weeks after the publication of the “Betty John” case, the Waupun Times again published a “counterpart” to Dubois, this time drawn from the medical journal Alienist and Neurologist. The paper introduced the example with the following preface: “The sensation produced by the attempt of Mrs. Hudson [Frank Dubois] to play the role of husband has attracted a good deal of attention, but other similar cases have been known before. In a recent … Alienist and Neurologist, Dr. P. M. Wise, of the William [sic] Lunatic Asylum, described a woman now in that institution who for some years passed as ‘husband’ and was acknowledged as such by the ‘wife,’ although it does not appear that any marriage ceremony was ever performed. The following is an abstract of Dr. Wise’s paper.”42 Significantly, Wise’s article was a pathbreaking piece within the realm of sexology, as up to this point sexologists had primarily been interested in exploring gender and sexual deviance in men. Thus, Wise’s study was one of the first to be entirely devoted to a patient with female anatomy. What’s more, Wise’s article contained the first usage of the term “lesbian” in an American publication. The individual featured in Wise’s article was Joseph Lobdell, a gender transgressor who gained notoriety in the national mass-circulation press in the 1870s and 1880s. I will return to discuss Lobdell’s appearance in the Waupun Times shortly, but given the great importance of Lobdell’s case history as the first “lesbian,” it is worth pausing to discuss his life previous to his mention in the rural Wisconsin paper (and for that matter, prior to his incarceration in the Willard Asylum for the Insane).
“Romantic Paupers”
Joseph Israel Lobdell was born Lucy Ann Lobdell around 1829 in Westerlo, New York.43 According to an autobiography published in 1855, Lobdell was different from the start, desiring pursuits such as schooling and hunting that were unconventional for young girls. He endured an unhappy marriage to a man (George Slater), who eventually abandoned Lobdell and their young daughter.44 At that point, faced with few opportunities to support himself as a woman, Lobdell began dressing as a man.45 He lived a transient life for many years, working in various rural communities in upstate New York, Pennsylvania, and even as far west as Minnesota. In most of these locations, he presented himself publicly as a man and earned a living through hunting or working in other rural industries, such as lumbering.46 By the mid-1860s, Lobdell fell on hard times and sought refuge in the almshouse of Delaware County, New York. It was here that Lobdell met a woman named Mary Louise Perry, and the pair developed a relationship that would last many years. The couple left the almshouse in the late 1860s and traveled throughout the rural areas of Pennsylvania.
Although there are few records related to the early years of their relationship, it appears that by 1871 the pair had become somewhat notorious in the region of southeastern Pennsylvania. One local paper reported, “Much has been said and written about lately concerning two dilapidated specimens of humanity, who have been wandering about through this region of country for nearly three years, and who have been representing themselves as man and wife, and call themselves Joseph Israel Lobdell and Mrs. Lobdell.”47 The story proved to be of interest beyond southeastern Pennsylvania, and it appeared in newspapers across the country, often under the title “Romantic Paupers.”48 This article established a standard narrative about Lobdell and Perry that circulated in the mass-circulation press as they continued to receive attention throughout the 1870s and 1880s.
Notably, just like the press coverage of Frank Dubois, “Romantic Paupers” reveals the relatively fluid and nonbinary way both gender and sexuality were described in the late nineteenth century. While historians for a generation have embraced the “romantic friendship” model as a means of understanding nineteenth-century same-sex intimacy, a close reading of “Romantic Paupers” and subsequent iterations of Lobdell’s story suggests that Americans were not so innocent concerning the idea of same-sex love as previously believed. Similar to newspaper discussions of the relationship between Frank Dubois and Gertie Fuller, papers did not explicitly mention the nature of Lobdell and Perry’s partnership, yet they did repeatedly suggest that it went beyond a platonic friendship, often describing it as “strange,” or as a “mutual affection so strong they refused to be separated.”49 Such descriptions may not have signaled sexual connotations to all audience members, but the vague language certainly left much to readers to interpret for themselves and cracked open room to imagine sexual possibilities. Certainly the combination of phrases such as “female husband” and references to the “strong affection” that had “sprung up between the two women” were enough to suggest to some readers that Lobdell and Perry’s relationship was similar to other marriages, including their erotic components.50 Just as some have written about the closet being more of an “open secret” rather than the absence of knowledge, one of the remarkable aspects of newspaper coverage of their relationship is the silence that enveloped it.51 Indeed, journalists allowed Lobdell and Perry to keep their “open secret” by not discussing explicitly the nature of their relationship—and yet some readers no doubt filled this silence with their own interpretations of the sexual possibilities therein.
Lobdell and Perry cycled in and out of various state institutions and almshouses throughout the 1870s. They generally escaped lengthy sentences and were relatively free to wander the rural counties of western New York and eastern Pennsylvania. At some point in 1877, Lobdell purchased a small plot of land in Wayne County, Pennsylvania—a plot his brother later characterized as “four or five acres situated near Narrowsburgh in Wayne County Pennsylvania. I don’t think it is worth more than $10. Is a very rocky[,] poor place.”52 Although this may be read as a sign of the couple’s increasing stability, their legal troubles continued, and in 1880 Lobdell’s brother ordered that Lobdell be tried in an insanity hearing at Delaware County Court.
During the hearing, fourteen men from the surrounding community testified, and each swore that Lobdell was not of sound mind. William M. Main, for example, stated, “I am acquainted with Lucy Ann Slater and have known her for about twenty years. On one subject her mind is not sound but on other matters [I] have heard her talk quite sensibly. I have never had an intimate acquaintance with her habits and customs. I know that she sometimes dresses in men’s clothes and it is on that subject that I think her of unsound mind.”53 In Main’s testimony and several others recorded in the Delaware County Court, Lobdell’s insanity was specific to his desire to wear men’s clothing. However, as many of the testimonies made clear, Lobdell’s mode of dress was nothing new for him. In fact, several of the witnesses testified that they had known of Lobdell’s predilection for men’s clothes for twenty years or longer. This revelation suggests something quite powerful: that Lobdell’s neighbors were, for many years, willing to accept his queer embodiment and his partnership with a woman, and that they did not undertake any effort to modify his behavior or interfere with his relationship. While those actions would occasionally make Lobdell the subject of sensational newspaper articles, these courtroom revelations suggest a more mundane component of Lobdell’s story: that his behavior was condoned by his neighbors, except in instances when he appeared to be a threat to himself or the community. Indeed, the court testimonies reveal that neither Lobdell’s gender transgressions nor his relationship with Mary Perry was considered threatening.
Furthermore, such testimony suggests that it was not simply Lobdell’s queer embodiment that brought about the insanity hearing, because otherwise the hearing would have been called years before. The testimony makes clear that there were more factors involved than simply Lobdell’s dress, particularly his ability to support a household financially. Neighbor Harry Walsh, for example, testified, “She is insane without doubt and incapable of governing herself or of managing her property.”54 As Christine Stansell has shown, by the late nineteenth century in the North, mainstream attitudes about poverty had shifted from those widely held in the Revolutionary era. Whereas earlier, poor people were pitied, by the mid-nineteenth century, poor people were vilified as bringing poverty on themselves through laziness.55 In this way, Lobdell’s inability to properly care for himself, Perry, or his land was understood by those in his 1880 court hearing to be the result of personal pathology.
Another aspect of Lobdell’s identity that prompted some to view him as a nuisance to the community was his public articulations of religion. Lobdell’s brother made an explicit connection between Lobdell’s strange faith and his supposed insanity in his testimony, stating, “I think her insanity was to some extent