Jenny Moore (1887 - ?) keeper of a disorderly house

 Moore was born in the then slum area of Oakwellgate, Gateshead (just across the River Tyne from Newcastle), and raised as a boy called Robert. Moore and her siblings were raised by their mother. From an early age she had declared herself to be Jennie, a female, and attempted to live as girl. By 1901 13-year-old Robert was incarcerated at the Abbot Memorial Ragged and School, where children under 14 were sent after arrest for vagrancy, truancy and/or begging, or if vulnerable to abuse and neglect. This was an ‘industrial school’ where children were offered skill training and ‘moral education’. 

By 1911, when she was 24, Jennie, listed as Robert, was living at a seaman’s boarding house in South Shields and working there as a servant, and was so recorded in the Census of that year.

Daily Mirror 1913

By 1913 Moore was living as Jennie, and was convicted of keeping a disorderly house in Hartlepool, County Durham. She was taken to Durham for trial, and a street photograph of her was published in the Daily Mirror. Many so charged would have appeared in court in male clothing to mitigate the sentence, and claimed the transvesting as a lark or fancy dress. Jennie however was now confirmed in her gender, and appeared as her true self.

Jennie and her brother Fred Coulthard were in Gateshead in 1915. They were observed by the police, and charged with “being a reputed thief he did loiter in Gateshead for the purpose of committing a felony”. Jennie was, as usual, initially taken to be a cis woman, until she was examined at the police station. She explained that she had lived as female when she could since childhood. When asked why, made no reply. A search of Jennir’s home found no male clothes at all, but did find a well-kept neat flat with a piano and a gramophone, good curtains and carpet. The police also found correspondence with a soldier serving in the already ongoing war. Jenny was committed to a men’s prison for three months, and Fred was fined £1/7/-. 

In 1916 she was arrested in Liverpool charged with living an immoral life and ‘permitting a house to be used for immoral traffic’. She had been living as Mrs Jennie Gray, wife of James Gray – who was also charged with the same offence. Initially the arresting officers again accepted that she was a cis woman.

• “Man who dresses like a woman”. Daily Mirror, 16 December 1913 p9.
• "Man as a Woman: A Remarkable Masquerade: Gateshead Man Sent to Prison". Greenock Telegraph. 2 August 1915 p6.
• "Man dressed as a Woman: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Strange Disclosures". Newcastle upon Tyne Journal, 2 August 1915 p8.
• "Man-Woman at Gateshead: Extraordinary Case of Masquerading". The Darlington North Star, 2 August 1915 p5.
• “Man in woman’s clothes: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Remarkable evidence at the Police Court”. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 2 August 1915 p9.
• “Man dressed as woman: Extraordinary Liverpool disclosures”. Liverpool Evening Express, 29 June 1916 p3.
• “Man and ‘Wife’: Male Prisoners sent to Assizes”. Liverpool Daily Post, 30 June 1916 p3.
• Nic Aaron & Jeanie Sinclair. "Remembering Jennie Moore" in Kit Heyam & Jon Ward (eds). New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity: Forging A Home For Ourselves. Bloombury Academic, 2025: 87-113.

Unfortunately all we have as primary sources are newspaper articles that give her male name, and treat her as a curiosity. We can however see past these and see a lone trans woman unable to get a regular job, and without information about other trans persons.

1913 was almost the last time that fashionable women wore ankle-length skirts/dresses.  The changes brought about by the 1914-8 war led to more practical shorter skirts, and in the 1920s the demands of fashion took this further.

The government had passed the National Insurance Act 1911. All workers who earned under £160 a year had to pay 4 pence a week into the scheme; the employer paid 3 pence, and general taxation paid 2 pence. This provided some sick care and a small income whilst ill. This was the beginning of the welfare state, and was copied from the system that had been introduced in Germany in 1883. This was obviously a good step forward, but the associated NI cards, which were required when starting a job, would have outed Jennie and other trans persons, and thus made it very difficult to get a legal job.

The 1915 conviction re loitering would have been under the 1824 Vagrancy Act, while the 1913 and 1916 convictions of keeping a disorderly house would have been under the 1751 Disorderly Houses Act.

In January 1916, military conscription was introduced for the first time in British history, despite the previous raising of one of the largest all-volunteer armies in history for the Great War. Presumably Jennie’s male persona was called. Did her female persona result in rejection? Did she serve, voluntarily or otherwise, and die on the Western Front (as did the trans protagonist of the novel The Scarlet Pansy)? We have no record of her after 1916.

Whatever happened to her after 1916, Jennie Moore is what we might call a primary transsexual, although she would not know the term. When she was asked in court why she lived as a woman, she did not answer, probably because she had not encountered any suitable jargon even though ‘travesty’ and ‘transvest’ as a verb had been in use in England since the beginning of the 18^th century, and 'Travestiment' was being used by 1832, and 'Travestier' by 1883. It is likely that Jennie did not associate herself with those terms in that they were mainly used for cross-dressing, and she did not voluntarily cross-dress as a man.

Shelley Ball (1953–) sex worker, inmate.

Original: May 2011. 

William Ross Ball was raised, one of four children in Chilliwack, British Columbia. Their alcoholic father killed himself when the child was eight, followed by the mother having a nervous breakdown two years later.  The children were then raised in group and foster homes.  Shelley later said: "I wanted to be a woman since I was a kid, as far back as I can remember".  At 13 she was committed to a mental institution near Vancouver for dressing in female clothes.  Ball's teenage years were spent in reformatories and institutions across Canada, and even for a while at a boys' school in Washington State - he was kicked out for attempted arson.  Whenever Ball ran away, she survived as a female sex worker, selling her body to heterosexual men who very well knew what she was.  This fed a heroin addiction. She admitted robbing some of her customers, and had been stabbed several times. One night she was beaten, robbed and left for dead on a railway track in Vancouver. 

In 1977, Shelley, now 24, was working at a house for ex-mental patients in Edmonton.  In February, she met a trick in Edmonton's skid row section, and went to his hotel room with him.  Either: when he admitted that he had no money, she claimed to be a member of the police moraliy squad, he got nasty, she slapped him, and it escalated.  Or: the client became enraged when he realized that she was trans.  She ended up stabbing him 17 times.  

There was some confusion at the trial in February 1978 about which pronouns to use.  Edmonton psychiatrist Donald Milliken testified that Ball was transsexual, and already on female hormone therapy.   He said that she would be more confortable in a women's penitentiary.  Shelley, in male clothing, at first refused to testify in that there was a group of 14-15 year-old school children present in the court in pursuit of a language project.  The court accepted her contention that the case was not suitable for such young children and they were withdrawn,

Mr Justice Tevy Miller "with a great deal of trouble and soul-searching" found Shelley guilty of second-degree murder, and imposed the mandatory life sentence - which ruled out parole for the first ten years. Unusually, the judge also recommended a sex-change operation.  The chief of medical services for the federal corrections service approved the operation in that Ball would be molested in a male prison, and that the operation would likely decrease his violent tendencies.

This was the first such surgery for a convict in Canada, and is in marked contrast to how all other trans prisoners were treated until Synthia Kavanagh won her appeal in 2000.

