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The Boys of Fairy Town
Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago's First Century
Jim Elledge
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eBook - ePub
The Boys of Fairy Town
Sodomites, Female Impersonators, Third-Sexers, Pansies, Queers, and Sex Morons in Chicago's First Century
Jim Elledge
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About This Book
A history of gay Chicago told through the stories of queer men who left a record of their sexual activities in the Second City, this book paints a vivid picture of the neighborhoods where they congregated while revealing their complex lives. Some, such as reporter John Wing, were public figures. Others, like Henry Gerber, who created the first "homophile" organization in the United States, were practically invisible to their contemporaries. But their stories are all riveting. Female impersonators and striptease artists Quincy de Lang and George Quinn were arrested and put on trial at the behest of a leader of Chicago's anti-"indecency" movement. African American ragtime pianist Tony Jackson's most famous song, "Pretty Baby, " was written about one of his male lovers. Alfred Kinsey's explorations of the city's netherworld changed the future of American sexuality while confirming his own queer proclivities. What emerges from The Boys of Fairy Town is a complex portrait and a virtually unknown history of one of the most vibrant cities in the United States.
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1
Took Him Home with Me, and Love Him Better Than Ever
Monday is a sort of dull day with me alwaysânot because of my having any[thing] to do with the femalesâbecause the good lord knows that I do nothing of a kind.
TRUTH BE TOLD, John Wing was a sodomite.
He was also a devoted diarist, having begun keeping a journal when he was thirteen. He grew into a man with fine features and âfairâ complexion. He was five feet, seven and a half inches tall, his light blue eyes were piercing, and his mustache was as dark brown as his hair, neatly trimmed, and thick. He dressed to the nines in top hat and coat and had a penchant for diamond stickpinsâand for younger men. âDiamonds are my delight,â Wing wrote in his diary on Saturday, September 23, 1865, and then added, âdiamond pins or diamond friends, in the shape of whole soulded boys.â
Born in 1844 and raised on a farm just outside of Pulaski, New York, Wing dropped out of school at sixteen to become a âprinterâs devil,â performing menial tasks for a local newspaper, the Pulaski Democrat. Over the next five years, he worked on the staffs of three newspapers and as a teacher at two schoolsâall in upstate New York. He also read every book he could get his hands on and began building his personal library. As the Civil War wound down, Wing decided to go west to seek his fortune. He had just turned twenty-one years old when he boarded a steamship that sailed through the Great Lakes, stopping at Cleveland and Detroit, where he looked for employmentâunsuccessfully, as it turned out.
Wing returned to the ship and traveled to Chicago, arriving on June 4, 1865, a sweltering Sunday two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. As he walked down the gangplank, Wing carried a valise of clothing in one hand and a parcel of his diaries in the other. His library was in crates. He found lodgings in a rooming house, and the next day he called on the editor of the Chicago Tribune and asked him for a job as a reporter. He was hired on the spot and would live in Chicago for the rest of his life. At first he boarded in various rooming houses, but by 1866 he began living in hotels, among them Briggâs House at the northeast corner of Wells and Randolph Streets and the Shepard Building at the southeast corner of Dearborn and Monroe Streets.
Considered by historians to have been a âlargely male frontier cityâ in the mid-1860s, Chicago was, nevertheless, beginning to metamorphose into a major urban center. Its population was rapidly growing and would soon reach a quarter of a million inhabitants, due in large part to both its preeminence as a hub in the network of railroads that would soon crisscross the nation and its leadership in the meatpacking industry. The Union Stock Yard, which opened the year Wing arrived, was one of Chicagoâs first major industries, providing thousands of jobs to residents and shoving the Windy City into the forefront of the nationâs economy.
Despite its rough-and-tumble reputation, Chicago was also becoming well known for its array of entertainment venues. At one extreme it had scores of saloons and bordellos catering to homebred toughs and tourists alike, and Under the Willow, at the northwest corner of Monroe and Wells, was the most famous of all. Behind its walls men could find any sexual experience imaginable, from the everyday to the queer, from the normal to the debauched. It was well known that a few âmale prostitutes rented cubiclesâ there and made themselves available to clients.
At the other extreme were the more legitimate but no less popular forms of entertainment. Uranus H. Crosbyâs newly erected and elegant opera house opened its debut season with Verdiâs Il Trovatore, drawing hundreds to its performances, but Wing, who loved theater almost as much as he loved books and âwhole souled boys,â was attracted to Col. Woodâs Theatre and Museum and its more popular fare, such as John Buckstoneâs Leap Year; or, The Ladiesâ Privilege, one of Col. Woodâs hits. Wing kept mum in his diary about any saloon or bordello visits he may have made.
During his first few weeks in Chicago, Wing put his nose to the grindstone, often ending the day exhausted by the demands of his seven-days-a-week job of reporting on a variety of Chicago events, from goings-on at the police court to the high jinks at political conventions. To augment his salary, he wrote actual news stories in which he would add favorable mentions of items available in specific stores or services available in specific establishments, neither of which had anything to do with the news stories. He received generous kickbacks from the proprietors for the publicity and admitted to writing many.
