perhaps the first author to start this racket and the volume in review is evidence of the sad fact that the end of it is not yet.

In the accepted fashion of Krafft-Ebing’s pot-boiler, Dr. Potter goes through the various artificial classifications of homosexuals. He has Chapters on the Riddle of Homosexuality . . . a chapter on the history of . . . the various unsuccessful attempts of “scientists” to solve the “riddle,” .. . special chapters on Lesbians (female homosexuals), in which the author makes the sensational statement that “there isn’t a man on earth who has a Chinaman’s chance against a Lesbian, once she has thoroughly seduced a woman to her wiles” (any doctor having knowledge of gynecology ought to know the reason to be due to the fact that males are very deficient in the fine art of satisfying a woman’s sexual needs.) [etc.] ….

.. . Dr. Potter views the psychoanalytical method of dealing with homosexuals and cites cases in which homosexuals have been “cured” by psychoanalysts. . .

But the author does evidently not think so much of this “cure” of homosexuals, for he cautiously warns that homosexuals can be cured only if they want to be cured. The only way to cure a [male] homosexual of his foible is to make him love women, a very simple process indeed, but Dr. Potter does not seem to realize that heterosexual men can be cured exactly in the same fashion from their love for women, by getting them to like men. By the same method, Pop-eye, the sailor cures children who do not like spinach by making them believe that spinach is really good for them and that every normal citizen must eat it.

Byrne Fone. A Road to Stonewall, 1969:

“Dr. Potter’s cliches resonate against the common currency of homophobic texts of the period and centuries before. He deploys the familiar accusations and links homosexuality not only with the destruction of what he suggests are virtually nationally encoded gender roles but clearly implies that homosexuality and homosexuals are effectively un-American. Because of the ‘infestation’ of homosexuality, however, the pioneer and heterosexual American virtues have been weakened and now the danger is clear and increasingly present: ‘Today there are homosexual ‘joints,’ ‘queer’ clubs, pervert ‘drags’ or homosexual plays in practically every considerable American city.’ Not only general society but American youth has been tainted by homosexuals, for ‘today there is scarcely a schoolboy who doesn’t know what a ‘pansy’ is’ ”. (p233-4)

Andrea Ens, Pain, Pleasure, Punishment, 2024:

“The book’s ad promised sophisticated adult readers clinical findings that would ‘tear away the veil of mystery that hides the facts behind homosexuality’ by demonstrating ‘the abnormal ties and the unnatural desires and erotic reactions of these twilight men and women’. But while Strange Loves’ marketers emphasized its titillating narratives of perverse sexual trysts hidden in darkness, the text itself repeatedly insisted ‘abnormals’ were often not malicious, intentional criminals, but ‘neurotics who are no more to blame for their condition than they would be for having dyspepsia, or sciatica, or a deviated septum’. This blamelessness – revealed by contemporary medical and scientific advances into the origins and impacts of ‘sexual abnormality’ – meant that American medical, social, and legal treatment of non-heteronormative Americans might allow their re-entry into ‘normal’ heterosexual society’. (p26)

• Henry Gerber, “More Nonsense about Homosexuals,” Chanticleer, Vol. 1, No. 12 (Dec. 1934), 2-3. Partially reprinted in Jonathan Katz (ed) Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay men in the USA: 595-6, and in Tracy Baim’s Out and Proud in Chicago: 38-9.
• Byrne Fone. A Road to Stonewall: Male Homosexuality and Homophobia in English and American Literature, 1750-1969. Twayne Publishers, 1995: 233-4.
• Byrne Fone (ed). The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature. Columbia University Press, 1998: 669.
• Byrne Fone. Homophobia: A History. Henry Holt and Company, 2000: 386-8.
• "More Hilarious Zeitgeistiness". Autist's Corner, February 28 2009. Online. 
• Anna Lvovsky. Queer Expertise: Urban Policing and the Construction of Public Knowledge about Homosexuality, 1920–1970. PhD thesis, Harvard. May 2015: 34, 38, 39, 41, 48, 49, 53, 54, 60, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72 81, 84, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92.
• Alysha Maree Crossan. Liberals, Ground Breakers, and Graduate Students: Reinvestigating US Sex Surveys and Research Before Kinsey, 1900-1953. PhD thesis, University of Auckland, 2022: 46, 154, 155, 156, 157.
• Andrea Ens. Pain, Pleasure, Punishment: The Affective Experience of Conversion Therapy In Twentieth-Century North America. PhD Thesis, Purdue University, May 2024: 26-7, 47-8, 50-2, 55-6,

Potter's Bibliography

Mowry Saben/Ralph Werther/Earl Lind/Jennie June: Part II - publications

 Part I: early life

Part II: publications

Part III:  comments and bibliography 

In 1907 Mowry Saben wrote a short newspaper article.  'Woman – An Age-Haunting Problem' which was published in the Detroit Free Press and elsewhere. In it he proposed that all of our culture comes from men: 

“Turn where we will, the objects of our veneration are all the monuments of man. From man have come the cities and the industries of the globe: all the great inventions are his; of him are all the religions, the ethical systems, the sciences and philosophies; he has created all the great poems, paintings, sculpture, architecture and music of the world.”

He further declared: 

“The woman of the Feminist is a fiction: she forms no part of manifested reality.” 

Six years later he expanded the same sentiments to a five-page article in Neale’s Monthly called simply ‘Feminism’. 

“I hold, indeed, that man's indebtedness to woman is a very large and deep one. There is nothing finer in Nature than motherhood; and feminine influence at its best, like masculine influence at its best, is always of a divine quality. But I will say that the history of the world gives no sanction to the claims put forth by Feminists. In her sphere woman is supreme; but her sphere is not man's. … Our Feminists have indulged in loud talk, but they have proved nothing and accomplished nothing. Women are quite as free as men. There is nothing but their lack of innate capacity to prevent them from becoming the great Poets, Musicians, Artists, Scientists, Philosophers, Inventors, and Reformers of the race.”

That was the polite version. Werther-June had already written in Autobiography of an Androgyne: 

“I have always felt that a woman should adore her husband so much as to delight in being treated as a slave, and to suffer gladly any abuse by her lord”. (p98) 

And there is no mention in either of their books of the ongoing campaign for female suffrage.