Ball, who already had breasts, but was 1.88 m (6'2'') and 73 kg (162 lb.) did time in three different male institutions, and had no trouble. "In Prince Albert (Saskatchewan), I think I went out with nine different guys while I was there. I had more husbands than Zsa Zsa Gabor."

Shelley in 1984

Shelley had partial (no vaginoplasty) genital reassignment surgery in 1980 and was then transferred to Kingston Penitentiary for Women.  It was reported that the operation cost $250,000 - which led to cries of outrage.  Vancouver trans activist Stephanie Castle wrote to The Province newspaper pointing out that "The $250,000 is enough for 30 such surgeries. ... Doing SRS in Canada currently costs about $8,000."  She was given the reply that "Ancillary security costs to guard Ms Ball during repeated hospital visits pushed up the costs". 

 She was initially treated badly by the other women inmates, and attempted suicide several times. However she had an affair with an inmate and decided, after a lifetime of having sex with men, that she was a lesbian.  She took a  a hairdressing course while in Kingston, and later a Queens University psychology course.

There were two attempts at parole.  On one she made an unauthorized trip to Vancouver to see her mother, but the mother was too drunk to recognize her, which prompted Shelley to go back on heroin. Both the trip and the heroin led to the parole board revoking her privileges, and her hoped-for release in 1990 did not happen. 

She accepted that her life is in prison, and became chairperson of the prisoners' committee, pushing for more services for the other prisoners. 

She was in the news again in 1998, still in Kingston Penitentiary, when she attempted to slash her own throat.

Toronto Star 1979.8.12 p2

*Not the Canadian football player, not the insect ecologist.

• "Trans-sexual trial sparks confusion".  Red Deer Advocate, February 15, 1978: 2. 
• Dick Schuler. "Prostitute gets life for stabbing death". Edmonton Journal, February 15, 1978. 
• Isabel Miller.  "Not in Front of the Children".  Letter, Edmonton Journal, February 21, 1978: 5. 
• Peter O'Neil. "Sex-change operation proves less than blessing". The Vancouver Sun, Aug 5, 1989: B3.
• Beth Gorham.  "Transsexual is content in prison". Calgary Herald, February 5,, 1989: 29.
• Holly Horwood. "A female 'eunuch's' cry for help". The Province, Jan 29, 1995: A2.
• Stephanie Castle. "Hurts transsexuals". Letter in The Province, Fenbruary 6, 1995: 17. 
• "Inmate slashes throat". Kingston Whig Standard, Sep 29, 1998: 3.

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

Kingston Penitentiary for Women was closed in 2000. From 1995 to 2000 its inmates were transferred to other federal correctional institutions.

I was unable to find any mention of what happened to Shelley Ball after this date.

David Petillo (1908 – 1983) hitman, mafioso

Original Version March 2010.

Antonio Petillo from Pollico, Salerno south of Naples, emigrated to New York in 1885, and married Michelina, also an Italian immigrant, the next year. They had seven children – David was the sixth. Antonio was a sanitation worker and later a driver. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1910. 

David attended a public school sometimes, and left for good when he was 14. He became involved with Giosue Aiello, a criminal who ran an area in the Lower East Side of Manhattan around Cherry Street. Petillo became regarded as a finocchio, or even a fairy. At age 18 he was sent to Chicago where Al Capone was to straighten him out.

Aiello disappeared, probably killed, around 1920, and David Petillo, along with partner Charles “Chalutz” Gagliodotto, and others of Aiello’s crew, were initiated into the Lucky Luciano's  (Genovese) organization. 

Petillo and Gagliodotto were contracted to carry out murders for the bosses of the Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago Mafia organizations. It was during this time that “Little Davie” earned a reputation as the “cross-dressing killer”, as he often dressed in drag in order to get close to unsuspecting victims, although it was sometimes Gagliodotto (who had the advantage of being barely 5 feet/1.5m) in drag, and sometimes both. It is said that both dressed as female mourners for a funeral, complete with veils, and slipped into a car after their target to kill him without detection. The FBI estimated that Petillo and Gagliodotto were involved in as many as 30 murders.

In 1924, Petillo was charged with "jostling" (intentionally and unnecessarily placing one's hand in close proximity to another person's pocket or handbag) and given sixty days. That same year in October he was charged as Joseph Rose Richmond with attempted grand larceny, but discharged. He served a day in jail in May 1925 and in June, he was charged under the name Joseph Rose and given 30 days. He was charged again in October in Danbury, Connecticut with vagrancy: this time as Herbert Quell.

David married Madeline in 1928 or 29. In the 1930 federal census he gave his profession as a salesman. He had a unit on Canal Street buying odd lots, although other sources say that he was in Chicago as Al Capone’s bodyguard. 

In 1932 Petillo made his first trip to Italy with his sister Lavinia. He made another trip as part of Luciano’s entourage.

On return to New York, he reported to Lucky Luciano, and in 1936 he was arrested on ‘white slavery charges’ in a racket that grossed $12 million a year with over 3,000 prostitutes working at over 200 brothels. Enough women were happy to testify against him.

“Among the brothels Luciano and Petillo had under their proverbial thumb was one operated by the husband-and-wife team of Pete Harris and Mildred Balitzer. Harris pleaded guilty, and Balitzer turned state’s evidence. Balitzer testified about meeting both Little Davie and Charlie Lucky numerous times, and that she was required to collect from each of the girls at her brothel $10 a week which “bonded” them to the mobsters.” (Crawford, 2015 p 85).

“It was the gangster trial of the decade. After beer baron Dutch Schultz was shot to death in a New Jersey tavern, Luciano was declared public enemy number one on the East Coast. [Special Prosecutor Thomas E] Dewey vowed to take him down. Instead of narcotics or gambling, both of which fell under Luciano’s domain, Dewey went after what he saw as the gangster’s weak spot: his control of the city’s $12-million-a-year “vice rackets,” including two hundred brothels and two thousand prostitutes.

Indicted under his given name, Salvatore Lucanía, the trial of Charlie Lucky garnered daily headlines. Dewey depicted the crime lord pulling the strings as he strutted around his luxury suite in the Waldorf-Astoria in a silk robe. Luciano’s main instrument of terror and control over the prostitution ring was “Little Davie” Petillo, or Betillo as he often allowed his name to be misspelled.

'You guys are through,' a brothel operator testified he was told by Luciano. 'I am giving the business to Little Davie.' Those who resisted suffered beatings, bullets pegged in their direction, and guns and knives in the ribs, Dewey told jurors.” (Capeci & Robbins)

Petillo was sentenced to serve 25-40 years in New York State’s Sing Sing prison. Luciano was sentenced to 30-50 years. Later in 1936, authorities moved them to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY, a remote facility far away from New York City. At Clinton, Petillo prepared special dishes for Luciano in a kitchen set aside by authorities. After the US entered the Second World War, Luciano struck a deal with the  government to get Mafia co-operation re security on the New York waterfront to prevent Axis infiltration, and then provided Mafia contacts in Sicily to aid the Allied invasion in 1943. In return Luciano was released but deported to Italy. Petillo was still in prison.

