Out of the Ordinary

Notwithstanding the strong societal pressures toward conformity with accepted sexual roles, the public had a fascination with people who stepped outside what was considered the norm. The stories of two remarkable women – one unknown and one well known – serve as examples. Charley, age 19, was arrested in New York City in 1856. Born Ellen London in New Orleans, on her fifteenth birthday she had put on men’s clothing and taken a job as a messboy on a riverboat; later she worked as a bartender New York City. Charley found that she got along better in men’s clothing and could get better wages. At five feet three inches tall, with her black hair cut short, she was described as a “perfect love of a fellow”. When she was arrested for prostitution, Charley was unemployed and was paying her way from her savings. The New York Times carried the news under the headline “An Unfeminine Freak – A Girl in Man’s Clothes” although the story and the tenor of the reporter’s questions reflected curiosity and sympathy. In the absence of any evidence to corroborate the charges, the magistrate dismissed them. Her true gender made public, Miss London said she planned to join her sister in California.

Eliza Gilbert’s career was somewhat different. Born in Ireland, she spent her early years in India among the British army families. Through her beauty, presence, and grace as a dancer – aided, no doubt, by her charm and genius for both self-promotion and reinventing herself – she gained fame in Europe under the name Lola Montez. Her successes and reversals were due principally to the facts that she flouted convention and defied established authority. She had liaisons with Franz Liszt and King Ludwig of Bavaria; the latter named her the Countess of Landsfeld. She fled Bavaria during the 1848 uprisings and eventually relocated to California, where she reestablished her fame as a dancer. She later became an actress and a popular lecturer, and she published a book of beauty tips and another with stories of love throughout the ages. The New York Times reported her appearances and mentioned her in its pages at least a half dozen times during 1860. Her ability to stay in the public eye, attract lecture audiences, and sell books indicated she was entertaining, and she maintained the public’s interest in her both because and in spite of her unconventional life. Today she would be considered a celebrity.