Then on Monday, July 3, a month after he first set foot in Chicago, Wing had a brief respite from his humdrum day. He âfell in with a bully little boyâ whom he talked up for quite some time in hopes of making a date to meet later. Because he never recorded the boyâs age, Wing might appear to have been a pedophile targeting a child, but Wing used boy and boys to refer to anyone to whom he was attracted regardless of the manâs actual ageâa convention that had been popular among queer men across the United States and in Europe long before Wing arrived in Chicago.
Because no labels had yet been coined for the relationships that grew up between them, queer men created their own from what was at hand. According to historian Jonathan Katz, they might describe their bond as one between a ââyouthâ and an âold man,â or a âboyâ and a âman,ââ ignoring the actual ages of the individuals involved, or they might use labels from family lifeââchild/parent, father/son, brother/brother, uncle/nephewââas a way to understand that a strong bond existed between men, between men and boys, or between boys and boys. The bond that the labels suggested legitimized their relationship. Walt Whitman used both types of labels in his romantic relationships, calling Harry Stafford, who was twenty-two years old, âmy darling boyâ and using son when addressing Tom Sawyer, Lewy Brown, and Peter Doyle.
The practice found its way into the popular culture of the time in a camouflaged form. While Wing was out seeking bedmates in Chicago, Horatio Alger, who was a Unitarian minister in Brewster, Massachusetts, was denounced for having sexual liaisons with teenagers in his church, and he quickly relocated to New York. Strapped for cash, he made a successful career and earned a great deal of money from writing his Ragged Dick and Tattered Tom series of novels. In them a wealthy older man takes a destitute teenager under his wing, and through the younger oneâs hard work and determinationâas well as the guidance and patronage of the older manâthe younger becomes the epitome of the American success story. The homoeroticism of their relationship lies just under the surface of each of the novels but went virtually unrecognized by non-queer readers. Interestingly while in New York, Alger informally adopted three teenage boys.
Although he was only twenty-one when he reached Chicago, Wing adopted the convention in his diaries, using the generic boy for his pickups and, when he was especially enthralled by someone, the more effusive âbully boy.â He once even used boy when he described himself as âa lucky boy.â As Paul Gehl has shown, Wing reported in the first volumes of his diaries that he was âthe younger partnerâ in several same-sex sexual relationships during his adolescence and young adulthood, but in Chicago he took on the label of âthe elderâ partner in his romantic dalliances, even if his paramour was in fact older than he.
Wing never revealed where he met the âboyâ on July 3, only that he chatted with him, hoping it would lead to something in the future. It never did. In fact, Wing recorded a number of other dead-end experiences in his diary, as well as several that resulted in one-night stands. On Monday, September 11, 1865, for example, Wing âfell in love with a little beauty,â but he âgot the mitten,â nineteenth-century slang for getting dumped. Upset over the outcome, he had a âdâd poor bedâ alone that night. Even when he was able to bed someone, his pickups rarely remained the entire night.
On October 4 Wing made the acquaintance of Johnny Maier. Wing succinctly, and with only a bare hint of emotion, described their first night: âSaw a boy with whom I fell in love, and chased him up. Found him and got him all right. Engaged a roomââthat is, he rented a hotel room for the two of themââand he and I retired. He is a bully fellow, but got up in the night and dug,â nineteenth-century slang for slipping out without a word.
Hearing Maier leave, Wing followed him to a pool hall, where Maier began drinking heavily. Instead of returning to the hotel room for which he had paid two dollars for the night, Wing went home, dejected. The next day he wrote in his diary about his âenamorata of last night,â and by using the feminine ending a, instead of the masculine o, he may have been hinting about Maierâs sexual preferences. Unfortunately, Wing didnât bother to explain in the diary entry why he didnât just take Maier back to his place, rather than the hotel, after they met.
Along with his many one-night stands, Wing sustained a relationship for several days with a young man whom he happened to meet on Wednesday, August 23, 1865. After finishing a reporting job, Wing returned to his office at the newspaper, where, he wrote in his diary, âI run against a boy dressed in military clothes, whose countenance was so familiar that I stepped up to him, and succeeded in making his acquaintance by telling him that I must have met him in the south. Invited him to call at the office in the evening, which he did.â
The âboyâ was Tommy Phelan, and in his diary entry for the next day, Wing describes his budding interest in Phelan. âWhen my newly found soldier boy came to the office last evening,â Wing reported, âI was charmed by his noble bearing, and the intelligence and refinement which he displayed. Took him to the theatre, and soon became charmed with his society.â Phelan captivated Wing with his uniform and his story of having been a prisoner in Andersonville, the Confederate-run prison in Georgia for captured Union soldiers.