In that year, 1913 the editors of Neale’s Monthly described Saben as “one of the most vigorous essayists of our day”. They also published a long essay by Saben, “Broken Lights”, 78 pages in five chapters and seven parts, wherein he examines the ideas of his time and finds most of them lacking.

Saben’s major book under his male name was The Spirit of Life: A Book of Essays, which came out in 1914 and had a chapter on morals, and another on sex. In the latter we find:

“I do not object to sex-worship in itself. I have stood at its altar; have myself been a worshipper, and am, in a measure, one even yet. But I am not a Monotheist; I am a Polytheist. I have many gods, and some goddesses. My temple is the Pantheon. I bow low whenever I stand before a Holy Image. But I am a Catholic, and insist that there shall be no neglect of any divinity or saint.” (p138-9).

“The tenderness of Gautama was feminine, and was not Jesus very much of a woman in some of his characteristics? Goethe said that there was something

feminine in all genius, while Coleridge went further, declaring that the mind of a genius must be androgynous. Tennyson dared in The Princess to prophesy that the sexes were destined to become more and more alike” (p151)

“It will not do for the man or woman who indulge from necessity their hetero-sexual tastes to throw stones at the man or woman who indulge from necessity their homo-sexual tastes”. (p160-1)

A paragraph by Saben, published in Mitchell Kennerley’s The Forum, was reprinted in many newspapers across the country in 1915: 

“Our moral codes were invented, not to prepare man for heaven, or for Utopia; they were invented by men who were none too good themselves for people who were not much worse. There are great differences in human beings as to the amount of knowledge and wisdom which they possess, but there is small difference in regard to the amount of goodness or rascality that they manifest”.

 

1917: Werther-June was diagnosed with gonhorrhea.

In 1918 Saben wrote to a friend: 

“Germany did me a lot of good, a fact to which I am still bound to bear witness even in this terrible twilight hour of the ages. One of these days, if life and health are spared to me, you shall know all about it, for I am preparing the material for a book of confessions — ‘The Confessions of a Philosopher,’ I call it, using the word ‘philosopher’ in the original, or Socratic, sense. I believe that the book will be a big one, if I have all the courage requisite for my task.”

The autobiography - by Werther-June rather than Saben - was finally accepted by the Medico-Legal Press, whose new editor, Alfred Herzog, wrote an introduction. The book, Autobiography of an Androgyne, carried a publication date of 1918, but was not actually sold until January 1919. Only 1,000 copies were printed and it was sold through the mail [despite Comstock’s refusal of the text] only to “physicians, lawyers, legislators, psychologists, and sociologists”. Herzog wrote: 

“For, although I hope to fill with the Autobiography of an Androgyne a void; yet, had this void been recognized, were the want felt to have this void filled, my task would be easier of accomplishment. The void whereof I speak is the colossal ignorance of the reasons for homosexual practices on one side, and the pharisaical pulchritude on the other side, which, although knowing that homosexuality has been practiced uninterruptedly from biblical times up to the present, refuses to study its causes or its devotees; and while not endeavouring to make this world a better place to live in through its own abandoning unwholesome practices, vices and other actions which, although approved, condoned or ignored by the multitude —because these actions are popular —are condemned by philosophers and thinkers, yet will crucify those whose vices are much less harmful, because they are vices for which this pharisaical pulchritude has no taste, which therefore it cannot understand, and not understanding them, cannot condone.”

1918-20 Werther-June wrote and had published a series of articles in American Journal of Urology and Sexology, Medical Review of Reviews and Medical Life. They were mainly self-case studies, explaining to doctors what it was like to be Werther-June. 

Of particular interest is “Studies in Androgynism”, in Medical Life, 1920, which is Werther-June’s summary of the topic. They write: 

“As in this article I have to refer to the fact that I myself have had an extensive experience as a fairie, I think it wise to state at the outset that this line of conduct was not mine because of moral depravity, but because of irrepressible instinct, and that though my open career lasted twelve years, I made a gainful occupation of my propensities for only the nine weeks during which otherwise I would have been penniless. From the age of nineteen to thirty-one, obedience, to these propensities was absolutely essential for living out the scholarly life that I was regularly privileged to do. … Psychicly fairies have always felt that they belong to the female sex. They always adopt feminine names during the periods while they are under the influence of the sexual movings. Particularly they borrow the names of star actresses. With the more cultured, it has been a lifelong regret that they had not been born physical females, as well as psychic. As to the age of professional fairies, one over thirty is almost unknown. Nearly all appear to be between eighteen and twenty-five. Their career must be confined to youth. But they retain the freshness, slenderness, and litheness of youth-what might be described as "the small-boy appearance" – an abnormally long time, at least until the age of thirty. They are like women in that they have little tendency to baldness. … To sum up the natural endowment of fairies: they are not merely humans with a female soul in a male body, but they have, from the sexual point of view, never grown out of babyhood. Their craze for fellatio is only the abnormal survival through adulthood of the infant's feeding instinct. … As to the frequency of fairie-ism , I estimate that the raw material that is, the congenital girl -boys or androgynes throughout the world, one to every three hundred physical males. The writer has resided in fifteen different civilized countries, and in many of these countries has explored the underworlds of the great cities. The conditions as to fairies are about the same in all civilized countries. For fairie-ism is not due to example or moral degradation; but entirely to Mother Nature. At the dawning of adolescence, either because afflicted with congenital psychic nymphomania, or because thrown into intimate contact with a band of tremendously virile young bachelors, about one girl-boy out of every ten becomes extensively promiscuous-in other words a fairie. … Fairies may be divided into high-class and low-class. The former are for the most part recruited from the middle class of society, and have at least a grammar-school education, and rarely a high -school. As a rule, the high-class fairies are decided æsthetes. In embellishment of both their dress and their living apartments, most people would judge that they go to extremes. The author is the only university graduate he himself has encountered in the ranks of intensive fairies. But he has been acquainted with a number of such graduates who were addicted to fellatio with one or two trusted ultra-virile friends. The combination of high intellectuality with the frivolousness of the fairie is perhaps unique in the case of the present author. … The low-class type were born and brought up in the slums, and are much inferior in intelligence-not to say culture. While the high-class are subject to spells of acute melancholia in the realization of their condition of being misunderstood by their sexually normal fellows, and being pariahs, and from time to time even resort to suicide, the low-class fairie is perfectly contented with the niche in life which Mother Nature intended "him-her" to fill. Low-class fairies are likely to be deeply depraved. But this depravity has supervened upon their congenital effeminacy, and is something separate and apart.”