David’s wife Madeline died in 1950; his parents returned to live in Salerno, Italy. Antonio Petillo died in 1954. One of David’s brothers, Roland, became an Italian police officer, and another an agent for the IRS.

David was paroled in 1955, and then trafficked heroin for the Genovese family though Lower East Side and Greenwich Village bars including the 82 Club (run by his cousin Anna Genovese (née Giovaninna Petillo).

He was arrested for violation of parole in June 1958, and on narcotics charges. He was returned to Clinton Correctional Facility for another nine years.

Gagliodotto was among 19 arrested in 1965 charged with being part of a $90-million-a-year narcotics ring. The defense attorney filed multiple motions and three years passed. Gagliodotto was particularly edgy, and was addicted to his product, the heroin. He accused two colleagues of stealing from him and executed them. The others thought that he had gone too far. Petillo, newly released from prison, agreed to deal with him, and took along his cousin Eddie Vassallo. Gagliodotto did not suspect his old partner, but Petillo and Vassallo, using a plastic bag, strangled him, and then left him on the street. The morgue doctors did not pay enough attention and put it down to a heart attack, until rumors reached the FBI and the job was done properly. However nobody was ever charged.

Petillo now, in the late 1960s, became involved in pornography until the business was sold to the Gambino family.

David, age 61, married for a second time in 1969 to Phyllis aged 19. They went on honeymoon to Italy and Greece. On a second trip to Italy in January 1973, David and Phyllis were arrested on arrival and quickly deported back to the US.

From 1975, Petillo lived in Brick Township, New Jersey, and was building up a new criminal crew, and running adult bookstores and gay health spas. In February 1980, after a dispute about ownership and profits, Petillo and three others shot and killed his cousin Edward Vassallo.

Petillo fled the US via Mexico after the murder. The FBI and Interpol tracked him as he moved between luxury hotels in Germany, Greece, Singapore, Bali, Hong Kong, and Hawaii. The trail ended three days after Christmas in 1983 when Petillo collapsed and died while staying in the resort town of Málaga, Spain, on the Mediterranean coast. He was 75. His body was returned to New York City for burial.

• John Martin. “Dewey’s Vice Raids Peril Police Jobs », Daily News, February 4, 1936.
• “Vice Ring Links Half of Nation”. The Reading Times, May 12, 1936.
• Tom Renner. “Mobster Reported Slain”. NY Newsday, August 28, 1968.
• Dorothy Hinchcliff. “Witness tells of carrying out mob’s orders to kill”. Asbury Park Press, May 19, 1982.
• “David Petillo”. "The FBI Files: David Petillo Did It in Drag". Friends of Ours: Mostly About Organized Crime,12/20/2010. Archive. 
• Eric Ferrara. “Petillo, David Silvio” in Manhattan Mafia Guide: Hits, Homes & Headquarters. History Press, 2011: 122-4.
• Phillip Crawford, The Mafia and the Gays. Kindle, 2015: 85-6.
• Jerry Capeci & Tom Robbins. Mob Boss: The Life of Little Al D’Arco the man who brought down the Mafia. St Martin’s Press, 2013.
• Jim Elledge. The Boys of Fairy Town: Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago’s First Century. Chicago Review Press, 2018: 82.

Wikitree(David Silvio Petillo, Antonio Petillo)

IT.Wikipedia(Dave Petillo)

-----------

David’s family name is sometimes given as Betillo. Wikipedia spells it so when writing about Lucky Luciano. 

Neither Petillo nor Betillo is listed among the notable inmates on the Wikipedia page on Sing Sing prison.

Petillo almost certainly was not permitted to transvest while in prison, and there is no mention of any action afterwards. Therefore he had stopped by the age of 28.

See also The Murderers amongst us.

Amber McLaughlin (1973-2023) convicted of murder

McLaughlin was born in Missouri and given the name Scott. The mother abandoned the child who was placed in the foster care system: one foster parent rubbed feces in his face, and an adoptive father tasered the child. Severe depression resulted in multiple suicide attempts, both as a child and as an adult.

McLaughlin became a registered sex offender in 1992 after a conviction for sexual assault against a 14-year-old girl. In 2003 McLaughlin was arrested for the rape and fatal stabbing of an ex-girlfriend in Earth City, an ex-urb of St Louis, whom he had been stalking. In 2006, the jury found McLaughlin guilty of first-degree murder, but was deadlocked at the punishment phase of the trial. The trial judge intervened and imposed a death sentence. Missouri and Indiana are the only two US states that allow judges make such a decision. 

In 2016, a federal judge ordered a new sentencing hearing after finding that the defense had not used an expert witness on penalty mitigation to discuss the accussed’s mental state after finding that he had falsified data 17 years earlier. In 2021 a three-judge panel of the 8^th US Court of Appeals ruled that earlier falsified date was irrelevant, and that the expert should have testified. However, they also found that the testimony was unlikely to change the outcome, and reinstated the death penalty.

On death row at the state prison in Potosi, McLaughlin announced in 2019 that she was trans, and was allowed to transition. She took the name Amber, but her legal name was never changed, nor was she allowed to start on estrogen.

3 January 2023, Amber Mclaughlin was executed by lethal injection.

• Robert Patrick. “Federal appeals court reinstates death penalty in 2003 St. Louis County rape, murder”. St Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug 18, 2021. Online.
• Kevin Held. “Missouri executes convicted murderer Amber McLaughlin”. Fox2now, Jan 3, 2023. Online.
• Riya Teotia. “Who was Amber McLaughlin, the first transgender woman executed in the US? Know about the 2003 case”. Wionews, Jan 04, 2023. Online.
• Emily Chudy. “Trans prisoner Amber McLaughlin set to be executed today unless governor grants clemency”. PinkNews, Jan 03 2023. Online.

EN.Wikipedia

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

Some sites claim that Amber was the first openly transgender woman executed in the U.S. This of course ignores the many two-spirit shamans executed by white colonialists. It also ignores Frank Spisak executed 17 February 2011.

From arrest to execution was almost twenty years. So in effect McLaughlin served a life sentence in addition to being executed.

In Britain, prior to the abolition of the death penalty, it was judges, not juries, who decided between a life sentence and a death sentence.

Toni Simon (1887 - 1979) cafe owner, high voltage tester, pornography smuggler

Simon was raised in Thuringia with the name of Anton. Father was a blacksmith. Even as a child Simon wore girls’ clothes whenever possible, and was pleased to do housework for mother. At age 17 Simon volunteered for the cavalry to avoid service in the infantry where his ‘girlish’ gait would be mocked, but was mocked anyway. After three years of service, Simon became a machinist in a bicycle factory. A marriage to a woman in 1908 resulted in five children. Simon worked in breweries and tanneries, went to sea as a stoker and herring fisherman, and worked as a bridge builder in northern cities such as Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Bremen. When the war started in August 1914 Simon was running a business selling newspapers and maps – which was taken over by his wife when he was conscripted. After 1918 Simon opened a restaurant in the Ruhr area, and in 1923 opened Café 4711 in Essen's Segerothstraße, which also acted as a “neuer Damenklub” for Essen’s transvestites. Herr and Frau Simon separated in 1927 and their divorce was finalised in 1932. 

