1883 "Sexual Perversion" - Joseph Lobdell 1st Documented Transgender Man in U.S.

Description: The Alienist and Neurologist: A Quarterly Journal of Scientific, Clinical and Forensic Psychiatry and Neurology. Intended Especially to Subserve the Wants of the General Practitioner of Medicine. Vol. IV. January, 1883. No. 1. Edited by C.H. Hughes, M.D., and an Associate Corps of Collaborators. St. Louis, Mo. : Ev.E. Carreras, Steam Printer, Publisher and Binder. 1883. Softcover, 174 + advertisements, 8.5 x 5.5”, 8vo. ****First documented American transgender man (Jospeh Lobdell) featured in Case of Sexual Perversion by P.M. Wise, M.D., Willard, N.Y., Assistant Physician of the Willard Asylum for the Insane, 87 - 91 p.**** In fair condition. Front cover attached by tail ONLY, very fragile. Head and tail of spine bumped; paper spine chipped with exposed binding. Paper spine toned from shelf-wear. Light toning throughout text-book, mostly at edges of leaves. Some instances of finger-soiling. Small tearing found on fore-edges of pages 7-12 (text unimpeded). Binding intact, front cover very fragile. Please see photos and ask questions, if any, before purchasing. On Oct. 7, 1879, the New York Times reported the death of one Lucy Ann Lobdell Slater under the headline, the “Death of a Modern Diana,” a reference to the Roman goddess of the hunt. While known for her prowess as a “female hunter,” the Times reported, her “strange life history” was most notable for the fact that she “assumed the name of Joseph Lobdell,” “put on male attire” and “went about the country making a living as a music teacher.” It was “a pursuit,” the obituary added, which came to an abrupt end when her sex was “accidentally discovered, and she was forced to fly from the place in the night to escape being tarred and feathered.” There was a modicum of truth in the obituary. Lucy Ann was a skilled hunter but the name had not been Lucy Ann for years. He had long ago assumed the name Joseph Lobdell. And he did wear men’s clothing. He and his wife were constantly on the run, hounded from town to town in upstate New York and beyond, and threatened with being tarred and feathered. But there was one giant untruth: Joseph Lobdell, or as the Times called him, Lucy Ann, was not dead. The error was perhaps understandable. His family, after all, had told everyone he was indeed dead. When his wife came looking for him, they told her as well. Joseph Lobdell wasn’t the first transgender man or woman in America, but rather the first to attract public notice, though the newspapers of the day didn’t call him “transgender,” a word unimaginable then. They called him “strange” and a “freak.” He married Marie Louise Perry in 1861, but police arrested the couple for vagrancy multiple times and sent them to jails and poorhouses. By the time of the 1879 New York Times obituary, the family had declared him dead. But, according to Bambi Lobdell****, census records show that Joseph was then living with his brother John, who probably kept him out of sight. In 1880, John took legal action in Delaware County, N.Y., to have Joseph declared insane and committed to an asylum. “She has a habit of dressing in men’s clothes,” he declared to the court before a hearing convened in his own home, "She has a woman who she sometimes claims is her wife. … From what I see and know of her she is of unsound mind at all times.” A doctor who never examined Joseph and admitted that he was “never acquainted with her before” signed the paperwork to move the commitment forward. “I have frequently heard of her as a crazy female hunter,” he attested. In October of that year, Joseph Lobdell was transported to the Willard Asylum for the Insane in Ovid, N.Y., where he continued to wear men’s clothes and insist he was a man. A doctor at the Willard Hospital for the Insane, where Lobdell was involuntarily committed in 1880, would write in a medical journal in 1883 that he was insane, a case of “sexual perversion,” a “rare form of mental disease.” And then he dismissed him as “a clinical curiosity in psychiatric medicine.” His report, benighted as it was, is cited as one of the first medical journals to use the term “lesbian love." In 1890, Joseph Lobdell was moved to an asylum in Binghamton, N.Y. where in 1912 he died. Although Joe Lobdell died in obscurity, he has gained some notice in the 21st-century. In 2011, for example, Dr. Bambi Lobdell****, a distant cousin, published A Strange Sort of Being: The Transgender Life of Lucy Ann/Joseph Israel Lobdell, 1829-1912. Journalist William Klaber also released a novel about Lucy/Joe, The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell. ****First documented American transgender man (Jospeh Lobdell) featured in Case of Sexual Perversion by P.M. Wise, M.D., Willard, N.Y., Assistant Physician of the Willard Asylum for the Insane, 87 - 91 p.**** Incredible American LGBTQ+ History! FORN-SHELF-0599-BB-2408-HK1989

Price: 2000 USD

Location: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

End Time: 2024-09-16T16:06:05.000Z

Shipping Cost: 7.63 USD