In addition to writing about Androgynes, in 1919 and 1921 Saben did some editing/writing work for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. This involved so little work that he was able to complete Werther/Junes’ next book, The Female Impersonators – which was published in 1922, again with the restriction that it was to be sold only to “physicians, lawyers, legislators, psychologists, and sociologists” despite Werther-June having written it in a popular style for the benefit of general readers. It contained nude photographs taken by Dr Shufeldt and also by Dr Alfred Herzog. 

It also contained an account of Columbus Hall better known as Paresis Hall, presented as 

“the headquarters for avocational female-impersonators of the upper and middle classes … In front was a modest bar-room; behind, a small beer-garden … A score of us have formed a little club, the Cercle Hermaphroditos. For we need to unite for defense against the world's bitter persecution of bisexuals. We care to admit only extreme types —such as like to doll themselves up in feminine finery.” (p146-156)

There was a third volume by Werther-June, Riddle of the Underworld, to complete the trilogy. However, it was never published. It was partially rediscovered in the 21^st century.

In 1924 Saben spent several months in Montreal, but returned for medical treatment on an anal fistula. He told the publisher Mitchell Kennerley that some mistakenly viewed him as “an almost saintly individual”, and continued: 

“If I were to write an absolutely truthful book of confessions, telling what I have done, etc., they would refuse to believe it, and they would try to convince the public that my mind, at the time of writing the book, had become unhinged.” 

From 1926-29 Saben worked as assistant to Secretary of Labor James J. Davis with the title “Commissioner of Conciliation” – where his main job was writing the Secretary’s speeches, etc. He then ghosted for a senator for a year. In 1934 he became editor of The Argonaut, based in San Francisco.

In September 1950, Saben was hospitalized with heart, liver and kidney ailments, and died a few weeks later. Apparently, he was given a blood transfusion of the wrong blood type – however the inquest ruled that this did not hasten his death.

He was 80 years old.

An unnamed friend was said to have removed Saben’s personal papers from his San Francisco apartment after his death. They were never seen again.

Publications by Saben/Werther/Lind/June:

• Mowry Saben. The twilight of the gods: an essay.  Unity Pub House, 1903. Online. 
• Mowry Saben. “Woman – An Age-Haunting Problem”. Detroit Free Press, Aug 04, 1907: 42. 
• Mowry Saben. “Feminism”. Neale’s Monthly, July 1913. Online.
• Mowry Saben. “Broken Lights”. Neale’s Monthly, In seven parts, September 1913 - March 1914. Online: 1913 1914.
• Mowry Saben. The Spirit of Life: A Book of Essays. Mitchell Kennerley, 1914. Online. 
• Ralph Werther --Jennie June. "The Fairie Boy. An Autobiographical Sketch." American Journal of Urology and Sexology (October 1918) v. 14, n. 10: 433-37.
• Ralph Werther --Jennie June. "The Girl-Boy's Suicide." American Journal of Urology and Sexology, v. 14, n. 11 (November 1918): 495-99.
• Earl Lind (“Ralph Werther” – “Jennie June”) Autobiography of an Androgyne. Ed., with an Introduction by Alfred W Herzog. The Medico-Legal Journal, 1918 (but not published until January 1919. Reprinted Arno Press, 1975. Digital Transgender Archive. Wikisource.
• Ralph Werther --Jennie June. "Boy – But Never Man“. American Journal of Urology and Sexology, v. 15, (March 1919): 97-100.
• Ralph Werther --Jennie June. "The Sorrows of Jennie June“. American Journal of Urology and Sexology, v. 15, (April 1919): 160-4.
• Ralph Werther --Jennie June. "The Female Impersonator “. American Journal of Urology and Sexology , v. 15, (June 1919): 241-5.
• Ralph Werther --Jennie June. "Protest from an Androgyne“. American Journal of Urology and Sexology, v. 15, (July 1919): 313-5.
• Ralph Werther -Jennie June. "The Biological Sport of Fairie-ism." Written 1920 for Victor Robinson. Published in: Medical Review of Reviews (Anthropos 2) 40 2, (1934) 40: 185-96.1934).
• Ralph Werther -Jennie June. "Studies in Androgynism." Medical Life (NY), (1920) 27: 235-46. Online.
• Ralph Werther-Jennie June (“Earl Lind”). The Female Impersonators; a sequel to the Autobiography of an androgyne and an account of some of the author's experiences during his six years' career as instinctive female-impersonator in New York's underworld. Ed., with an introduction, by Alfred W. Herzog. The Medico-Legal Journal. 1922. Reprinted Arno Press, 1975. Digital Transgender Archive. Wikisource.
• Ralph Werther. The Riddle of the Underworld, 1921. Unpublished. Online.
• Mowry Saben. “Socialism and Freedom of the Press”. The National Republican, February 11, 1922. Online.

Trans New York 1963-1965

  See also:

Trans New York 1961-1962

The four years leading to Stonewall – a New York timeline

The five years following Stonewall - a New York timeline

The Gilded Grape

The GG Knickerbocker P T Barnum Room

1963

Reed Erickson became a Benjamin patient and almost completed transition. He then founded the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), financed entirely by himself.

Through his foundation Erickson agreed to finance the newly created Harry Benjamin Foundation (HBF) for three years at a minimum of $1,500 a month. The money from Erickson enabled a move to a larger office at 86th St and Park Avenue. The foundation sought to enhance Benjamin’s professional status. Robert Stoller at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) had disparaged Benjamin in that he was not psychiatrically trained, and did not publish in the most reputable journals. Stoller politely declined to serve on the Foundation’s advisory board. Nevertheless Benjamin was able to use the Foundation to enhance his working relationship with other doctors and researchers in the field.

Leo Wollman also worked from the new office. He started running a group session the first Sunday of every month, near his other office at Coney Island where transsexuals could meet and exchange ideas and experiences. He also used hypnosis to determine whether a transsexual was authentic.

Meetings of the foundation were held in the office, mainly on Saturday evenings. The members conducted psychological, endocrinological and neurological tests on transsexual patients, and interviewed them before and after surgery, looking to prove or disprove any genetic, hormonal or neurological basis for the condition.