Simon was arrested several times for illegal beer sales from the secret bottle cellar of Café 4711. In August 1929, Simon was summoned to appear before the Essen district court, and appeared in women's clothes. The judge found this "improper", and imposed an administrative fine of 100 marks. Simon's appearance caused a stir not only in the Ruhr press, but also in the Berlin transvestite scene. Simon wrote an account which appeared in the magazine Die Freundin (The Girlfriend – a lesbian magazine with trans content) asking whether he should appear again "als Dame (as a lady)" at the next trial. A reader from Upper Bavaria, who would also "rather be a woman", expressed indignation at the judgement of the Essen district court and recommended that Simon obtain official permission to wear female clothing, a Transvestitenschein.

Toni Simon in the 1930s

In June 1930 Simon had written to the Friedrich Radszuweit (1876-1932) publishing house advising against a new magazine especially for transvestites in that "A transvestite doesn't read a transvestite magazine, because he'd rather spend his money on nice stockings". 

By then Simon was undergoing a deep personal crisis, and turned to Elsbeth Ebertin (more) (1880-1944) the most prominent of the first female astrologers and a prolific author who had achieved fame after she drew up a horoscope on an unnamed person who was later revealed to be Adolf Hitler, and who had published a book on homosexuality in 1909 (Auf Irrwegen der Liebe) where she counted transvestites among a sixth group of homosexuals: those who are "all too in need of love", and who only stray into "sexual aberrations" out of the "exuberance of their feelings" or out of "sexual need".

Simon told Ebertin how she had wanted to be a girl since early childhood, had often had thoughts of suicide, transvested on the street, and how having been in love only three times, always with a woman, but often fantasized about love with men. Simon claimed to have been the editor of a transvestite magazine (but which one was not specified). The actual editors of Die Freundin had been incensed by the letter to Radszuweit, but otherwise supported Simon who was open about transvesting, freely used her name and provided photographs. 

By 1932 Simon was completely impoverished and had had to close Café 4711. At the Essen criminal court 19 January 1932 Simon als Dame presented a Transvestitenschein. The charges of serving alcohol without permission, organising public dances and "insulting public officials in a way that was dangerous to the public" were upheld, but the charge of “groben Unfugs (gross mischief)” was dropped given that the accused had a Transvestitenschein. Simon was fined 25 marks. 

Based on the letters and newspaper articles that Simon had provided, Elsbeth Ebertin wrote a pamphlet Mann oder Frau! Das Schicksal einer Abenteurer-Natur (Man or Woman:The Fate of an Adventurer's Nature) which told of Simon and included two photographs and was published in Hamburg.

After the Nazi takeover in 1933, Simon’s Transvestitenschein was cancelled. After a short prison sentence, Simon emigrated to Spain, but returned after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, and obtained work as a fitter.

23 October 1937 Anton Simon was charged by the Special Court of Stuttgart with “Heimtücke (insidiousness - political insult according to § 2 paras. 1 and 2 of the Nazi law of 20 December 1934)” having been denounced for criticizing the then government as idiots and rascals. Simon was sentenced to one year in prison – this was served in the Rottenburg am Neckar prison. 11 May 1938 Simon was granted amnesty on the basis of the "Law on Obtaining Immunity from Punishment" of 30 April 1938 and the remaining sentence was commuted to three years' probation. After release, Simon worked in a metal processing company.

Simon was convicted again and imprisoned for six months in the Welzheim police prison/concentration camp at the end of 1939.

Toni Simon in the 1950s

In 1949 Simon was living in a caravan in Swabia and applied for reparations under the 1949 compensation law for the time in the Rottenburg prison and in the Welzheim police prison as well as for the three years spent in Spanish exile. The proceedings dragged on into 1952, with repeated appeals against the court decisions. Simon’s lawyer repeatedly obtained freeze periods during which the proceedings were suspended, while Simon was to produce new evidence, but was unable to do so. The previous convictions, especially the pre-1933 ones counted against her application.

Simon worked as a tester of high-voltage pylons. In this, and in the applications for reparations, she was referred to as Anton and Herr Simon. At the same time she was considered as a survivor of the pre-war queer scene in Stuttgart, and worked with the gay group Kameradschaft die runde which met in Stuttgart pubs. She arranged meetings and dances, and ‘Toni Simon’ was mentioned in advertisements in the local press. Her Transvestitenschein had been restored in 1951.

She supplemented her pension in the 1950s by smuggling in queer pornography from Denmark which at that time had a more liberal attitude to such publications.

Toni Simon died age 92.

• Toni Simon. „Angeklagter in Frauenkleidern. Die Welt der Transvestiten“. Die Freundin, 5,13, 1929.
• Elsbeth Ebertin. Mann oder Frau! Das Schicksal einer Abenteurer-Natur. Dreizack-Verlag, 1933.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005: 140, 144.
• Raimund Wolfert: „Zu schön, um wahr zu sein: Toni Simon als ‚schwule Schmugglerin‘ im dänisch-deutschen Grenzverkehr“ Lambda Nachrichten 32, 133, 2010: 36–39. Online.
• Katie Sutton. “ ‘We Too Deserve a Place in the Sun’: The Politics of Transvestite Identity in Weimar Germany”. German Studies Review, 35,2, 2012.
• Julia Noah Munier & Karl-Heinz Steinle. “Wiedergutmachung von Transvestiten und Damenimitatoren nach 1945”. LSBTTIQ in Baden und Württemberg: Lebenswelten, Repression und Verfolgung im Nationalsozialismus und in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 21. Dezember 2017. Online.
• Karl-Heinz Steinle. “Toni Simon, geb. als Anton Simon”. Sie machen Geschichte: Lesbische, Schwule, Bisexuelle, Transsexuelle, Transgender, Intersexuelle, Queere, Menschen in Baden Württemberg.:22-3. Online.

Liddy Bacroff (1908 - 1943) sex worker

 Heinrich Habitz from Ludwigshafen in Rheinland-Pfalz, across the river from Mannheim, was raised by the grandparents, and spent a year in a correctional home for being difficult to raise. Early employment in office work and as a messenger boy did not work out. She was then a circus dancer.

Habitz obtained a Transvestitenschein, a permit to dress female, but was convicted in 1924 under her male name, and sentenced to six weeks for ‘unnatural’ and ‘commercial fornication’, but the sentence was remitted. In 1929 the Mannheim district court gave her a two month jail sentence for ‘unnatural sex acts’ under §175. In November that year Habitz left the family home for good and moved first to Berlin and then to Hamburg. She renamed herself Liddy Bacroff, and did some performance work.

