The Female husbands of the 18th and 19th Century

Welcome back to Let's Be Perfectly Queer Podcast, your go to LGBT Australian podcast for all things queer.

In this episode, we dive into a fascinating and often forgotten part of queer history: female husbands of the 18th and 19th centuries. These were people assigned female at birth who lived as men, married women, and built lives that challenged the rigid gender norms of their time.

We explore real historical cases, what the term “female husband” meant in its historical context, and how these stories connect to modern conversations about gender identity, trans history, and queer survival. And what can their lives teach us about how gender has always been more complex than society admits?

This episode unpacks:

• What “female husbands” were in historical records
• How people navigated gender and identity before modern labels
• The risks and consequences they faced
• How queer and trans history has been recorded (and erased)
• Why these stories still matter today

If you love queer history, transgender history, and LGBTQIA+ stories that challenge what we think we know about the past, this episode is for you.

Because queer history didn’t start recently, it’s always been here.

🎧 Listen in and find out more about the female husbands... and until next time, stay perfectly queer!

Transcript

Welcome to Let's Be Perfectly Queer, a queer podcast, creating space to talk about all things queer. My name is Archie. And I'm Katie.

And we are your hosts. Questions of how you identify. Seeking answers to clarify.

Whether you're queen. Or somewhere in between. Let's be perfectly queer.

And I'm back. You're just you. You're back.

And we're back. We are back. And we are back for season four.

Oh my goodness. Where did the time go? It's sped along, hasn't it? It definitely has. And yeah, so... What's there to look forward to? What's there to look forward to? There's a lot to look forward to.

I've got a whole bunch of interviews lined up for this season already. I think I've actually got more interviews lined up already than we had last season. The catalog is growing.

Which is a bit insane. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah, and to just give you guys kind of a look at what's coming up is we have some great guests. One of them is Cassie Hamilton, and she'll be on the next episode, and she's going to be talking about her musical, A Transgender Woman on the Internet Crying, and I'm really excited for you guys to hear that one. 

I also talked to Dr. Anna Baith and author Ellie Rocha, who's also a teacher, and I talked to them about the future of trans sports. We also have a look at the three mindset shifts that help parents move from fear to confidence in supporting LGBTQ plus loved ones. I also talked to a board certified wellness coach about the exhaustion that many LGBTQ plus adults face due to the game of belonging. 

So those are some of the episodes that are coming up in the near future. I actually can't wait to hear it. I've heard so many snippets, and it sounds like there have been some really good interviews with people who know a lot about the topic, so I can't wait to hear all about that. 

Yeah, I had some great conversations, and I've still got many more interviews to come over the next few weeks and months as well. So stay tuned for that. Lots of people wanting to jump on board and some really interesting conversations and some interesting people that I've really enjoyed chatting with and can't wait to chat to as well. 

Yeah, very exciting. But it is February, and February in Australia, most people know that is... Mardi Gras season. It is Mardi Gras season. 

Mardi Gras this year has been getting a bit of a mixed review. Yeah, it has done, hasn't it? And it's quite interesting about it, so I might just... There was a really good article in The Guardian that unpacked a lot of the suspected controversy about it, and it will be interesting to see what comes post to the actual events that unfold. But it seems that the after-party of Mardi Gras has actually been cancelled, which is incredibly significant seeing as Mardi Gras, the parade, the after-party is the major event of it. 

It's where they usually have their headliners such as Kylie, they've had Dua Lipa, they've had RuPaul, and this is actually going to be the 48th year of the Mardi Gras. So the controversy seems to be that there's been some speculation as well as actually a lot of comments from their chief executive, Jesse Matheson, that the party or the events has actually been running in a deficit since 2020, which in the last year, it seems that they actually were $143,000 of deficit because they didn't get the ticket sales. It seems that they're understanding all of this and seeing the trajectory because it's all privately run and organized that they've bought Live Nation in and the major two parts of Live Nation being Kix and Bizarro to try and actually run the party and organize the headliners to bring more ticket sales in. 

