Women Posing as Men

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 660, 11 May 1929, Page 18

Women Posing as Men

Some Strange English Cases

W

OMEN who pose as men are not rare, and In England alone there have been many cases equalling in successful

audacity that of “Captain” Victor Barker (writes a special correspondent in the London “Daily Mail”). These men-women are divided into two classes—those who adopt men’s wear as a temporary disguise or convenience, and those who not only dress like a man but also live a man’s life. In the first class are women crooks and "advanced” young women, while records of the second class can be found in the newspaper files over a period of many years. My own experience in the police courts include numerous instances of young women arriving in dock in men’s or rather boys’ clothes, and today I know of women who frequently appear in the streets of London in trousers, jacket and waistcoat complete. But to a keen observer these women look like women and they can only sustain the disguise in a j crowd. Boy-Girl in Brixton ; Women crooks with slim fashioni able figures are not easily detected, i A girl of 22 charged at West London ! Police Court with disorderly conduct ! uot so long ago was wearing army ; breeches, puttees, trench coat, and j wide brimmed hat. Dressed as a boy she had previously been arrested for obtaining money by false pretences and it was not until she reached Brixton Prison that her sex was discovered. Perhaps the most sensational case of a woman crook posing as a man was that of “J. Gillson,” who 24 years ago masqueraded in London under ten different names. Arrested for committing wholesale frauds all over the country, she leaped, handcuffed,

from a tramway-car and was cut to pieces. This woman led a strange Jekyll and Hyde existence. Neighbours saw her moving about the house in the clothes of her sex, and in the evenings they saw her leave the house attired as a man. She used to dress in the height of fashion, wearing a light overcoat over a faultlessly-fit-ting suit and a silk hat and she was generally accompanied by a small terrier. She was a heavy smoker, and her only feminine trait was a weakness for tea, which she drank at almost every hour of the day. “Charles Wilson” Another extraordinary caffe of a dual life that will be remembered by many readers of the “Daily Mail” concerned Catharine Coombes, who lived in Loudon as “Charles Wilson.” Smoking a briar pipe and, dressed in men’s clothes, she first made the acquaintance of the Westminster police when she walked into Rochester Row Police Station, where she told the story of her life to an amazed inspector. She was married, she said, at the age of 15 to Percival Coombes, and many years afterwards she wedded, as a man, a woman with whom she lived for 14 years at Huddersfield. For 45 years she passed as “Charles Wilson,” and she worked at the docks, in a printing office, on board ship, and as a painter and decorator. An inquest at Enfield Highway Cemetery revealed some years ago that the deceased known as "Harry Lloyd” Had lived with the mother of a girl of 26, who had always understood her to be her father. Not An Offence One of the most remarkable of these impersonations is that of “Dr. James Barry,” M.D., Inspector-Gen-eral of Hospitals, who, having been accepted as a man during her adult life, died at the age of 71 at Down Street, Piccadilly, in 1865, when her sex was revealed. Her grave, bearing the simple inscription, "Dr. James Barry, died July 15, 1865, aged 71 years,” may be found at Kensal Green Cemetery. While it is an offence against the law for a man publicly to masquerade as a woman, it is not an offence for a woman to impersonate a man.