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Explicitly homoerotic poems appear in Leaves of Grass, particularly in the section "Calamus." This text was foundational for queer Victorian-era homosexuality. If one said they enjoyed Whitman's poems, though popular, it was also used as code for being queer.

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When I Heard at the Close of the Day from "Calamus" (1860)

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When I Heard at the Close of the Day from "Calamus" (1860)

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"The Lost Pardner" from Sun and Saddle Leather poetry collection (1915) by Badger Clark Jr.

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"The Lost Pardner" from Sun and Saddle Leather poetry collection (1915) by Badger Clark Jr.

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Recollecting on his earlier past as a cowboy, Badger Clark Jr. continues a tradition set by Whitman, of explicitly homoerotic sexuality in poetry. There is insight into how queer partnerships worked in the West, not only sensually, but by way of devotion and a working lifestyle.

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Autobiography of an Androgyne (1918) by Jennie June

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Autobiography of an Androgyne (1918) by Jennie June

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Jennie June self-identified as an androgyne as well as used the terms "bisexuals," "female impersonators," and "gynanders" to describe what would become transgender people and homosexuality. He was one of the first to publicly do so. He was an advocate for decriminalization of homosexuality and wrote of his life experiences in Autobiography of an Androgyne.

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African-American women Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus & their erotic/loving letter exchanges

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African-American women Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus & their erotic/loving letter exchanges

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"You are the first girl that I ever love so and you are the last one. Dear Rebeca, do not say anything against me loving you so, for I mean just what I say. O Rebbeca, it seem I can see you now, casting those loving eyes at me. If you was a man, what would things come to?They would after come to something very quick. What do you think the matter? Don’t laugh at me. I not exactly crazy yet."

-Addie writing to Rebecca, 1859

"How I did miss you last night. I did not have anyone to hug me up and to kiss. Rebbeca, don’t you think I am very foolish? I don’t want anyone to kiss me now. I turn Mr. Games away this morning. No kisses is like youres".

-Addie to Rebecca, 1859

"O my Dear Dear Rebecca when you press me to your dear bosom O how happy I was. Last night I gave any thing if I could only layed my poor aching head on your bosom. O Dear how soon will it be I can be able to do so? ... It is very gloomy here. If I was only near you’now. I rather have my head on your lap then pencil the few lines to you ... Addie

P.S. except a sweet kiss. I will imprint on here so look good."

-Addie writing to Rebecca, Fall 1860

Though letters from both women survive, Rebecca's direct responses to Addie's letters are missing. However, the portrait of the two that emerges is one of sensuality, sexual overtones, and a deep companionship and devotion between the two women, even amid marriages and other major life events. As a reference source for literature and historical record, these letters are vitally important, as they give voice to missing identities of Black women during the mid-19th century.

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Photo of Jennie June from Autobiography of an Androgyne

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Photo of Jennie June from Autobiography of an Androgyne

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Jennie June/Ralph Werther/Earl Lind, 1870-1950: Researching the Author

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Jennie June/Ralph Werther/Earl Lind, 1870-1950: Researching the Author

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Jennie June/Ralph Werther/Earl Lind: The “Cercle Hermaphroditos” · Jennie June/Ralph Werther/Earl Lind, 1870-1950: Researching the Author · OutHistory

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‘No Kisses Is Like Youres’: An Erotic Friendship between Two African-American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century. 

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‘No Kisses Is Like Youres’: An Erotic Friendship between Two African-American Women during the Mid-Nineteenth Century. 

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Remember to close your browser window when you are done.

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Timeline Project_ Queer, Trans, and POC Western Lit-3

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‘To address you My Husband’: Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus’s Queer Epistolary Exchange.”

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‘To address you My Husband’: Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus’s Queer Epistolary Exchange.”

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Project MUSE - Queering Romantic Engagement in the Postal Age

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VanHaitsma argues that epistolary instruction in the nineteenth-century United States shaped civic engagement in predictably heteronormative ways even as it opened up possibilities for queer rhetorical practices. Her archival study draws on writings whose authors, diverse by gender, race, class, and education, all developed ways of queering cultural norms and generic conventions in their same-sex relationships.

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Exploring the Queer History of the Old West... Yeehaw, Kaz Rowe

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Exploring the Queer History of the Old West... Yeehaw, Kaz Rowe

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Exploring the Queer History of the Old West... Yeehaw

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Although absent from Hollywood portrayals of the old West, homosexuality was surely a feature of life on the frontier. “The West,” observe John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman in their history of sexuality, “provided extensive opportunities for male-male intimacy. Some men were drawn to the frontier because of their attractions to men.” Badger Clark was born in 1883 and grew up in Deadwood, South Dakota. His collection of western poems, Sun and Saddle Leather, was not published until the second decade of the 20th century. But the following verse about “The Lost Pardner” suggests a continuing—but largely forgotten—gay presence in the American West of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sun and Saddle Leather, by Badger Clark.