----

Susanna and Marie sold their resort property as it was unprofitable.

August: Patricia Morgan was arrested on East 57^th Street for wearing shorts that were too short. She replied to the judge: ““My shorts weren’t too short. It’s just that my legs are too long!”, and the case was dismissed.

After graduating High School in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Marsha P Johnson left home for Manhattan with $15 and a bag of clothes.

Donald Wollheim, being a professional writer and editor, began to consider putting his feelings and experiences of the past year onto paper, especially as the near mental-breakdown of the year before had passed as he had accepted what he really was, and something like normality had been recovered. He returned to Los Angeles, and met Virginia Prince again. However he also socialized with other transvestites who were by then ostracized by Prince.

Vicky West, after two years in Los Angeles as an engineer, and as a participant in Virginia Prince's Hose and Heel Club, returned to New York, and studied Fine Arts and Graphic Design at Cooper Union.

Siobhan Fredericks published Turnabout irregularly from 1963-7. Donald Wollheim was involved, and usually wrote as ‘D Rhodes’. This was in competition to Virginia Prince's Transvestia, and attracted crossdressers who were critical of Virginia Prince, her ideas and her list of femme* words. It was also more open to transsexuality and to activities that Prince regarded as fetishistic. In contrast to Transvestia, Turnabout did not feature autobiographies, especially those that catalogued the writer's wardrobe and measurements. Harry Benjamin described Turnabout as the "more objective approach". Renée Richards later described it as "a poor thing, on newsprint as I recall". Benjamin referred Richards and other clients to the support group held in Siobhan's home.

Benjamin was invited by Dr Robert Hotchkiss, the urologist, to read a paper at New York's Bellevue Hospital. He also read a paper at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex (of which he was a charter member).

Female Mimics, the glossy magazine for transvestites was launched. Performer Kim August was on the cover. The emphasis was mainly about female impersonators, sometimes ignoring that she had completed transition. An article about Christine Jorgensen, “A Real Woman” was included, but the article on Bambi (who had completion surgery in 1960) is called “French Fooler: Bambi” and uses male pronouns. The second issue featured Coccinelle (both completed surgery and taken a husband) referred to as “France’s Most Fabulous She-Male”, the article being a summary of Carlson Wade’s biography, uses male pronouns and gives only her male name, The third included “How I Changed my Sex” by Patricia Morgan.

The future Bunny Eisenhower/Barbara de Lamere completed military service and lived with his male lover in New York.

Cross-dresser and artist George Maciunas returned to New York and set up the Fluxus art movement, including a shop on Canal Street.

Jack Smith filmed Flaming Creatures, an underground film of an extended party on the roof of the Windsor cinema in New York's Lower East Side with lots of drag and nudity. Francis Francine had been intended as the star of Flaming Creatures, 1962, but disappeared partway through filming, leaving Mario Montez as a replacement. The film became famous when New York City police seized the print at the premier. The film was ruled to be in violation of New York's obscenity laws. Jonas Mekas and Susan Sontag mounted a critical defense of Flaming Creatures, and it became a cause célèbre for the underground film movement.

• Harry Benjamin. “Clinical Aspects of Transsexualism in the Male and Female”. Read before the 6^th annual conference of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, November 2, 1963, and published American Journal of Psychotherapy, 18,3, 1964.
• Patricia Ann Morgan. "How I Changed My Sex". Female Mimics, 1,3, 1963. Online.
• Jack Smith (dir). Flaming Creatures, with Frances Francine, Mario Montez (as Dolores Flores). US 42 mins 1963.
• Avery Willard (dir) Variety, with Minette. US ? mins 1963.
• Avery Willard (dir) If Ads Were True, with Minette. US ? mins 1963.
• Edward Sagarin writing as Donald Webster Cory with John P. LeRoy. The Homosexual and His Society; A View from Within. New York: Citadel Press, 1963. Cory and LeRoy (a sex partner whom he helped out financially) claimed that there is no such thing as a 'well-adjusted homosexual', and also discussed hustlers, but challenged the then common assumption that homosexuals were security risks.
• Carlson Wade. She-male: the amazing true-life story of Coccinelle. Epic, 1963.
• Turnabout, no 1. June 1963. With contributions by Fred Shaw, Siobhan Fredericks, D Rhodes, Quiven Enright. Susanna Valenti listed as Associate Editor.
• Turnabout, no 2, October 1963. With contributions by Fred Shaw, Quiven Enright. D Rhodes and a summary of Harry Benjamin’s “Clinical Aspects of Transsexualism in the Male and Female”, and photographs of Sonne Teal in La Poupée.
• Female Mimics no 1, no 2, no 3.

1964

A 17-year-old transsexual referred to as G.L. who had been convicted of stealing women’s clothing and $800 worth of wigs was ordered by the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City to have sex reassignment surgery at Johns Hopkins. Her probation officer delivered her to the Johns Hopkins Women’s Clinic where Howard Jones was to do the surgery. However the psychiatry department intervened at the last moment, and had G.L. referred to them for therapy instead.

John Money introduced Richard Green to Harry Benjamin in 1964, and for two years he saw patients in Benjamin's New York office and wrote letters for them so that they could obtain surgery in Europe.

April: Benjamin gave a talk at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Benjamin met monthly with John Money and Richard Green and the idea was raised of applying the kind of surgery being done on intersex patients to transsexuals as well. Money took three post-operative patients of Harry Benjamin to meet his colleagues at Johns Hopkins. As the Gender Identity Clinic there began to coalesce, it was integrated into the work of the Foundation, which provided them with patient referrals. Reed Erickson’s EEF donated $85,000 to the Gender Identity Clinic over a few years, and Reed became quite friendly with John Money. He went to Johns Hopkins for a double mastectomy repair in 1965.

The Harry Benjamin Foundation similarly endorsed the gender clinic at Stanford University. 

The Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis was considering opening a gender identity clinic led by Donald Hastings. Two members went to New York, met with the HBF and were able to examine patients of Benjamin and Wollman who had had surgery abroad. Their surgeon, John Blum, went to Johns Hopkins to observe transgender surgery.