In 1930 in Hamburg, Liddy was sentenced to two months for having stolen clothing from a female roommate, and then a month for trespass. In 1931 she was sentenced to four months for ‘unnatural sex acts’ under §175. While in prison she wrote two pamphlets about her life: Freiheit! (Die Tragödie einer homosexuellen Liebe) (Freedom! :The Tragedy of a Homosexual Love) and Ein Erlebnis als Transvestit. Das Abenteuer einer Nacht in der Transvestitenbar Adlon! ( An experience as a transvestite. The adventure of a night in the transvestite bar Adlon! ).

In 1935 the Nazi government amended Paragraph 175. Under a new section 175a, the law introduced harsher penalties for male prostitution, sex with a man younger than 21, or sex with a student or employee. The change in the law was not publicized for fear of spreading knowledge of homosexuality. Most Germans were unaware the law had changed and many of those arrested under the new law had no knowledge they were committing a crime. The law was also applied retroactively.

Later that year a sailor had gone to the police and reported a prostitute for theft. Police investigations led to Liddy. She was arrested in January 1936, and made the following statement: “I admit to the theft of 20 ReichMarks in the Herrenweide. Its my opinion that the man did not know that I am also of the male sex. Rather he will have assumed that intercourse was with a woman. Since my release I have lived from unnatural sex acts. I did not have stable employment and I also didn’t receive any help from public funds. I met my punters in St. Pauli. I usually received 2 to 3 RM for each job. On average this meant my daily earnings were around ten Reichsmarks. I lived in different places, usually only for a day or two. I also went there with my punters. I don’t know the names and addresses of the people any more.”

The assistant police investigator wrote in his report: “On the homosexual disposition of Habitz it should be said that the seeds of his abnormality can already be observed in his youngest years. He preferred to play with dolls, as his behaviour matched just that of a girl. Lipstick was indispensable to him in his ‘vanity’. At the age of 16 his homosexual nature was awakened. His emotional life can be compared to that of a woman. He never had the urge to live his sexual life as a man. The description of ‘Mann-Weib’ [‘man-woman’] aptly characterises him.”

Libby was sentenced to 2 years in prison and 3 years forfeiture of honour (loss of civil rights) for commercial unnatural fornication and theft, and served her time in the Bremen-Oslebshausen prison, where a Nazi SA official had been installed as director.

Liddy was released in January 1938, and changed address without registering with the police. This led to a police search for her. On 25 March she was denounced by an onlooker while sitting in a bar with a customer. The man insisted that he thought that he was with a woman. In the police report Liddy is quoted:

“I was given permission for it by the police authorities. So I could move about in women’s clothes. But at the same time I was watched by the vice squad. […] My passion for men ultimately drove me to prostitution. I find sexual satisfaction, where there is love for my partner, through anal intercourse. […] Up to today I have earned a living through prostitution. […] In the period after serving my sentence until my arrest, i.e. from 15.1.38 to 25.3.38, in these 9 weeks I had around 3 men per day. On average they paid me 3 RM. Sometimes I would even get as much as 10 RM from a punter. In most cases I met my gentlemen on the street (St. Georg), rarely in a bar. Sometimes I would approach the men, sometimes the other way around. After we had agreed on the price we would go to the Kucharsky guesthouse, on the corner of Hansaplatz and Bremerreihe. The guesthouse owner knew that I was a Mannweib.’”

In August Liddy was sentenced to three years in prison A few months into the sentence, Liddy applied for "voluntary castration" in order to be cured of the "morbid passion that led me down the path to prostitution". She was forensically examined by medical councillor Wilhelm Reuss who described her as an incorrigible "transvestite", "feminine, infantilistic, eunuchoid in voice", a "passive pederast" who was to be considered a "dangerous habitual criminal" due to the "now dangerous and permanently fixed form of his sexual perversion". Reuss saw little prospect of "improvement" and recommended subsequent preventive detention.

In 1943 Liddy Barcroft complete her prison sentence, again in the Bremen-Oslebshausen prison. She was then transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp where she was murdered.

• Liddy Bacroft. Freiheit! (Die Tragödie einer homosexuellen Liebe), 1930. (Freedom! :The Tragedy of a Homosexual Love)

• Liddy Bacroft. Ein Erlebnis als Transvestit. Das Abenteuer einer Nacht in der Transvestitenbar Adlon! 1931. ( An experience as a transvestite. The adventure of a night in the transvestite bar Adlon! )

• Rainer Herrn. “Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit – Ein Forschungsdesiderat”. (Transvestitism in the Nazi era - a research desideratum). Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung, 26,2,2013: 339-340.

• BLATTER zum land nr. 86: Eine lange queer Geschichte in Rheinland-Pfalz: 7, 10. Online.

• Renée Adele Grothkopf & Tamara Loewenstein,“Liddy Bacroff: Persecuted as homosexual and transgender”. Arolsen Archives: International Center on Nazi Persecution, 31 August 2021. Online.

• Bernhard Rosenkranz & Ulf Bollmann, translated by Joanne White. “Liddy Bacroff (Heinrich Habitz)1908 - 1943” The Deceased of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Online.

DE.Wikipedia

Friederike Blank, curtain maker (1799-1853)

Blank was raised in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.  After the parents separated, Blank learned sewing and embroidery from his mother. As an adult Blank made a successful living as a self-employed "curtain stitcher", and achieved a good reputation in the trade. Blank’s own flat was noted for its decoration. 

Blank transitioned and lived full time as female, asked the authorities to recognise her female name, Friederike, and announced an engagement to a craftsman. She was also known for being sexually available and put it out that she had a vagina. 

However she was passing on gonorrhoea. A l7-year-old tailor's apprentice went to Dr Hieronymus Fränkel for treatment, and was questioned. Fränkel notified the police and Blank was brought in for questioning. She appeared in court in 1845 under her male name of Süsskind Blank, and was sentenced to three months in a male prison. She was again arrested on similar charges and sentenced to six months. 

In 1853 she was arrested again and while being transported to prison managed to throw herself into a river and end her life at age 54.

 Dr Fränke quickly wrote up the case as a pathology, but also described her femininity as a silly affectation. 

“With this death, the source of a poison is stopped up, which for many years has been infecting an incalculable number of young men”. 

He described Blank’s flat as the "Boudoir of an Elegant Harlot", and cited the prescription of Deuteronomy 22, 5 against cross-dressing. 

Eleven years later, in his pamphlet Inclusa, the pioneering gay activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs who regarded both gay men and trans women as Urnings, both having an inner feminine nature, quoted at length but disagreed with Fränkel’s article. Where Fränkel found a "silly affectation", Ulrichs found an "inner feminine nature". In 1865, in his Vindicta, he blamed the Prussian courts for Blank’s death: 

 “They have acted immorally. No matter what kind of vices he had, knowingly or otherwise, he did nothing different from what Dionings do, and Dionings are not put to shame or subjected to persecution.”

• Hieronymus Fränkel, “Homo mollis,” Medicinische Zeitung vom Verein für Heilkunde in Preußen,1853, 22, 102–3, 102.
• Hubert Kennedy. Ulrichs:The Life and Works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement. Alyson Publications, Inc, 1988: 59-60.
• Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller. Mann für Mann : biographisches Lexikon zur Geschichte von Freundesliebe und mannmännlicher Sexualität im deutschen Sprachraum. Hamburg: MännerschwarmSkript, 1998: under “Blank, Süsskind”.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des  Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Psychosozial—Verlag, 2005: 26.
• Ross Brooks. “Transforming Sexuality: The Medical Sources of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) and the Origins of the Theory of Bisexuality” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allies Sciences, 67, 2, 2010: 207-9.