But it seems that from there, there was a statement that came out from chief executive Matheson that what they've said is, after the review of the Mardi Gras party financial performance capacity constraints following the loss of RHI, which I don't know what that is, but anyway, nonetheless, community feedback and challenging demographics of attendees, it has become clear that the event is no longer fit for purpose and doesn't follow its traditional format or aligns with our future vision for the community celebration of our entire LGBTQIA plus community. I've been to Sydney once for Mardi Gras. Firstly, the tickets are ridiculously expensive, like absolutely bonkers. 

And when I went, there was no Australian LGBT acts. So I think, look, I think that they need to, unfortunately, they should have been a lot more transparent because a lot of people are like, where's the tickets? What's going on? And I think that does fall down to Mardi Gras. They should have been transparent to their patrons and everybody who supported them over the years, you know, because they obviously would have realized this wasn't going ahead for a while. 

You don't just cancel it without. Well, the curious thing behind that is, you know how I said they signed with Live Nation? They actually signed with them last year for a five year contract with potential for an extension. And the only reason that people started speculating that the party wasn't going along is that ticket sales would usually start in November and then the headliners would have been outlined in January, which hasn't happened. 

Which that's what I'm saying. They should have said in November, it's not likely to go ahead unless something was going to happen. Because the thing is, well, a lot of the people who supported Mardi Gras and a lot of the people who wanted to go, they said, had you said anything, we could have crowdfunded. 

We could have done something so that there was an event. And I think it needs to go back to the roots. It should be Australian LGBT artists, performers, you know, instead of spending all this money on all these international acts who aren't LGBT. 

I think the year that I went, Nick Jonas was there. And it's like, it was just performers for the sake of performing and getting money and it's lost its vision and it's lost its value about why it's around. And I think, you know, needs to be just a celebration with local LGBT artists and acts and performers. 

That's what it needs to be. Don't make this into something bigger than it has to be and get back to its values and its roots. I think that's what it needs to do. 

I wonder why they were actually struggling to get headliners though, because it seems that the other thing in this article that came up is that they didn't want to announce it until they actually lost their headliner for January, which who knows if that's actually factual or not, or it's all just speculation. Because like, if they already had it, generally you would imagine that you would have some people that you would call on. I mean, I'm not in the business, but I imagine that Live Nation would have a lot of connections, wouldn't just lose a headliner. 

There would be more background to it that we aren't knowing. See, I think, you know, stop trying to get these big international acts. You have people like Courtney Act, who is a part of the broadcast commentary for the parade. 

Get Courtney Act to perform a 40-minute show. You also have the Veronica's with one of them being bisexual or pansexual. Get them. 

You've also got like... G Flip, Tash Sultana. I was going to say G Flip, Alex the Astronaut. You've also got Ruben Kaye.

Yeah. Like there's so, you could literally have a full lineup, but stop trying to make money. I think that's where you lose your way when you try to make an event for profit.

So, I mean, knowing that they've been in a deficit for the last five years now, I thought it was really curious unpacking the statement from Matheson that said, the challenging demographics of attendees, which I'm like, maybe that's because they've gone too big, because they've been trying to get these major stars. Then you have your more... You have your heterosexual individuals who go along because they're like, oh, I really love this performer. I'm going to spend this money.

Yeah. And generally, I mean, tickets were $200 a person. Which is ridiculous.

Which is ridiculous, but on the flip side, that sometimes is actually cheaper than going to a concert these days. So, it's kind of like, I can see why you're getting these different demographics. I would do the same thing if I really wanted to see someone like Dua Lipa and I'd be like, oh, fab. 

I'm pretty good as an ally. I might as well just go down. But then you have everyone, other man and his dog coming down and you lose the essence, which I mean, they did explain that it's changed from what they wanted to do. 

It's changed from the essence, which is supporting the queer community. And as you said, should be queer artists as well. And it needs to change. 

And this is probably a wake up call and stop making it a big money grab. Like, of course, you don't want to be in deficit, but if you're constantly in deficit, it is a business model that is wrong. And you need to really look at everything and see what's going on, because you should really break even, maybe make a little bit of a profit to support for the next year and so on. 

