Winters' Story
On February 21, 1909, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch headlined a sensational front-page, full-page illustrated story revealing how a young woman, Lillian Winters, had posed and worked for nine years as "William Winters" ("Willie" or "Bil"). See "How Lillian Winters Deceived Men: After Nines Years in Male Attire She Is Glad to Wear Women's Garb," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 21, 1909, p. 1.
The unsigned St. Louis paper's report focused on how Lillian/Bill managed to fool women and men as to her sex. But this story is important now for a number of other reasons. It's a major document in the history of same-sex intimacy, gender norms and norm-breaking, women's history and feminism, and working-class history.
Same-Sex Intimacy
Under the heading "'His Girl' Badly Smitten," the newspaper states:
Lillian has a girl in the neighborhood of Third street and Lafayette avenue. It would be unfair to tell the girl's name, because she was terribly smitten with her "Bill," and would have married the handsome "boy" quickly, for "Bill" was her ideal among men, and she made no secret to her friends that she "loved the very ground 'Bill' walked on." When she discovered "Bill's" duplicity she suffered a nervous shock that almost resulted in prostration.
In addition, for two years Bill had boarded with the Roth family on South Second street, and "One of the daughters, now married, was very much in love with 'Bill,' and when she was told of Willian's deception the other day she nearly fainted, then got angry.
The report finds it less surprising that Lillian fooled men as to her sex than that she fooled women, "and fooled them into falling in love with her."
"Love," in the mainstream media at this time, did not signify sexual relations. "Love" was still conceived as "spiritual," as opposed to erotic. The idea of spiritual love versus nasty sensuality was a Victorian holdover.
The paper points to Lillian/Bill's interest in "girls":
She drank, she swore, she courted girls, she worked as hard as her fellows, she fished and camped; she told stories with the best of them, and she did not flinch when the talk grew strong. She even chewed tobacco....
After Lillian's birth sex was revealed, she reportedly told reporters of "how girls had fallen in love with her in her character of a handsome boy." For example: Working near Ste. Genevieve, Lillian/Bill had
met Mabel Kendrick, who fell in love with the good-looking boy, and a correspondence followed in which the girl wrote affectionately to her "boy" friend in St. Louis, and rallied [railed] him about his girls.
The paper suggests: "Possibly, Lillian, in her masculine guise, had boasted of the girls 'he' had made conquest of..., boasting of feminine conquests." Miss Kendrick was quoted: "'I don't blame the girls for falling in love with you...You are almost too pretty to be a boy.'"
Though Lillian/Bill is said to have actively "courted girls," nowhere does the paper discuss her feelings for other women. Though the medical press had begun to associate "sexual inversion" with gender-norm breaking, in 1909, this St. Louis paper expressed no hint of such a link. The idea that gender deviancy was a sign of sexual deviancy would only catch on in mainstream culture in the late-1920s in the U.S.
Gender History
This report is one of many in newspapers and other sources about women dressing, working, and living as men, and --sometimes-- falling in love and having intimate relations with, and, even, marrying, other women. Sometimes evidence suggests that persons identified at birth as female had long experienced and considered themselves to be male. The subjects of these cross-dressing, cross-living, cross-working, sex-crossing reports had many different motivations.
In Lillian's case, her beginning life as a male had reportedly begun nine years earlier, in 1900, after "her family was swept away in the flood that wiped out Galveston," Texas. The paper indicates that Lillian left Texas at about age twelve, dressed as a boy, with a male named Richard Steren, about whom this report says no more.
Working-Class History
The paper stresses that, as Bill, Lillian did the hardest, physical labor. She is quoted: "I usually picked out the hardest work there was -- I liked that kind best."
The reporter explains: "There was only one thing for her, manual labor, a lack of education making clerical work impossible." The writer adds that Lillian/Bill "might have obtained a job as a salesman in a department store, where her lack of education would have made little difference, for she was so persuasive and good-looking as a boy she might have the women anything." But "Bill" had chosen to drive in hot rivets, toiling as a boilermaker.
After working as a boilermaker's apprentice, Lillian/Bill became a "helper in that trade," and "joined the Boilermaker's Union, of course, and eventually was made recording secretary of the local branch of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers and Iron Ship Builders Helpers on account of her popularity as one of the boys."
The paper lists and stresses the many kinds of work that Lillian/Bill undertook to make a living, and illustrates many of them.
She drove a "snatch team" in a camp near Ste. Genevieve. (A "snatch team" was a driver of a horse team that accompanied and helped another driver of a horse team.)
In St. Louis, Lillian/Bill worked at The American Rattan Works, making chairs and baskets.
Lillian/Bill drove a wagon for a hardware store and lifted heavy kegs of nails.
She helped out at Bob Hannon's Saloon at Sixth and Hickory streets, doing porter work, and tending bar, and "was popular with the habitues of the place." Hannon was quoted: "If Bill's a girl then I must be a woman."
Lillian/Bill led the St. Louis Labor Day parade in 1908, claims the paper, illustrating them riding a horse.
Lillian's Response to Being Discovered
According to the article, "she did whine when she was stripped of trousers and jacket and she donned for the first time her life a pair of corsets. Then she knew she had lost her freedom."