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

Süsskind or Süßkind  means 'sweet child'.   However this has no significance, it was a common name among Jewish Germans at that time.

Dionings are heterosexuals, to use a later term.

Pozzale prison

30 km southwest of Florence is the comune of Empoli, and in Pozzale, a frazione thereof (a suddivision of a comune introduced in the Fascist period), there is a medium-security prison, which until 2010 was a women's prison.

By that date the Pozzale prison had a staff of 22 plus 6 Ministry of Justice employees but only 2 inmates. While nearby prisons were overcrowded, it had proved impossible to have some of their inmates transferred to Pozzale.  Its former governor had been removed from his post because of difficulties in his personal relationships. A regional tribunal ordered his reinstatement but this never took place. In 2007 the ex-governor was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment for abuse of his office and other offences, but in 2009 the European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy for not giving him a fair trial.

On Christmas Day 2009 around 3 pm, a Brazilian transsexual committed suicide in a detention centre for illegal immigrants in Milan. 

There was also an ongoing state of emergency over prison overcrowding.

A partial solution was announced.  Pozzale prison would become a prison exclusively for trans prisoners, of whom there were 60 in Italy at that time.  Most would have come from a special arm of Sollicciano prison in Florence. Training courses were to be provided for custodial staff: free hormonal care and recreational opportunities barred from anywhere else were provided. The adaptation and restructuring works were already underway when the Ministry of Justice, at the time chaired by Angelino Alfano, changed its opinion and blocked everything. Pozzale was returned to hosting women inmates from January 2013. 

In 2020, Pozzale became a prison for mentally ill convicts.

• "Italy’s new Pozzale Prison for Transgender Inmates: A Photo Essay Waiting to Happen".  Prison Photography, January 13, 2010.
• Pat Eggleton. "Italy to open world's first prison for transgender inmates". Italy Magazine, 01/14/2010. 
• "La doppia sofferenza delle trans in carcere".  La Repubblica, 28 agosto 2013. 

EN.Wikipedia      IT.Wikipedia   

Liz Eden and Dog Day Afternoon: Part II - Imprisonment, the Movie and one more wedding

Trigger warning. This 3-part article contains quotations from John Wojtowicz, the major protagonist. The quotations contain frequent misgenderings, and in the latter 2 parts traditional English swear words. Caveat Lector.

Part I: Two Weddings and a Bank Robbery
Part II: Imprisonment, the Movie and one more wedding
Part III: Release, a final wedding and afterwards (and Bibliography)

A month after the robbery there was an extensive write up in Life magazine, “The Boys in the Bank”, which prophetically described John Wojtowicz as having “the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman”.

Arthur Bell’s investigation of claims that Wojtowicz had been set up by the Gambino family brought bomb threats to the Village Voice. At Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) meetings

“conservative and radical gays debated over whether Wojtowicz was a counterrevolutionary lumpen adventurer victimized by the mob or a proud gay superfly caught in an act of righteous expropriation, but the debate was inconclusive.” (Holm, 1976)

A bartender friend of Sal Naturale asked GAA to help fund a burial.  They declined and Sal was interred in the gigantic pauper burial site on Hart Island off the Bronx coast (which contains over a million corpses).

While in The Bayview Correctional Facility, 550 West 29^th St, John Wojtowicz wrote a will in which he allotted a portion of the proceeds from his life insurance to pay for Liz Eden’s operations.

Warner Brothers wanted to turn the Life magazine article into a film.

“They came down to make the movie deal when I was in prison, and I told them, ‘I’m not making no movie, ’cos you’re gonna make me look ridiculous.’ So they brought Ernie down from the nut house, and they brought me in and let me fuck him in the warden’s office, at the old federal prison on West Street in the Village. They brought him down there, and Ernie had the paper, and he said, ‘Sign the paper.’ I said, ‘I ain’t signing that paper.’ He goes, ‘Well, don’t you want me to have the sex change?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ He says, ‘Well, if you sign this, they’re gonna take me outta the nut house, I’m gonna get the sex change. And I’ll come and see you.’ And I says, ‘OK, let’s fuck.’ And he goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ll seal the deal with a fuck.’ So the warden left, you know, and we stayed in there, and we got down. In fact, I fucked him on the warden’s desk.” (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 61)

Wojtowicz mug shot

Wojtowicz thinking that he had a deal pleaded guilty. He had sold his story for $7,500 and 1% of the net profit, but he had to sue (from prison) to get it. Liz was to get $2,500 for the operation. She returned to the West 10^th Street apartment. However, with the publicity about the film, the landlord realized who she was and evicted her.  She found a place in a gay rooming house in Brooklyn.

Wojtowicz was sentenced to 20 years, and placed in a federal penitentiary at Lewisburg. Pennsylvania.

As Carmen and John were still married, she visited him in prison. She was not pleased to encounter Liz Eden, also visiting. However the two somewhat became friends. Carmen called her when she had an orchiectomy with Dr Benito Rish in Yonkers in November 1972. She had a vaginoplasty the following March.

“He got out of the nut house . . . [but] they only gave him some of the money for the operation, not enough. So I had to have my mother and my wife [Carmen] give him more money. I signed the paper in November of ’72.”. After the operations Liz came to see John one last time, and explained that the doctors had told her to break off with him, and go somewhere else to be a woman. (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 61-2).

John then attempted suicide, the evening before he was to be sentenced.

The working title of the film was, like the Life magazine article, Boys in the Bank, a riff on the successful pre-gay-lib gay drama, Boys in the Band, 1970. Director Sidney Lumet did not like this, and wanted something that suggested a hot, stuffy day near the end of summer. Thus it became Dog Day Afternoon – although without accuracy in reference to the rising of Sirius at the hottest days of summer. However the film was shot in late autumn, and the actors had to chew ice cubes so that their breath would not be seen. Sidney Lumet, the director was quoted as saying that Pacino was at risk because “no major star that I know of had ever played a gay man”.

The trans component in the film is quite small. The Liz-John wedding is not shown. The lover, Leon (=Ernest, and played by Chris Sarandon, Susan’s then husband), who appears for only a few minutes, is presented as a mid-70s gay stereotype, who has been informed by the shrinks that he is a woman trapped in man's body. He does not seem to be too happy with this conclusion. Despite its dubious portrayal of Leon, the film was much applauded for featuring a sympathetic, fully-rounded bisexual male. There is no mention of mafia contacts. Wojtowicz may, as Life Magazine said, have resembled Al Pacino, but the connection was secured as Pacino was cast as Sonny Wortzik (=Wojtowicz). Wojtowicz afterwards became known as the Dog because of the film. John Cazale, who had starred with Pacino in the The Godfather films, was cast as Salvatore despite being 37 rather than the real Sal’s 18. The film Sal insists that he is not gay – in contradistinction to the real one. Sal is the only character in the film to have the same name as the corresponding real person.