But yeah, when you're that far behind, there is a major issue. Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to hear about your experience, you guys' listeners' experience with Mardi Gras, if you've gone across there. 

How was it for you? I mean, we've both been, it was pretty a blasé experience for me. I didn't really enjoy it. To watch the parade, it was like a three hour parade and you had to stand on a, people were selling milk crates and people are buying things just so you could see. 

It was ridiculous. And it wasn't really an inviting environment. It was, I was very disappointed. 

And then the after party was worse. I was bored. I didn't want to be there. 

It felt like a pill popping kind of thing. That's what it felt like, to be completely honest. And it wasn't my vibe. 

Yeah. And that's what a lot of people I imagine wouldn't gel with either. When I went across there, I felt like I was in a giant rave, which is fine. 

But the thing is, is that that's not the whole queer community. I think things like Fair Day is a better reflection of what the queer community is about. Yeah, I agree. 

I agree. Yeah. Because it encapsulates the word of community.

Yeah. But anyway, let us know your thoughts on Mardi Gras. What do you think? Share it in our comments on Spotify, but also on Instagram and let us know. 

You can also send us a message on DM or via email if you'd like to get more involved in the conversation about that as well. Yeah. And if you need a voice note us, because words are just not the way.

Yeah. Well, I mean, text is not the way. Writing is not the way. 

Then do it. We would love to hear your voices. Yeah. 

So let's now get on to today's episode. Today's episode is about the female husbands of the 18th and 19th century. Today, I've got an interesting bit of queer history for you.

On this episode, we are talking about some individuals who challenged the very definition of gender and marriage. Imagine living in a time when your economic opportunities were determined by your sex and the only way to claim safety, freedom and a decent wage was to become someone else entirely. This episode is about the female husbands in the 18th and 19th century.

And that's more like alien sounds, but sure. Female husbands. So they were people who were assigned female at birth, who lived as men, married women and often passed in society as male for years, sometimes even decades. 

The women who married these female husbands were not always victims of deception, as some believed. They were active participants who knew their husband's background, holding power as secret keepers. Well, I hate to say it, but if you were married to somebody, there's going to be at some point in time that you may or may not see their genitals.

You would think so. As well as other appendages or lack thereof appendages. You would think so. 

But anyway, I'll get into that in a little bit later on. But where does the term female husband come from? So the term is a label. It's not an identity. 

No one walked around saying, hi, I'm a female husband. That's just not how it worked. It was a phrase that was given to them from newspapers, court records and public gossip from the 1700s and 1800s. 

And it usually appeared in stories where someone's gender was discovered or outed. They were often discovered because of suspicion or violence or because someone got arrested or taken to court. And then newspapers would jump on it and publish these sensational stories like, woman disguised as man marries another woman. 

Clickbait headlines have been around for centuries. The term female husband was used to describe people whose gender expression did not match the sex they were assigned at birth and who were in a long-term, usually legally binding marriage to a woman. The crucial part being the marriage. 

There were people assigned female who lived as male for purely economic reasons, like getting a higher wage as a sailor or a laborer. But the female husband category specifically included the commitment to a woman under the appearance of a heterosexual marriage. That marriage is what authorities saw as the greatest offence.

So I guess that's where the difference between being a woman, being like, I know that there is only going to be advantages in my life if I'm a man. Therefore, I'm going to dress up as a man. But in my private life, I still identify fully as a woman and wear, in that time periods, woman clothes. 

Whereas the other ones are probably just lesbians or trans men or non-binary. Like you never know. You never know. 

There's a whole potential. There's the potential that they might be lesbians, hence why they actually want to marry women and that might have been. It all depends on the purpose of why you're dressing up as a man or like disguising yourself as a man or you feel like you are a man. 

There's so many different avenues to it for the purpose. And we don't know because we didn't live in that time and we only have stories. And so we can only speculate. 

But the papers almost always misgendered them, calling them women or masqueraders. Many of them lived as men for years before being discovered. They held jobs, rented homes and built entire lives. 

It wasn't about someone just wearing different clothes or looking and acting the part. It was about claiming a social role, a legal status and a domestic life that was strictly reserved for men. So for people of authority, they felt there was this threat of the female husband.