----

British journalist James Morris was in New York and visited Harry Benjamin, who advised him that a change of body must be a last resort, and that he should try working life as a man. He procrastined another eight years

The future Renée Richards, then still in the US Navy, also came to Dr Benjamin, but procrastinated another decade before finally transitioning.

Susanna Valanti and Marie bought a replacement 150 acre property with a large house, close to Hunter, New York. This became Casa Susanna, and like the Chevalier D’Eon Resort was frequented by the transvestite crowd. Susanna and her guests would go, dressed, to drive-in movies and to friendly neighbours. Some transvestite visitors even went into the village of Hunter for shopping, where, if nothing else, they were noted for being overdressed.

Susanna wanted to make movies.  Andrea Malick, a professional photographer as well as a visitor to Casa Susanna, stepped up with a professional 16mm camera. Two films were shot in the same weekend in Marie’s wig store in New York. David/Gail Wilde, one of the richer members, had previously bought Andrea an expensive Roleiflex camera (which cost over $1,000) with the request that Andrea learn how to process color film. Gail also requested a copy of each photograph taken. Gail collected them in expensive albums.

Donald Wollheim/Darrell Raynor became a regular at Casa Susanna and used the name Donna or Doris. He did not drive and so wife Elsie chauffeured him. The daughter Betsy was sent to summer camp for two months every year for 8 years to avoid awkward questions. In 1964 he announced that he was going out for Halloween as his sister, and spent five hours in the bathroom getting ready – even at age 12 Betsy realized that this was odd.

14-year-old Kim Christy was going out in semi-drag, and took up with the young Billy Schumacher (later to become International Chrysis). They were photographed fooling around outside the Astor in Manhattan when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were staying there, and the picture appeared in a Life Magazine article on teenage delinquents.

Holly Woodlawn was briefly employed as an in-house model at Saks Fifth Avenue.

The short-lived Lavender & Lace magazine for transvestites came out – it had a much greater racial diversity than Transvestia.

March: Felicity Chandelle, an airline pilot recently widowed, was arrested in New York near her home by an officer of the West 128^th Precinct for a violation of Section 887, Subdivision 7 of the New York Code of Criminal Procedure which designates as a vagrant any person who 'having his face painted, discolored, covered, or concealed, or being otherwise disguised in a manner calculated to prevent his being identified, appears on a road, lot, wood, or enclosure'. The law dates back to the 1840s when farmers were disguising as 'Indians' to harass Dutch landowners in the Anti-Rent Movement. Despite having no criminal intent John Miller was sentenced to two days, suspended. This resulted in losing her job with Eastern Airlines after 25 years, because such behavior ‘signaled homosexuality’, even though an Eastern Airlines manager actually phoned Harry Benjamin and was reassured that the conviction in no way impacted on Miller's competence as a pilot. Virginia Prince and Siobhan Fredericks worked together and championed her case, raising over $1,200 to finance an appeal. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a brief as amicus curiae, and the New York Times carried a sympathetic story. The appeal hearing was denied, by the New York appeal court and by the US Supreme Court.

Leonard Wheeler published Sex Life of a Transvestite. He revealed Connie, his female self as an erotic transvestite who was also into bondage, with cruel sadistic fantasies about women. He does state that his bondages and his attitudes to women are separate from his crossdressing, and that he is hardly typical of transvestites. His thoughts were written up by Jack Jardine (1931 - 2009), a lesser science fiction writer using one of his aliases. Using the same alias he had published Girls on Sin Street, about prostitution, the year before. The book contained an introduction by Albert Ellis (1913 – 2007), an associate of Alfred Kinsey, who had published Sex Without Guilt in 1958, and was then writing Homosexuality, Its Causes and Cures which would be published in 1965. He later became the father of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and was known for his liberal use of swear words.

• Harry Benjamin. “Transvestism and Transsexualism in the Male and Female”. Presented at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine on April 13, 1964.
• Harry Benjamin. "Nature and Management of Transsexualism, with a Report on 31 Operated Cases", Western Journal of Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, 72, 1964.
• Harry Benjamin & R E L Masters. Prostitution and Morality: a definitive report on the prostitute in contemporary society and an analysis of the causes and effects of the suppression of prostitution. Julian Press, 1964. Review. In this book, unlike The Transsexual Phenomenon, two years later, androphilic transvestites are acknowledged.
• Benito B. Rish. 1964. "Profile-Plasty. Report on Plastic Chin Implants". The Laryngoscope. 74, 1, 1964: 144-154.
• Hugo Beigel. “The Myth of the Latent Femininity in the Male”. Turnabout. He dismissed the idea that a male-bodied person could have a feminine soul. Susanna replied in Transvestia that Beigel was taking the girl-within over-literally rather than as a metaphor. The metaphor of the girl-within, she maintained, was simply an uncomplicated way of expressing these various motivations and urges that make up a transvestite’s second personality, the feminine self that had to be kept hidden in public settings out of fear of social disapproval. She also countered his claim that transvestism is an acquired condition.
• Leonard Wheeler, as told to Jack Jardine writing as Larry Maddock, with an introduction by Albert Ellis. Sex life of a Transvestite. K. D. S. Publ. Co 1964.
• Carlson Wade. The Twilight Sex. S. Publications, 1964.
• Carlson Wade. "Men in Skirts". Female Mimics, 1,4, 1964. 
• Queens in Drag: Female Impersonators … on Parade. S-K Books 1964. Photo essay of the 'Art Students' Ball' held in Manhattan each year under the auspices of the Art Students' League of New York.
• Female Mimics, no 4.

1965

Siobhan Fredericks participated in a panel discussion on New York's listener-sponsored station, WBAI- FM, with Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, co-author of the Kinsey reports.

The teenage Harvey Fierstein was attending the 82 Club. Angie Stardust was the first black star at the club, until she was fired for taking female hormones. One of the owners said to her: "Girls like you are going to be the death of this business". 

Dario Modon graduated from the New York School of Visual Arts in 1965, and started doing drag at Halloween. He advanced to the drag balls and private parties. He was 6’2” (1.88m) and specialized in a simple black dress.

Chris Moore, ex-army and merchant navy, took up female impersonation, and appeared with Frank Bennet in the Follies Mantisque. This led to work with the Jewel Box Revue, at first doing a comedy strip. However it was discovered that he could impersonate Ethel Merman rather well, and he started singing songs from Gypsy. He then added Marlene Dietriche and Bette Davis to his repertoire. He used a special heavy makeup to hide the tattoo on his upper arm. He was also partially blind and required thick glasses.