Wojtowicz commented on the film:

“Well, they never tell you I was against him having the operation all along. And the only reason I decided to let him have the operation was because I wanted to save his life. Therefore, saving his life was the number one thing, and as long as you’re trying to save somebody’s life, whatever you’re doing’s not wrong. And I loved him enough to do that. That never comes across in the book or the movie. It’s just like, they make fun of my fat wife, Carmen, and they [implicitly] say, well, if you had a wife that was fat and had a big mouth, no wonder you went with the drag queen. But that’s a lie. I didn’t go with the drag queen because my wife was fat or ugly. To me, my wife was beautiful. And I like big women! ’Cos I like the Sophia Loren/Elizabeth Taylor type. The reason I broke up with my wife is because of our in-laws, and because I’m what you call an old-fashioned Italian: I’m the boss. Her parents would always interfere with us, and she would always take the parents’ side over me. And that’s what led to the breakup. …  And [Sal] was gay, not like the movie tells you. He never said, “Tell them there ain’t two homosexuals in there,” ’cos he was a chicken hawk. He liked young guys and he had an apartment in the Village and he used to bring kids up there.” (Photos-Wojtowicz, 2003: 54, 57.)

Pacino took the film to Lewisburg Penitentiary before the official release intending to introduce the film. However the warden initially refused to allow the film to be shown even though Warner Brothers were offering it without cost. Wojtowicz made a fuss, and was supported by gay and straight newspapers on the outside, and the warden relented. However several of the other inmates after seeing it took the film to be saying that he had sold out Sal. Wojtowicz was subsequently beaten up and his cell set on fire. He had to be moved to a different prison.

Carmen visited him in the prison hospital. An attendant said to her: “Oh, you’re the other wife”, and she was informed that Liz was listed as next of kin. That was it. She went to see a divorce lawyer.

Liz

Carmen Wojtowicz sued Warner Brothers for invasion of privacy and unauthorized used of her and her children’s names and portraits.

Liz Eden sued Warner Brothers for libel and they settled out-of-court. Word was that Liz received somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000. For a while she had an agent and there was talk of a book deal, a nightclub act and even a discotheque to be called ‘The Garden of Eden’.

Wojtowicz started an affair in prison with George, a jailhouse lawyer, black, Irish and Jehovah’s Witness. They were married in the prison yard by a Jesus Freak. George got Wojtowicz’ sentence reduced and he was released in November 1979, but was then returned for parole violations such as still seeing George.

----------

$2,500 in 1975 is $14,500 now.

It was standard practice at the time for sex-change doctors to tell their patients to break off all gay contacts and go live somewhere where their prior self was not known.

While Wojtowicz was not in any way co-ordinating with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the date of the rising has moved – because of the precession of the equinox – from 19 July at the time of the Caesars to the third week of August now.  If you are 50° north or more, it is on 21/22 August.

“no major star that I know of had ever played a gay man”. Presumably Lumet, although in the film-biz had not heard of Dirk Bogart in Victim, 1961. However this was a New York film being edgier than anything from Los Angeles.

Sidney Lumet has made many great thrillers and crime films, and is known for his social concerns and depictions of minorities, however the gender variant persons in his films are either minor or get killed: a mannish lesbian briefly glimpsed in The Group, 1966; Jack Doroshow (Sabrina) in mufti in The Anderson Tapes, 1971; heterosexist female impersonator, Gypsy Haake has a cameo in The Morning After, 1986; International Chrysis' character is killed, and the other trans women are humiliated by Nick Nolte's bad cop in Q & A, 1990.

Michelle-Lael Norsworthy (1964 - ) convicted of murder

​After high school, as Jeffrey, Norsworthy became a police informer, joined the army national guard, ran around town inebriated, and carried a loaded gun.

“I was an extremely aggressive, non-thinking person. I did anything I could to suppress my femininity”. 

One night in 1984 Norsworthy, then 20, encountered a man in a bar in Fullerton (close to Los Angeles) whom he had helped bust in a drug deal years before.  They argued, first in the bar, then in the parking lot, and Norsworthy got a gun from his car.  It went off three times, nicking the man’s femoral and carotid arteries.  Norsworthy began dressing his wounds as help was summoned. The man died six weeks later.

Norsworthy was sentenced in 1987 to 17 years to life in prison for second degree murder. Norsworthy takes full responsibility for the murder –

“the crime I committed I’m responsible for. I’m not trying to mitigate that in any way”. 

Most of Norsworthy’s 28 years incarceration was spent in Mule Creek state prison in Ione, California. Most of the first years were violent: fights, self-mutilation, etc. It was not until 1994 that Norsworthy was able to put a name to various feelings. A prison psychiatrist, or maybe the priest, used the term ‘transsexual’. Norsworthy looked it up in a dictionary and it clicked.

She came out and started expressing as female – she now declared her name to be Michelle-Lael. However it took many years of agitation before she was transferred to Vacaville, the only California prison with a Gender Clinic.  She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 1999, and it was another year after that before she was allowed female hormones. She requested a bra, was denied, appealed and was so allowed.

In 2009, again in Mule Creek, she was gang-raped with the prison guards doing nothing. This left her with broken teeth and Hepatitis C – for the latter she was not allowed any treatment.

Finally in 2012 her psychologist recommended gender-affirmation surgery – however he was quickly transferred to another prison. In 2013 Norsworthy was again denied parole as “a danger to society”.

In 2014 she filed a lawsuit, arguing that denying her surgery was cruel and unusual punishment. In addition one doctor added that, without surgery, her already damaged liver would suffer from the high dose of hormones – after surgery they could be reduced.   In April 2015 U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar agreed, ordering California to provide her transition surgery. This was a groundbreaking decision. Norsworthy was the first person incarcerated in California to get such a ruling.

Michelle-Lael in prison, 2015

All of a sudden she was returned quickly – two years early - to the parole board because of  "a change in circumstances or new information” and parole was granted – officially this was recognition of Norsworthy’s model behaviour: she hadn’t been written up for a disciplinary infraction for years. The same day the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation filed a motion to toss out Judge Tigar’s opinion, arguing that since she’d been paroled, the ruling was moot. The Transgender Law Center, who were representing her, went back to court, arguing the state was trying to make the precedent (not to mention the cost of surgery) go away by releasing her.

In August 2015 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation agreed with Shiloh Quine, 56, also suing for transgender surgery, that it would pay, but only if all parties agreed that no precedent was being set.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did rule that the timing of Norsworthy’s release implied “there was at least some chance that the defendants influenced the parole process.” Norsworthy’s case was allowed to set legal precedent for other inmates.

After release Michelle-Lael, aged 52 after 28 years in prison, initially lived in a halfway house in San Francisco for female drug addicts. Although she had been sober for more than 20 years, it was the only place that would take her. She was then able to receive treatment for Hepatitis C. She is sort of cured but has permanent damage to her liver.

She had affirmative surgery in 2017 provided by Medi-Cal. She has been attempting to setup a charity to help trans persons and other women in San Francisco.