Female husbands were seen as a greater threat than other groups who blended the ideas of gender, like female soldiers motivated by patriotism or poverty. Think Mulan. Being a man in the 18th and 19th centuries meant having power and female husbands were seen to be taking that power.

And this was the real issue. Some believed they posed two huge threats to the social order. One, homosexual desire. 

It showed that same-sex desire could be obtained and hidden in plain sight. And number two, it challenged the idea that only those assigned male at birth could truly be men who provided for and married women. Also, I guess the added agenda to that is that if society perceives you as a man, you're going to be able to vote and women were not able to vote in that time either.

And their perspective was not sought out. So it's that added, you're bringing your female rhetoric potentially to the voting categories. Yeah. 

It's all about power and they were losing power and they didn't want to lose power. Well, they're not losing power, but that's the perception of the cis white man in those times. Exactly. 

So you can really see how gender and sexuality were tied to the power and opportunities that came with living as a man. In the early 1900s, sexologists often assumed that anyone who didn't fit traditional gender roles, like masculine women, must be homosexual. It took time for people to realise that gender and sexual orientation aren't the same thing.

But now let's talk about some of the well-known female husbands. First up, Charles Hamilton. He was arrested in 1746 in England after marrying a woman named Mary Price. 

Charles had been moving from town to town, working as a quack doctor or apothecary, marrying women along the way. How many women? I'm not sure. I didn't have that.

I love how it says marrying women, as in like more than one woman. I didn't go that deep into it because there was a lot of pages to read and a lot of female husbands. But these ones that stood out and the names that kept coming up a lot.

Poor Charles. He probably just married one woman. Who knows? You know, it's hearsay. 

Someone says one woman, someone says ten and someone says five and it falls somewhere in between. The marriage lasted about two months before Mary Price reported Hamilton to the authorities. She claimed she was deceived. 

Charles became the first person known as a female husband. And even though Charles didn't break any existing laws, they were charged with vagrancy, sentenced to hard labour and publicly whipped. What the hell? It's very common for female husbands to be charged with vagrancy.

Because they couldn't get them on anything else. And vagrancy is such a broad, unspecific topic. Yeah. 

So the Vagrancy Act of 1744 mainly focused on deceitful ways of making money and was used to charge people like fortune tellers, unlicensed peddlers and men who abandoned their wives and The court's goal was not to apply a specific law but to use Hamilton as a public example of what happens when you challenge gender norms. A famous writer, Henry Fielding, best known for Chom Jones, wrote a popular pamphlet about the case, titled The Female Husband, which cemented the phrase in the public eye. For the 18th century, Hamilton's story was a wildly circulated tale of what was referred to at the time as gender crossing and deception. 

But Charles had absolutely no intention of pretending for a moment. They lived as a man, consistently and confidently. I wonder how many of these individuals were actually intersex? That's a good question. 

And that's something we will never know. Yeah. So the idea of it as well would have been really scary if you happen to have grown up a certain way. 

So say back in the day, your parents, I mean, at the end of the day, there was no gender reassignment surgery. And thankfully, that's becoming a little bit archaic now as well. But there was no gender reassignment surgery. 

You grew up with whatever sex organs you had. No one knew what chromosomes you had because we're talking about the 18th and 19th century. Nobody's going out and really investigating that or have the means to investigate that.

So it just seems that you might be living your life, how you're living your life, and then all of a sudden, you happen to be in a relationship with somebody that you find attractive. You ask them to marry them. You thought that you were living fine.

And then you have the potential to have everything in your life on question, as well as your body. And I can imagine people being like, strip them down and make sure who they were. That would have been so scary.

Well, that's what's happening across the world right now with the transgender athletes and people saying, well, we need to strip search them. It's like, no, you can't do that. You are asking them to do unlawful strip search.

Why would it be okay for anybody in any generation to be like, get naked and let me inspect you? It's not. Fucking disgusting. I empathize with these people, these poor people, no matter what gender they were or what sexuality they were. 

Tell me more. I'm intrigued about these other individuals. So next we have James Allen, born 1809 in the UK. 