Kim Christy and Chrysis each left home and shared a tiny apartment in the area that later became New York's SoHo. They met sex magazine pioneer and editor of Exotique magazine, Lenny Burtman who arranged photo-shoots and other favors. Kim had a boyfriend who worked with her to soften her Bronx accent. She got to know New York female impersonators such as Tammy Novak, and performed at Club 82 as a stripper and as a showgirl. Her song was the theme music from A Man and a Woman. She toured North America as a female impersonator.

The State Liquor Authority decided to revoke the Peppermint liquor licence. This was upheld in the state Supreme Court. The club closed in December.

Edward Sagarin was increasingly at odds with the new activists in the Mattachine Society including LeRoy who were advocating for civil rights and liberation for homosexuals. In 1965, after a bitter fight for control, Sagarin quit the Mattachine Society. The conflict, expressed with some bitterness, appears in his PhD thesis, Structure and ideology in an association of deviants, that he submitted in 1966.

Reed Erickson hired Zelda Suplee to run his Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF). From her office in New York she and lesbian feminist activist Phyllis Saperstein (they had met in a nudist camp) managed the daily operations, and the contacts with transsexuals who asked for help. Erickson made the final decisions about who and what he funded, but spent much of his time in Baton Rouge, and then Mexico, with his family.

Howard and Georgeanna Jones with Edmund Novak wrote a textbook of gynecology which went through several editions and in its time outsold all other such textbooks combined.

• Ira B Pauly. "Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. A Review of 100 Cases". Archives of General Psychology, 13, 1965:172-181.
• James Mills. "The Detective: a good cop fights for law but the deck is stacked against him". Life, 3 Dec 1965: 90d-123. Online. Contains the photograph of Chrysis and Kim outside the Astor.
• Andy Warhol & Ronald Tavel (dir). Screen test Number 2. Scr: Ronald Tavel, with Mario Montez and Salvador Dali, Dennis Hopper and Lou Reed. US 4 mins 1965. Montez is confronted about his gender and admits that he is a man, but he does so, he says, only because he is a woman.
• John Oliven Sexual Hygiene and Pathology, revised 2^nd edition, Lippincott,1965 (a year before Benjamin’s Transsexual Phenomenon) where he wrote: “The term [transsexualism] is misleading; actually, “transgenderism” is what is meant, because sexuality is not a major factor …”.
• Edmund R. Novak, Georgeanna Seegar Jones, and Howard Wilbur Jones. Textbook of Gynecology. Williams & Wilkins Co, 1965.
• Siobhan Fredericks. The Best of Both Worlds: A Novel of Transvestism. Abbé de Choisy Press, 1965.
  
• Abby Sinclair, George Griffith, Carlson Wade & Latina Seville. I Was Male. Novel Books. 95 pp 1965.
• Antony James. Abnormal World of Transvestites & Sex Changes. New York: L. S. Publications 192 pp1965. Chapters on history, operations, prisons, married tv's, lesbian tv's, tv prostitutes, S&M among tv's and more. James also published America’s Homosexual Underground, in the same year.
• Female Mimics, no 5, no 6, no 7.

Trans New York 1960-1962.

 See also:

Trans New York 1963-1965

The four years leading to Stonewall – a New York timeline

The five years following Stonewall - a New York timeline

The Gilded Grape

The GG Knickerbocker P T Barnum Room

1960

Gynecologists Howard and Georgeanne Jones left their private practice to become full-time faculty at Johns Hopkins Psychohormonal Research Unit. Howard started doing ‘corrective’ surgery on intersex infants.

Female impersonator Libby Reynolds was working in mufti as a bartender at Main Street Lounge in Greenwich Village when actor Raymond Burr (1917 - 1993), who played Perry Mason on television, came in and they spent the night together. Reynolds sold the story to Confidential magazine, and the story now was that Burr had innocently picked up Libby and never realized that she was a ‘man’. The story included a composite photo of Burr and Libby en femme.

Nan Gilbert, author of forced femininity fiction and who had been active among transvestites at an earlier date, had his mail stopped and was fined $500. Donald Wollheim contacted Gilbert, and they corresponded for some time.

Patricia Morgan became a patient of Harry Benjamin, started taking estrogen, and began living full-time as female. She was saving seriously for the $5,000 plus expenses for the operation. She was arrested as a female prostitute, got through the strip search without being read, and declared herself as a ‘boy’ only in court. She was released in that the prostitution law applied only to women.

New Yorker, Susanna Valenti started her “Susanna Says” column in Transvestia.

David Wilde separated from his wife and moved to an apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. As Gail he subscribed to Transvestia, and became a New York contact for the Foundation for Full Personality Expression, (FPE). Those who knew both David and Gail found Gail to be less abrasive, but both personae were negative about gays and transsexuals.

Felicity Chandelle first met other cross-dressers through the Transvestia contact ads. Then she took up the practice enthusiastically.

• Edward Podolsky and Carlson Wade. Transvestism Today; The Phenomena of Men Who Dress As Women. Epic Pub. Co, 1960. Online at Queer Music Heritage.
• Edward Podolsky and Carlson Wade. Erotic Symbolism; A Study of Fetichism in Relation to Sex. Epic Pub. Co, 1960.

1961

Ira B Pauly was doing a psychiatric residency at Cornell Medical Center in New York. He was called to urology to counsel a trans man who was in for a hysterectomy. He attempted research in the hospital library but found material on transsexualism only in French and German. He had patients who were willing to do longhand translations for him. He then discovered a paper by David Cauldwell.

“And then there was a brief article by someone named Harry Benjamin. And in those days, it was in a somewhat obscure journal. I don’t quite remember which journal it was. But it had his address. And it was an address that was about five blocks away from the hospital that I was working at. So, I looked up his name in the phone book and told him that I was a psychiatry resident, and I had a little experience with a transgender, transsexual patient. And was there any way I could come over and talk to him, because I had read—he was an endocrinologist. And a lot of these folks, the first step in the physical transition is taking the contrary hormone.” 

For much of that year, he attended Benjamin's Wednesday afternoon clinic.