The California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation announced a new policy in 2015 re trans prisoners, and a few were even granted surgery, but most were not.  A 30-page guidance document was released in March 2020 that aligns more closely to WPATH criteria, and permits primary care doctors to prescribe hormones.

• Ed Pilkington. “'Prison within prison': a transgender inmate's years-long battle for treatment”. The Guardian, 26 July 2015. Online.
• “Transgender convicted murderer, 51, seeking sex-reassignment surgery whilst in jail will now be RELEASED from prison after serving 28 years of her sentence”. The Daily Mail, 7 August 2015. Online.
• Bob Egalko. “Transgender pioneer out of prison, on a new path”. San Francisco Chronicle, March 19, 2016. Online.
• Annie Brown. “Michelle’s Case”. The California Sunday Magazine, May 17, 2016. Online.
• Jacob Anderson-Minshall. “This Trans Ex-Con Helped Make History” Advocate, March 07 2017. Online.
• Chris Johnson.  “Calif. prison system updates policy on trans inmates as scrutiny grows”.  Washington Blade, March 11, 2020. Online.

San Quentin Prison, California

(All photographs within the prison via the Digital Transgender Archive)

San Quentin is one of the world’s best-known prisons. It is the oldest and largest in California, and the only one in the state where executions have been done. It is known for recorded concerts by Johnny Cash and BB King.

The prison was opened in 1852. It was so named as it is located on San Quentin Point. That, also, is not named for the 3^rd century saint in Gaul. It is named for a renowned sub-chief of the Coast Miwok first nation.

There has been more drag and trans at San Quentin than you might expect.

See also: Trans in prison which I wrote in November 2012.

Part I: to the conviction of Oscar Wilde

Part II: to Stonewall

Part III: to Farmer v. Brennan

Part IV: to the Synthia Kavanagh Human Rights Case

Part V: to the National Offender Management Service, New prison guidelines, 2011

Part VI: Comments & Bibliography

1914

Artie Baker, 14 years for bank robbery, San Francisco, was in San Quentin for some time before being discovered to be female-bodied. (Peter Boag. Re-dressing America's Frontier Past, 2012: 211)

Prison Vaudeville Show featured cross-dressed prisoners.

1915

Prison Vaudeville Show again featured cross-dressed prisoners.

1930

The 17th annual field meet held at San Quentin in 1930 when James B. Holohan was the acting warden. Olympic Club member, Frank G. Kane, was Master of Ceremonies. The entertainers depicted are San Quentin inmates; the cross-dressers were a popular attraction.

1933

20th Annual Olympic Club Track & Field Meet at San Quentin prison was sponsored by the Olympic Club of San Francisco. Prison inmates held a field and track day. Consisted of some 29 athletic events, stunts, chorus girls and vaudeville acts performed by prisoners. Some 5000 inmates attended.

1940

• Leo L.Stanley & Evelyn Wells. Men at Their Worst. By L. L. Stanley ... with the collaboration of Evelyn Wells. Illustrated. [The autobiography of the Chief Surgeon of the California State Prison, St. Quentin.], 1940: 203. Dr Stanley relates that while examining an apparently male prisoner, he discovered that the prisoner had been surgically transformed into a woman.

1950

Josephine Montgomery was arrested and convicted of strong-arm robbery. After two months in the women’s wing of the Imperial county jail, and one night in the women’s prison at Tehachapi, a routine physical exam resulted in a transfer to a man’s cell at San Quentin. NewsArticle.

1972

Katherine Marlowe, author of Mr Madame, 1964, met her future husband while lecturing at San Quentin prison, and finally transitioned to female in 1972. (Richard Nelson. Call Me Kate: The Story of Katherine Marlowe, a Transexual, 1999)

1980

Guthrie Danowski, 24, who was serving a life sentence at the prison, apparently slipped into some of his wife's clothing in a restroom of the crowded prison visiting room. His wife arrived at the prison early in the day, checking out two hours after her arrival. About five hours after that, San Quentin officials realized that Danowski was missing. (The Gateway, 2,12, June 1980: 9. Online)

1990

Janet Kolmetz on death row at San Quentin – at that time the only known trans woman in San Quentin. (TV-TS Tapestry, 55, 1990: 15-6. Online)

1998

Jeanne Hoff, the last doctor at Harry Benjamin’s practice, had become returned to being a psychiatrist after transition in the 1980s, and was employed at San Quentin. She was in the news in April-May 1998 when she was the only one of three psychiatrists to testify that murderer Horace Kelly might be competent to be executed, and the defense attorney attempted to impeach Hoff. Although Horace Kelly's lawyer subpoenaed Hoff's prison personnel file in an attempt to impeach her, he presumably hadn't heard rumors that she was transsexual, didn't find it in the file and didn't read her. Otherwise he probably would have used it to defame her. She had been in a 1978 television special under the same name, but that was 20 years earlier. Jeanne was also named as trans in Jayne County's 1995 autobiography, but presumably the lawyer didn't read punk biographies. GVWW.

2008

• Stuart Cabb (dir). Louis Theroux: Behind Bars, with Deborah Worledge. UK BBC 60 mins 2008. Deborah was filmed shortly before her release on Sept. 2, 2008. Two days after release she was dead from a drug overdose.

2009

Skylar Deleon, who had killed to be able to afford transgender surgery, arrived at San Quentin death row.

2014

Mandi Camille Hauwert,  Correctional Officer at San Quentin. One of the first US Correctional Officers to transition on the job. Another is Meghan Frederick who works at the state prison in Sacramento.

2015

Lady Jae Clark, who came out in 1973 and has been in San Quentin since 2013, was the first trans woman to play Lady Macbeth in San Quentin’s production of the play. Newsarticle.  She co-founded a program called Acting with Compassion and Truth (ACT) in San Quentin to increase understanding and decrease violence toward LGBTQ inmates. Newsarticle.

Trans woman at San Quentin approached the Insight Prison Project. They asked for support for the formation of Acting with Compassion and Truth (ACT) at San Quentin. They didn’t want a support group. “We live our lives here every day surrounded by thousands of people who have been for the last 20 or 30 years who haven’t had exposure to the evolution that we know is happening out there.” A year-long curriculum was set up. Newsarticle.

Shiloh Heavenly Quine, incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison was approved for transgender surgery, which set a precedent so that other trans inmates in California could hope.

• Kristin Schreier Lyseggen,. The Women of San Quentin: Soul Murder of Transgender Women in Male Prisons. 2015: 109 – 136. About trans women in prisons, but most are not in San Quentin, despite the title of the book.

2018

Lisa Strawn who transitioned at age 18, but has been in men’s prisons for 25 years following a three-strikes burglary charge, who had helped establish an LGBTQ group at Vacaville prison, was transferred to San Quentin and joined ACT. Newsarticle.

2019

The LGBTQ education program was replicated on death row. Newsarticle.

First TDOR at San Quentin’s Catholic Chapel emceed by Lisa Strawn, the first such in a California prison. Newsarticle.

Child killer death row inmate Jessica Hann filed for change of name and legal gender.