fairy

1892-01-02: "At nine o'clock on Saturday night, January 2, 1892, testified reporter William A Gramer, he made his first visit to the Slide [on Bleeker Street, New York City], walking down a flight of stairs from the street, and entering a barroom. . . . At its far end a winging door in a partition topped with stained glass opened into a second big room where most of the customers gathered, a man played the piano, and another man, called 'the Fairy,' sometimes sang." Here "Fairy" is the capitalized proper name for one particular individual -- the mother of all fairies? Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality p. 291, n. 7 p. 

1896-00-00: "This coincides with what is known of the peculiar societies of inverts. Coffee-clatches, where the members dress themselves with aprons, etc., and knit, gossip and crotchet; balls, where men adopt the ladies’ evening dress, are well known in Europe. ‘The Fairies’ of New York are said to be a similar secret organization. Scott, American Journal of Psychology, v. 7, p. 216, cited in Katz, GAH, p. ?

1918-04-00: "Yanez, in his Medicina Legal, published in Madrid in 1881, gives an excellent description of homosexuality and describes also the general appearance of those male homo-sexualists whose ways and manners resemble those of the female sex, and who in common parlance in the United States are called “Fairies.” Dr. Alfred W. Herzog, Introduction dated April 1918, The Autobiography of an Androgyne (NY: Medico-Legal Press, [copyright] 1919), p. v. 

1918-04-00: "'Fairie' Defined. The present work discloses not only the life of an androgyne per se, but that of a 'fairie ' or 'petit-jesus,' the life of which rare human 'sport' (in the biological sense) your author was apparently also pre-destined to live out in a way immeasurably more varied than falls to the lot of the ordinary fairie, having had a limited experience in this vocation in Berlin and Paris and other great European cities, in addition to his ex-tensive experience in New York. [New paragraph] The “ fairie ” is a youthful androgyne or other passive invert (for they are perhaps not all members of the extreme class of androgynes) whom natural predestination or other circumstances led to adopt the profession of the fille de joie. The term “fairie” is widely used in the United States by those who are in touch with the underworld. It probably originated on sailing vessels of olden times when voyages often lasted for months. While the crew was either actually or prospectively suffering acutely from the absence of the female of the species, one of their number would unexpectedly betray an inclination to supply her place. Looked upon as a fairy gift or godsend, such individual would be referred to as “ the fairy.” As the author is one of the first users of the printed word in this derived sense, he has elected to adopt a distinctive spelling." Earl Lind ("Ralph Werther"--"Jennie June"), edited by Alfred W. Herzog, The Autobiography of an Androgyne (NY: Medico-Legal Press, [copyright] 1919), p. 7.

1922-00-00: "On one of my earliest visits to Paresis Hall -- about 1895 -- I seated myself at one of the tables. I had only recently learned that it was androgyne headquarters -- or FAIRIE as it was called at the time." Earl Lind, The Female Impersonators (1922).

1928-00-00: “Just walk down Hollywood Boulevard someday if you must have something out of uniform. Here are little fairies who can quote Rimbaud before they are 18.” Hart Crane quoted in David Kipen, ed., Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018 (Modern Library, December 4, 2018). 

1929-00-00: ‘‘'Who are they?’ Emily asked the Captain. ‘Who are who?’ he murmured absently.‥ ‘Oh, those? Fairies.’" R. Hughes High Wind in Jamaica, p. iv, cited in The Longer Oxford English Dictionary, "fairy": "A male homosexual. Slang". 

1945-00-00: "‘Two girls stopped near our table and looked at us curiously. ‘Come on,’ said one to the other, ‘we’re wasting our time. They’re only fairies.’" E. Waugh Brideshead Revisited i. v. 102 cited in The Longer Oxford English Dictionary, "fairy": "A male homosexual. Slang".