 “So every Wednesday afternoon, through the generosity and mentorship of Harry Benjamin, I was able to see probably more transsexual patients than any psychiatrist in North America. … As I got to know the patients, they uniformly described being happier into the gender role that they felt they were in from the very beginning. And that the only thing that needed to be done as far as treatment was concerned was to get the body on board with the gender of their choice.“ 

Pauly set out to aggregate 100 cases from the literature and from among Benjamin’s patients.

Patricia Morgan, with arrangements made through Harry Benjamin, flew to Los Angeles in November 1961 for surgery with Dr Elmer Belt. While waiting for a hospital bed, she was in a car crash with a drunken john. She sued the john, a movie producer, to cover her medical bills, and they settled out of court. After four months in Los Angeles, Pat had a penectomy and her testicles implanted in her abdomen. Two months after that she had a vaginoplasty. Afterwards she was in pain, very weak and her money had run out.

Vito Russo, the future gay film historian, was 15 and his parents bought a house in Lodi, New Jersey – to his chagrin. However, he soon found the local queer scenes:

“Vito’s first drag-queen contemporary was a fellow student …. Standing six feet two inches [1.89 m] under a bleached-blond man, Billy knew how to make a striking entrance – particularly when bombing around Lodi in his pink Cadillac convertible. Contact with Billy meant automatic social ostracism. … Billy invited Vito to a New Year’s Eve party held at the home of ‘the most outrageous drag queen in Bergen County’. …

Billy’s friends were working-class drag queens from Lodi and the nearby towns…. Like Billy, these men were wildly out of the closet, almost unwittingly so: they were ‘identifiable on the street whether they liked it or not. They couldn’t hide it even it they tried’. From them, Vito got his first lessons in gay survival. He listened attentively to their tutorials on ‘how to take care of himself on the street and be funny and get out of a raid and go through a window in a bathroom and all that stuff you had to know in the ‘60s’. …

Another favorite haunt was Danny’s in Fort Lee, where the group went to see ‘Bella from the Bronx’, a drag queen whose act consisted of traditional Italian families’ reactions to the revelations of their gay children. … He was also enamored of the headliner at Fran Bell’s in Nyack, New York. Fran herself … donned a tuxedo and top hat and crooned ‘Just a Gigolo’ à la Dietrich. Then there were the drag balls at Newark’s Robert Treat Hotel.”

Susanna Valenti’s male persona, Tito, was summoned by postal officials. Two of her correspondents had been charged with mailing obscene materials, and Susanna’s name had come up. Tito pleaded respectability and denounced the obscenities.

The future Vicky West, after army service, returned to Cornell and completed an engineering degree.

Virginia Prince flew into New York on her way to that year’s Halloween Weekend at Susanna Valenti's Chevalier D’Eon Resort in upstate New York. While in New York City,

“I was chauffeured over to Dr. Benjamin's office for a nice but too brief visit and dinner with him. Those of you who have never met Dr. Benjamin have missed a real treat. People of our persuasion have no better professional friend.”

Donald Wollheim, science fiction editor, was building to a nervous break-down from not expressing his cross-dreaming.

• Greg Garrison (dir) Hey, Lets Twist, with Joey Dee and the Starlighters. US BW mono 79 mins 1961. IMDB. Wikipedia. A fictionalized story of the Peppermint Lounge, partially filmed there.
• Avery Willard (dir) The Last of the Worthington, with Minette. US ? mins 1961.
• Avery Willard (dir) Magic Music Hall, with Minette. US ? mins 1961.

1962

Ira B Pauly obtained a position at the University of Oregon Medical School.

John Money became head of the Psychohormonal Research Unit at Johns Hopkins University Hospital when Lawson Wilkins retired. 

Holly Woodlawn, 16-years-old, hitch-hiking, arrived in New York. She found work as a saleswoman at Saks 5^th Avenue.

11-year-old Sylvia Rivera discovered 42^nd Street where he had heard that the maricónes were to be found. However a neighbour spotted Sylvia, which led to a row with grandmother, a suicide attempt and two months in Bellevue Hospital.

January: New York science fiction editor Donald Wollheim, discovered a copy of Transvestia, and a copy of Justice Weekly, in a store on 42^nd St.

March: Donald Wollheim was in Los Angeles on business. He, having previously corresponded, met first Virginia Prince in his hotel room, and then was invited to dinner with Virginia and wife Doreen. After an interesting evening, it was suggested that in New York Darrell should contact Gail and Susanna who were listed in Transvestia. He also bought the complete back file of Transvestia.

Back home, the first task was to tell Mrs Wollheim. This was done in stages and accomplished after 10 days, and a few days after that they went shopping together on 5^th Avenue for feminine nightwear. 

Wollheim wrote letters to Gail (David Wilde) and to Susanna Valenti. The former had to go via Prince/Transvestia in Los Angeles, and therefore took longer to get a response. Susanna had published contact details in Transvestia, and could be contacted directly. A letter from Susanna arrived quickly, but an actual meeting – for one reason or another – took several months. It was early April, two weeks later, before a letter arrived from Gail, but it gave a phone number, and Wollheim was able to visit the next evening, had a heart-to-heart chat and was given gossip about New York transvestites.

Nan Gilbert advised Wollheim not to contact persons such as Gail and Susanna, in that they were frustrated persons who would be disappointing. On the other hand, Wollheim and Gail met a few times for lunch. In May Gail moved again to an apartment in Greenwich Village, and Wollheim attended a small party where Gail was the only person in female clothing. Gilbert was mentioned, and known by those who were present. Later when Wollheim sent regards to Gilbert from ‘Alice from Canada’, a reference to one in attendance, Gilbert became curt, and the correspondence was soon discontinued.

On the 4^th of July, Mrs Wollheim also attended the soiree at Gail’s. This was the first time that they met ‘Fiona from New Zealand’ (actually Katherine Cummings from Australia).

Patricia Morgan, still in Los Angeles, moved in with her friend Shelley, but was gang raped by two of Shelley’s tricks. Later they were arrested and Pat was charged with living in a house of prostitution. She served 30 days in the prison hospital. She developed urinary problems and had to have a third operation with Dr Belt. She hustled to raise the airfare to go home.