They slept together for the first time that Wednesday night and then again the next night. On Friday morning Wing âwent to work, somewhat played out byâ his sexual âexcessâ with Phelan, âwho persisted in doingâ some sexual act that so enthralled Wing that he swore he would ânever forgetâ it. He wondered in an aside if Phelan learned it from his army buddies. It was common knowledge among queer men that some soldiers engaged in sexual relationships with one another and with civilians.
Later that Friday Wing took Phelan to a photographerâs studio and had his picture taken as a keepsake. Although their relationship seemed to be going well, Phelan had met a servant girl and asked her out. He told Wing that although he would be seeing the girl that evening, he would spend the night with Wing, not her. But by the next morning, Phelan still hadnât returned.
Wing had a difficult time concentrating at work on Saturday, presumably troubled by his loverâs unexpected absence. When Phelan reappeared in the evening, he admitted to Wing that had tried to get the girl in bed but she rejected his advances, and that he decided to spend the night out on his own and not to notify Wing of the change in his plan. Despite the distress that Phelan caused him, Wing welcomed him into his bed that night and reported that he had another enjoyable time. The next morning Phelan rose before Wing and left, vowing to return later that afternoon. When Wing finally roused himself from bed, he discovered that a ring he owned was missing. He didnât want to believe that Phelan had stolen it and rationalized to himself that Phelan had only borrowed it. Four oâclock came and went, then five oâclock, which was quickly followed by six, and Phelan hadnât returned. Wing gave up hoping that he would see him, or the ring, again.
Fig. 1. John Wing (left, 1844â1917) had photographs of his most favored âbully boysâ taken as keepsakes. In this one, taken two years before he moved to Chicago, he is with another young man named John. Newberry Library, John M. Wing Collection, uncataloged
Stealing Wingâs ring was not the end of Phelanâs surprises. On Monday morning Wing âfound to my great horror that my soldier boy had given me crabs, and worse than that, head lice. Found my corpus alive with vermin, and shuddered at the thought. Resorted to ample potations of anquinninââprobably quinineââand everything else, not forgetting to use a fine toothed comb. O! Horror!!â
Wing was undoubtedly feeling betrayed and perhaps even a little foolish by now, having been wronged not once but three times by Phelan and in such a short amount of time, and yet he again rationalized Phelanâs behavior. By the next day, Wing had forgiven him for the robbery, for the crabs and lice, and for lying about returning at four oâclock. âI love the boy,â he wrote in his diary and tried to explain why:
There is an indescribable something about him fascinating in the extreme. The present devotion to myself, professing the most ardent love, and still so refined and the hero of so many battles and prisons. Perhaps he did not take the ringâand he, a homeless wandererâis not to blame for giving me the horrible vermin! I will trust him, and believe that he did not take the ring.
A few days passed, and Wing still hadnât heard a word from Phelan. Then on Friday evening, September 1, as Wing was busy at work in his office, Phelan unexpectedly appeared at his door, wearing
a horrible old suit of . . . citizenâs clothes. He says that he has been to Washington and back; that he had no place to stay but at the soldierâs rest. The dear fellow! Took him home with me, and love him better than ever. He declairs [sic] that he did not take the ring, and feels terribly that I should accuse him of it. The poor boy is an enigmaâI cannot make him out.
If they had sex that night, Wing didnât mention it in his diary, in sharp contrast to his bragging about the sexual escapade he had had with Phelan only a week earlier.
The next day Phelan told Wing that he planned to leave Chicago and head to Milwaukee, and he admitted with a dramatic flair that he didnât have any prospects once he arrived there. He was hinting to Wing that he was available to be kept, if Wing would only say the word, but the fire that he had once ignited in the newspaper man had burned itself out during the time in which Phelan had disappeared. While he was away, Wing was evidently able to put their relationship into some sort of context. Phelan, he seems to have realized, was trouble, and Wing wrote an equally dramatic, and perhaps disingenuous, response in his diary to Phelanâs leaving: âO, that I could help him.â
Phelan left Chicago as he had planned, and Wing never saw him again. Wing admitted in his diary that he was exhausted from his busy work schedule at the newspaper and from worrying about Phelanâs poverty and âstrange behavior,â but he never explained which of Phelanâs behaviors were odd to him. It may have been stealing Wingâs ring, or infesting Wing with crabs and lice, or trying to bed the servant girl, or any number of things that Wing had forgotten to mention in his diary.
Robert Williams, editor of Wingâs Chicago diaries, has pieced together some of Tommy Phelanâs history. Williams reports that if Phelan gave Wing his real name, he may have been Charles T. Phelan, who had enlisted in the Union army on September 26, 1861, when he was eighteen years old. Confederate forces captured him and confined him to the prison at Andersonville. After his last encounter with Wing, he returned to his native New York, not Milwaukee, and enrolled in the Eastman Commercial College in Poughkeepsie. He graduated in December 1865 and the following year sailed to Cuba, where he remained for a year. After he returned to the United States, he married a woman in 1868, and according to the 1870 census, lived in Manhattan.
Wingâs summary of ...