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Alan L. Hart was born on October 4, 1890 as a female, but upon becoming an adult transitioned to become male, with surgery and counseling. He was a physician and doctor of medicine, graduating from the University of Oregon Medical Department, and did foundational work to detect Tuberculosis in patients using x-rays. He also was a writer and novelist, and one of his books, The Undaunted, reads a bit as a personal biography of his life as someone who transitioned from female-to-male.

"When it came to outrunning gossip he found he couldn’t do it ... he went into radiology because he thought it wouldn’t matter so much in a laboratory what a man’s personality was. But wherever he went, scandal followed him sooner or later ... His story would get around and then he’d be forced to leave.”

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Alan L. Hart: Trailblazing Transgender Doctor Saved Countless Lives

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Alan L. Hart: Trailblazing Transgender Doctor Saved Countless Lives

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After transitioning in 1917, Alan L. Hart helped alter medical history

By Leo DeLuca

In February 1918 Alan L. Hart was a talented, up-and-coming 27-year-old intern at San Francisco Hospital. Hart, who stood at 5'4" and weighed about 120 pounds, mixed well with his colleagues at work and afterward-smoking, drinking, swearing and playing cards. His round glasses hemmed in his pensive eyes, a high white collar often flanked his dark tie, and his short hair was slicked neatly to the right. Though the young doctor's alabaster face was smooth, he could deftly go through the motions of shaving with a safety razor. A photograph of a woman, who he had told colleagues was his wife, hung on his boarding-room wall.

Then, one day that February, Hart was gone. He left behind nothing but his razor, a stack of mail, a pile of men's clothing-and the photograph, still gazing down from the wall.

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A New Hold on Life

Alberta Lucille Hart, known as Lucille, was born on October 4, 1890, in Halls Summit-a lonesome part of Kansas just west of the Missouri border. The child's father Albert, a hay, grain and hog merchant, died two years later, and his widow Edna moved with Lucille to make a new start in Oregon. They eventually settled there in the pretty town of Albany, where the Calapooia and Willamette rivers twist together like twine into a single sprawling flow.

When Lucille Hart grew old enough to learn about her father's death, she would comfort her mother: someday, she said, she would grow up to be a man, her mother's caretaker. Hart often secretly fantasized about marrying her female high school teacher-reveries in which she also saw herself as a man.

A talented writer, photographer and mandolinist, Hart graduated high school as salutatorian in 1908. She enrolled at Albany College, transferring to Stanford University in 1910. There, Hart entered the premedical department, joined numerous organizations and founded the school's first ever women's debate club. She enrolled at the University of Oregon Medical School in 1913. Four years later Hart graduated at the head of her class, the first woman to earn the coveted Saylor medal for being the top scholar in each of the school's departments.

"Dr. Hart was a brilliant student," a former classmate said in a 1918 edition of Spokane's Spokesman-Review newspaper."She had the distinction of being the only woman in the class.... She dressed often in a very mannish style, wearing particularly masculine hats and shoes and frequently tight skirts. She walked with a noticeable mannish stride."

Alberta Lucille Hart in the 1911 edition of Albany College's yearbook The Takenah. Credit: Lewis & Clark Special Collections and Archives

Hart, since childhood, had secretly identified as male and been attracted to women. Though she covertly dated several women throughout college, she largely kept her feelings hidden. Then one day, plagued by a phobia that was unrelated to her gender identity or sexual orientation, she sought help from her University of Oregon Medical School professor and doctor J. Allen Gilbert. Suspecting Hart was hiding a deeper secret, Gilbert encouraged her to confide in him. After two weeks of deliberation, Hart returned to the doctor and revealed her entire life story.

At first Hart sought psychiatric help from Gilbert, attempting to convert herself into a conventional woman. Therapy failed. Hypnosis failed. Finally, Hart halted the process-if the conversion worked, she realized, she would no longer think, feel or act like a man. And that thought repulsed her.

"Suicide had been repeatedly considered as an avenue of escape from her dilemma," Gilbert later wrote in his 1920 case study " Homo-Sexuality and Its Treatment," in which he referred to Hart anonymously as "H."

"After treatment ... proved itself unavailing, she came with the request that I help her prepare definitely and permanently for the role of the male in conformity with her real nature all these years...," Gilbert continued. "Hysterectomy was performed, her hair was cut, a complete male outfit was secured and ... she made her exit as a female and started as a male with a new hold on life and ambitions worthy of her high degree of intellectuality."

An Undaunted Trailblazer

After transitioning, Hart was hired as an intern at San Francisco Hospital in November 1917. He lodged with a fellow male intern and hung a photograph of a woman named Inez Stark on his boarding-room wall, describing her to others as his wife. (Hart and Stark, a schoolteacher, were then romantically involved but not officially married.) Three months later, in February 1918, Hart applied for a laboratory position with physician Harry Aldersonat the nearby Lane Hospital. Then something awful happened.