James worked as a laborer and married Mary Allen for over 20 years. James passed as male and lived what we'd call a stealth life today. And for those who don't know what stealth is, it means where you are transgender, so whether you've transitioned from male to female or female to male, and you don't let anybody know that you have transitioned. 

So you live a stealth life. That's what it means. James died in a workplace accident when he was hit by a piece of timber that fell into the pit that he was working in. 

When he was taken to St. Thomas Hospital, doctors realized his body didn't match what they expected. And the story exploded in the press. During the inquest, it came out that James had bound his chest, dressed in men's clothing and lived fully as a man. 

Mary was brought in to identify the body, and she said she had no idea about any of this. James true, in quotation marks, true identity became huge gossip. The story spread across the country, and even the newspapers weren't sure how to talk about him. 

Most actually used he him pronouns, which was pretty rare and pretty significant for the time as well, though a few slipped in she her still. After James accident, officials were really careful in how they treated him. They didn't want his body turned into some kind of spectacle. 

They protect his remains and buried him in a private vault in Bermondsey to keep body snatchers away. Oh wow. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. 

Because the attitudes of the time, we can't really know what Mary truly knew or how she identified. Same-sex relationships between women weren't technically illegal, but they were treated as deeply immoral. So Mary could never publicly admit that she knew her husband was, in their eyes, a woman. 

It was already scandalous that she'd been married to James without knowing. If she'd admitted anything else, her reputation would have been destroyed forever. Yeah, and I'm sure that they had actually discussed this. 

I mean, they were married for 20 years, for heaven's sake. They probably discussed these kind of situations where they're like, oh, if one of us dies, the other one has to say that we're in a heterosexual relationship and that we didn't know any different. Because they would know 20 years. 

There's no way that you could... I mean, I'm sure somebody has, and if people are sometimes not the most perceptive, but I would be amazed to hear if truly, in the heart of hearts, she didn't know. Yeah, 20 years. It'd be weird for, unless she was asexual, and 20 years and not seeing your partner's body at all. 

Yeah. But I do find that very rare because, you know, to bind their chest back in the day, you'd have to have a lot of cloth. So, I don't believe that she didn't know, but... But also, like, bathing. 

Yeah. It's not like we've got bathrooms like we do here now. Depending on their living situations, they probably had a bath in which they shared area that wasn't as private. 

So, there would have been at some point in time that she would have seen. Yeah, but we will never know. Good on James. 

I just hope that she got compensation after his death, because I imagine that the company would have been like, oh, nah, let's not. But hopefully, seeing as they also treated him so respectfully in his death as well. And that might be why that, you know, she said, I thought he was her husband, but we really don't know. 

Yeah, completely. So, next up, we have Joseph Lobdell. So, Joseph is from the US and Joseph Israel Lobdell was born in 1829. 

A sign female at birth, but from his 20s onwards, he lived as a man. He was a hunter, a soldier, a frontier survivalist, and he referred to himself consistently as Joseph. Joseph published letters explaining that he felt like a man. 

And in one, he says he was born with a man's spirit and he rejected the name and role given to him at birth. He also married a woman, though the state refused to recognise their relationship. Eventually, Joseph was institutionalised and labelled insane for believing he was a man, which, of course, says more about society's refusal to understand gender than it does about Joseph.

I'm not going to go too much into Joseph because I actually have a full episode that I've got all the notes for that we'll be doing in the future. About Joseph? Yeah, about Joseph. So, Joseph was actually the first female husband I'd heard of, but I didn't know the term at the time when I was researching into Joseph. 

And so, I've got a full episode on Joseph to come in the future. That's so unfortunate about him. Well, I look forward to it. 

I can't wait. So, you'll learn more about Joseph in a future episode. Next, and the last one I'm going to talk about is George Wilson. 

And George Wilson was a Scottish immigrant living in New York City in the 1830s. He was a furrier and a labourer and had been living as a man since his early teens to secure higher wages and safety. The key difference here is the longevity of the marriage. 

George was legally married to his wife Elizabeth for 15 years before the public discovered their secret. In the summer of 1836, George was arrested for public drunkenness. So, he was arrested in the Lower East Side and it was another classic vagrancy charge.

