Woman's Queer Masquerade

The story of a woman's strange life comes from Chelsea, Eng., where an inmate of the workhouse has confessed to having lived fifty years as a man without being discovered. She is now seventy-five years old, and tells of this with a lively exultation in the adventure. She assumed the guise of a man because she thought that with it she could earn her living more easily. She was married at the age of sixteen, after being well educated, and immediately left her husband, disliking his treatment of her. She worked as a painter and decorator.

--Thousandsticks, Middlesboro, Kentucky, March 30, 1911, page 7.

LIVED AS A MAN

Prof. Eugene de Forest, 68 years old, the man-woman, whose strange case has puzzled the medical authorities of Los Angeles county for some time, died at the county hospital after an illness of several weeks of unresolved lobar pneumonia.

Prof. de Forest, whose maiden name was May Bradley, was a graduate of Yale, and for years has been a prominent figure in dramatic circles both of Los Angeles and San Francisco. She was brilliant in her particular field and was equally eccentric. Years ago she adopted male attire after the death of her husband, J. M. Hart, a San Francisco newspaper man. She repeatedly played male roles on the stage, and for years was directing head of the De Forest school of dramatics.

She was formerly associated with Mme. Janauschek, the actress. She once married a woman, but the union was almost immediately dissolved by legal process.

-- Des Moines Register, Nov. 9, 1917

Comment: Mme. Janauschek was Fanny Janauschek, with a brief bio at this site. Picture here.