Back in New York Patricia took up prostitution again. She had breast implants to 42DD but then reduced to 38D. She also had her nose straightened. She was booked for prostitution when she accepted a ride in the rain. Her lawyer tried to get her off on the technicality that she was still a man, not having changed her name or birth certificate. The judge ruled that she was a female anyway, and gave her a suspended sentence. She started a business of limousines with female chauffeurs, but it lasted only a year. She also did modeling.

Betty, who had been living full-time, and working in a night club in New York, found a sponsor who paid for her consultations with Harry Banjamin, and a few months later she had surgery in Casablanca.

43 ‘men’ were arrested at the National Variety Artists Annual Ball and charged with ''masquerading to conceal identity”. Judge William Ringel ruled that the ball, of its nature was a masquerade and dismissed the charges.

71 transvestites gathered at the Chevalier D’Eon Resort for Halloween 1962, held a day after the National Variety Artists costume ball raid. The guests at Chevalier D’Eon Resort included Virginia Prince, Katherine Cummings, Felicity Chandelle, Darrell Raynor and Gail Wilde, and psychologists Hugo Beigel and Wardell Pomeroy. Raynor, Cummings and Beigel later wrote about the event. Harry Benjamin was invited bur sent his regrets.

Tobi Marsh was engaged at Club 82 where Tony Midnite was doing the costumes. Midnite also did the costumes for the road shows of Gypsy and Carnival!, for the Metropolitan Opera and some television shows.

Tommy Dorsey (later Issan Dorsey), then a touring stage female impersonator, was the only survivor of a car-full of drag queens that crashed on route from New York to Rochester. He suffered medical problems from it in later years.

Isabel Whitney (1878 – 1962) died. Her companion, the future Dawn Simmons, inherited an estate reportedly worth over $1 million. Simmons flew her body to Heathfield, England for burial, although she had never been there in life, and then moved to Charleston, South Carolina as Whitney and Simmons had intended to do together.

• Edward Podolsky and Carlson Wade. Transvestism. Sexual behavior series, no. 5. New York: Epic Pub. Co, 1962.
• Edward Podolsky and Carlson Wade. Fetichism. Sexual behavior series, no. 6. New York: Epic Publ. Co., Inc, 1962.
• R E L Masters, with an Introduction by Harry Benjamin. Forbidden Sexual Behavior and Morality: An Objective Re-Examination of Perverse Sex Practices in Different Cultures. Julian Press, 1962.
• Avery Willard (dir) The Dead Sister’s Secret, with Minette. US ? mins 1961.

The Offices of Harry Benjamin. Part II: after 1968

Continued from Part I. 

44 East 67^th St

In 1968 Benjamin and philanthropist Reed Erickson had been in disagreement, mainly over money and who was to decide what, and after that year there was no more funding, and Benjamin had to vacate the large office.

It was back to 67^th St.

Leo Wollman returned to his office on Mermaid Avenue, Coney Island, Brooklyn.

The Harry Benjamin Foundation wanted a book to emerge from their work, but this was felt to be too narrow. In particular that would exclude the important work being done in Europe. The book, financed again by Erickson’s EEF, eventually came out in 1969 as Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment edited by Richard Green and John Money.

Also in 1969 Benjamin recruited  Charles Ihlenfeld, an internist with an interest in endocrinology, mainly to cover the office during the summer while Benjamin was in San Francisco. Ihlenfeld learned on the job, and stayed on.

45 East 74^th St, again between Madison and Park Avenues

Roberto Granato started doing vaginoplasties and phalloplasties and Benjamin and Ihlenfeld were pleased to refer patients to him.

In 1972 Ethel Person was introduced to Benjamin. He allowed her to interview some of his patients, and asked her to write a biographical portrait of him to be published after his death. She formally interviewed him to this end a dozen times.

Two papers by Person and Lionel Ovessey based on Person’s patient interviews were published, and came to standard psycho-analytic conclusions. Several of those who had been interviewed by Person were outraged. 

Ihlenfeld came out as gay in 1973. Benjamin was surprised but then became supportive.

Benjamin’s office was here until his retirement in 1975. Charles Ihlenfeld then took over the practice for a short while.

1 East 72^nd St, at 5^th Ave close to Central Park

In 1976 Wardell Pomeroy moved to California, and brought in Leah Schaefer as his replacement.

The practice was still open for existing patients. It was being managed under the aegis of the Orentreich Medical Group, a dermatology and hair restoration practice, also located at 1 East 72nd St. It was then still administered by Benjamin's office manager and assistant Virginia Allen.

223 West 22^nd St, between 7^th and 8th Avenues

Charles Ihlenfeld resigned in 1976 to begin a psychiatric residency in the Bronx, and Eugene Hoff took over. Hoff fired Virginia, the nurse Mary Ryan, and the physician Agnes Nagy, and pleased Dr Orentreich by moving the practice downtown to a townhouse behind the Chelsea Hotel.

Hoff transitioned to Jeanne and had surgery with Dr Granato in 1977. 

Leo Wollman had been working with Doris Wishman, one of the very few female exploitation film directors of her generation, and in 1978 they released Born A Man... Let Me Die A Woman, which is both a documentary and pornography.

Working with Connie Christine Wheeler, Leah Schaefer interviewed Harry Benjamin in 1979 about his history, he took to them and trusted them with his files. They read all the 1500 or so files, and started meeting regularly with him to discuss what they found.

The third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM III) 1980 added transsexualism for the first time, and subdivided it into asexual, homosexual, heterosexual and unspecified. Thus it was roughly congruent with the typologies proposed by Robert Stoller, Person-Ovesey and Virginia Prince. Furthermore ‘transvestism’ was defined as done by a heterosexual male. Again congruent with Stoller, Person-Ovesey and Prince. However to the chagrin of Prince (who had been insisting on a differentiation from fetishism) it was defined as done for sexual excitement.

By 1980 there were few patients left in Hoff's practice, and Hoff had already taken a job in a psych ward in Brooklyn. The next year she sold the building and moved away, first to Massachusetts and then California.

1980 the Yonkers Professional Hospital, where transgender surgery was done by Drs Wessor and Rish was closed down after a surprise inspection by the state.

Surgeon David Wesser who had done 200 sex-change operations, many referrals from Benjamin, was charged before a panel of the New York Department of Health in 1981, The panel was rigged and he was driven out of business.

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Harry Benjamin died age 101 in 1986.