Women Who Posed as Men

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 23, 27 January 1940, Page 20

Women Who Posed as Men

-^i^r^-'NE'; o^-|^;.::;irips| astounding . W .) :-W chapl^ri "^^eThistorV' 6f-.'the . "'mi-^ vaghS^iif^^clvilised"; man is •^^\ toatSlevotebl to" the "story p;3v 'Women:Wlio deliberately posed -as menV' . andto^s succeeded i, t^Api^ . tion, says a .Writer in the Melbourne., "Age." .'lJhe story is an amazing ireve;, lationAof ingenuity and:, perseverance V ■v- * j- -„, io«i> n 4 and-alsoof the extraordmaryolaek oi , "awareness" in ordinary people.: pome of the"wbrnenrconcerned lived an'camp . tent, and barracks alongside hunjdred^ i? of men—and only illness, accident; o) ; , ,-, '';j + v - •'■_„ ;• ■■ •'■ death revealed .their sex. ,• ; j;: -: Very few, -if any. or these <. women.. changed their nominal sex for}, any un worthy or'objectionable motive. ;;Some ~,V -r - * „„, ™; o i:^-,iA«+fc did,soJto. escape, from, cruel;,J3arents.. "difficult", husbands, and relatives who gave =them ho; peace. Others were simply' adventurous and wanted the •' L " w' , ..„_ ' int a ar . ain A an ntpay, scope, and relative independence of the opposite sex. Several carried their |double life till the- Angel oi Death" darkened their doorway; others revested to the names, dresses, and of>women, all the richer for ttieir curious experiences. Many married and their wives kept . then 'secret' tenaciously. Their assumed -roles various; the list .include?}: Hhosebf soldiers, ships 1 pursers, clerks factory hands, a Tammany T^eir fuU bioeraohies would fili >\vitt! v the assistance of Scotland^^ Yard ; ;and,a|wpnderful library was able to -produce an astonishing literary panofra™a r .:..-■ _"' ;', , . ' Bale, a ■Colchester girl iC areer as a teacher mWesi -Australia. At the. end.of a 9.09, having sfaeard that -her mother m England- was iill, she was supposed4 to'have booked 'a passage, to the Old Country. She .ceirtkinly. drew £.100 from the savings -bank"; farewelled her friends and land.;iady. and went to Fremantle ostensibly to catch a steamer. - Actually, she ; abandoned, her identity as a woman 'and.Vtaking the name of Martin Able, worked, ais" a, youth in a confectionery factory at West Perth. At first she 'stayed at an expensive hotel as a man .Of leisure; and then became the em■plpyee qf^:a.paper-making firm. Later

shfe held the post of bar steward at a .Fxe\maritlie: club, was cellar-man and Stfbh'g boy—-whatever that may mean ";-^at a hotel, and at one-stage of her niale" history tried' to run a stationery i^-J^S^L .-£S e dark complexion not unknown amongst the natives of the eastern ^ntfes ■of England. But for her identification, through a press photo g^ph< fey a^ellov ,6 wor £ er the 5^ ce t s factory, Margaret Bale's ex..per^ a man would have been cd. ■ Our second case is selected from the aistory of the army of the Tsars. At xte en Nadeshda Durova, a daughter ; 0 f..-a Russian land owner, hating the domestic and social slavery of Russian girls, and being opposed to marriage as she understood it, resolved to be 4 > jmea boy _ an - astO unding thing, a!: tne d ec i S i on came in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Obtaining a boy's, clothes, she. rode into a Cos sack camp* mounted on the favouritt horse from her father , s stables . Sh( was accepted and endured all tht hardships of camp life in those far-ofi days- In her first battle, at Gustadi (1807), she dispersed a party ;of Frencr ,dragoons and rescued a Colonel Panim when lie was wounded, by carrying m off the field on her own horse Many stories and rumours as to hei *ex became prevalent, and eventually she was summoned to appear before the Tsar, Alexander. return home- As she begged permib When ap p ear ing at Court she wem ln uniform as Captain Alexandrov and> writes Mr gc allard; « no one dared to treat hor as other than an oSicet ot the Royal Uhlans." In ISIS Nadesha returned to b wom an's life. Her memoirs were pub fished in 1839. In j une , 1911, amazement was expressed in hundreds of homes at En field Lock, the famous small arms factory district v Middlesex, by the announcement that a popuL . and venerated local figure known as "Harry Lloyd" had died—a woman .Jarry was married somewhere about 1885 to a widow, whose little girl was taught to regard Harry as her father. Harry Lloyd was a Frenchwoman named Marie le Roy, who down to 1880 .was known as a teacher of

French, and an assistant to Mr. Austin Holyoake at the Hall of Science in London! Whatever her motive, she decided in 1881 or thereabouts to become a man. For a while she worked at an electric-lighting station. When, however, she got together sufficient pupils to conduct a profitable class in French, she abandoned manual work. Becoming interested in a widow friend and her baby girl, Marie married the widow and Went to live at Enfield Lock, settling down as tfr. and Mrs. Harry Lloyd and child. Besides teaching French, "'Harry Liloyd" ran a news agency, and became much attached to the employees of the R.S.A. factory. As he wore an eyeglass, the small arms men, we c told, called him "Joey Chamberlain." He was a keen Liberal politician and an advocate — not unnaturally—of ■rotes for women..

The stone on the grave of Marie le .ioy bears this • inscription, "Harry Lloyd. Died June 18, 1910.. Aged 74 'ears." , ■ ■ Vi

Theodora Grahn was ; ■ the only laughter of a Bayreuth architect, who lied in 1740, in her first, year. She .vas clever from early childhood, and mastered French, Italian, and English, in addition to her native German, before she was 18. Before she attained der majority a legacy enabled' her to start in business as an exchange broker in Berlin. A few years later she disappeared, adopted men's clothes .md assumed the name of Baron de Verdion. ,-

! Possessing some means, sne bought 1 small estate near Berlin, and as a man became prominent in educational i-eform. Rumours as to her sex drove tier to: London, where she took a third tiame, viz., Dr. John de Verdion, and established herself as an exchange broker dealing in pictures, coins, and precious metals.

, A German nlemoir states that de \7erd;on wore elegant costumes and sported a handsome sword when attending ceremonial functions. On'one occasion, at Furnival's Inn Coffee House, which Grahn frequented, she was openly challenged as to her sex. Her concise reply, conveyed in ,the coarse colloquialism of the eighteenth century, seems to have silenced the challenger, s id satisfied the audience. She died in lodgings at JHatton Garden in July, 1802, aged 62. She was buried in the churchyard of St. Andrew's, Holborn. The first inscription on the tombstone recorded the death of "John, de Verdion"; a second and revised inscription read: "Miss de Verdion."