The police suspected the sailor wasn't a man. George's first defence was strategic. He lied, claiming his male attire was a temporary disguise worn while searching for a man he loved.

That's pretty clever. Yeah, it is. George has thought this out.

Yeah, it's like if I ever get caught, this is what I'm saying. This was a smart move to emphasise heterosexual romance and minimise his gender non-conformity offence to the police. It was a smart idea. 

But the truth emerged when George's wife Elizabeth stormed into the police station to retrieve her husband. Oh, Elizabeth. They should have come up with a plan. 

She later gave an interview stating that 15 years earlier, she was not at all disappointed to learn her husband's assigned sex and that they were happily married. Oh, I love that. Yeah, so the wives of the female husbands often held a lot of power in the relationship.

They were the secret keepers. They were loving participants, but if the relationship soured, that secret became their ultimate leverage for divorce or financial settlement. In George's case though, Elizabeth was a loyal defender. 

Despite the press coverage, George and Elizabeth were ultimately released without former charges. Oh, fabulous. In the 19th century, authorities saw gender as something you did. 

Your clothes, your hairstyle, your behaviour. Not something you are on the inside. There wasn't really a concept of gender identity at the time and because of that, they believed that if someone crossed the line, you could fix it just by changing their clothes. 

George actually used that idea to his advantage. He didn't make any big claims about who he was inside. He just went along with what the authorities wanted at that moment. 

Changed clothes when he had to and then carried on with his life. And because the courts had no framework for understanding gender as something that is inside of you, they couldn't argue with it or prove otherwise. George was very smart. 

I love this man. George was a very smart man. Oh, love it. 

George and Elizabeth. Goals. Love this.

Except Elizabeth shouldn't have come down looking for him. No, she should have probably been a little bit more tactful and I'm sure they probably would have discussed this previous. She was probably a bit frustrated with George getting drunk and then... Having to come down and march yourself down to the train station, to the police station to come get George.

And I imagine if George was Scottish, then Elizabeth was probably Scottish as well and like... Maybe. They lived in New York, so you're not sure. Oh, did they? Yeah, New York. 

I'm pretty sure. New York, did I say? Yeah, New York. Scottish immigrant. 

So she's probably like, oh, my Scottish husband and she wasn't Scottish. She's like, oh, you know. Fuck him.

Now, I want to be really careful not just to label everyone as a trans man, as we'd say today, because some may have been gender non-conforming or passing for survival and some may have identified in ways we don't have words for today. But many, especially people like James Allen and Joseph Lobdell, express male identities clearly and lived as men full time. They chose male names, used male pronouns and in many cases their partners affirmed them as husbands even after they were outed.

It's a reminder that transness isn't new. Trans people didn't arrive with the rise of social media and this isn't a new phase. We've always been here.

Yeah. But why do these stories matter? And I think right now in the climate of the world, these stories matter more than ever. The history of the female husbands demonstrates that the terms we use today, like gender identity and sexual orientations, are products of history and culture.

They just didn't happen overnight. The bravery of female husbands and their wives were demonstrated in their ability to fight for their lives and their relationships, often without the language that we have today. It reminds us that rights and freedom can be fought for based on the simple right to live and love.

It also matters because we are constantly told that transness is new. That it's a trend. But when we go back to these kinds of stories of people binding their chests with cloth and changing their names, moving towns, loving women, living as men, we see that trans or gender non-conforming people have been around for a very long time.

And we remember that people have always bent gender to be their true selves, survive and thrive. The people who came before us didn't have hormones or surgeries or affirming healthcare like we do today, but they still knew who they were and still found a way to live their authentic lives. I think that's beautiful and it really shows the strength and resilience of some of these female husbands of the time, of the 18th and 19th century.

Yeah, and that's it. It's a beautiful summary and it really makes you think about there's a lot of different reasons and beautiful reasons why people do things. And really looking at the purpose and the reasons why they've had to is such a, we shouldn't lose that analysis of history and realise that, yeah, there's a lot of things that are cyclic.

And, you know, we've spoken about him before. Was it Herschel who did the...

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