"Girl Poses as Male Doctor in Hospital," roared the headline of an article in the February 5, 1918, edition of the San Francisco Examiner. "Intern Unmasked as Girl Graduate of Oregon School," reported Portland's Oregon Daily Journal on the same day. "Woman Poses as Man Interne in Hospital at Frisco," echoed the Austin American on February 6.

It turned out that a former Stanford classmate had recognized Hart while he was applying for the Lane Hospital job, and had mentioned his past to someone on San Francisco Hospital's staff. The news eventually made its way to a hospital superintendent-and then into national headlines. Hart abruptly resigned his internship and headed home to Oregon, but stood by his conviction to transition to a man.

"I had to do it," Hart said in the March 26, 1918, edition of the Albany Daily Democrat. "For years I had been unhappy. With all the inclinations and desires of the boy I had to restrain myself to the more conventional ways of the other sex. I have been happier since I made this change than I ever have in my life, and I will continue this way as long as I live. Very few people can understand..., and I have had some of the biggest insults of my career.... I came home to show my friends that I am ashamed of nothing."

But Hart's hardships continued. Later in 1918 he quietly began practicing in the tiny, out-of-the-way coastal town of Gardiner, Ore.-but again, he was recognized and had to move. Hart wrote four medical novels throughout his life. His first, , is set in Gardiner and features a fictitious "Dr. Gilbert" who sheds light on Hart's real-life hurdles: "She 'made good' in every way, until she was recognized...," Dr. Gilbert says in Dr. Mallory, speaking of a female character. "Then the hounding process began."

Between 1918 and 1927, Hart worked as a doctor in at least seven states, married and divorced Inez Stark, then graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a master's in radiology in 1928. Hart bounced from state to state-and repeatedly, his fictional characters seemed to offer glimpses of his own struggles.

Albany College Debate Team in 1909. Hart is at right. Credit: Lewis & Clark Special Collections and Archives

"When it came to outrunning gossip he found he couldn't do it," Hart wrote of Sandy Farquhar, a gay male character, in his 1936 novel The Undaunted. "He went into radiology because he thought it wouldn't matter so much in a laboratory what a man's personality was. But wherever he went, scandal followed him sooner or later ... His story would get around and then he'd be forced to leave."

In The Undaunted, Farquhar commits suicide. But Hart kept going-and saved the lives of countless others.

"Hart was a pioneer in using chest x-rays to detect tuberculosis," says Elliot Fishman, a radiologist at Johns Hopkins University. "At that point, no one was really screening for TB. Sure, if you were coughing up blood, you would get x-rays, but no one was getting ahead of the disease. One in four patients had TB. Many of them were asymptomatic. Because of Hart, doctors were able to treat patients before they had complications. And since TB is an infectious disease, he was able to separate TB patients from others to stop the spread."

"Tuberculosis was a very stigmatizing disease," says Cristina Fuss, a cardiothoracic radiologist and associate professor of diagnostic radiology at Hart's medical alma mater, now known as Oregon Health & Science University. "Because of his own story, I imagine he could really empathize with someone who was struggling with being labeled. Today we still use x-rays to diagnose TB-they remain a hallmark of screening for TB. Hart was certainly a trailblazer."

Hart worked with TB patients in Washington State and Idaho before moving to Connecticut, where he earned a master's in public health from Yale University in 1948 at age 57. He continued his TB work in Connecticut. "Hart worked for the department of public health," Fishman says. "TB is a public health problem. He was able to combine his interest in radiology with his interest in public health. I imagine his work helped create other programs across the country."

Rewriting History

Hart lived out the rest of his life in West Hartford, Conn., with his second wife Edna Ruddick, before dying of heart disease at age 71 on July 1, 1962. In his will, Hart instructed an attorney to destroy the personal photographs and records he had stored in two locked boxes. But in 1976 historian Jonathan Katz identified Hart as "H" in Gilbert's 1920 case study, and unearthed the doctor's story. Six years later Edna Ruddick Hart died, leaving the majority of her estate to the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon in honor of her late husband.

"When uncovering the story of someone from the past, especially someone from the early 20th century-someone who, today, we would identify as transgender," says Peter Boag, a history professor at Washington State University and an award-winning LGBT historian, "we have to remember that, although the trans identity is recent in history, people often forget that trans people lived in the past. Uncovering the story of any trans person is not just something that affirms trans people's existence today. It rewrites our history."
Editor's Note: Up until 1917, Hart publicly identified as Alberta Lucille Hart and used the pronoun "she." After transitioning that year, Hart publicly identified as Alan L. Hart and used the pronoun "he."

Leo DeLuca is an award-winning writer from Dayton, Ohio. A graduate of the Columbia Journalism School's science concentration, DeLuca is currently writing a historical book concerning systemic racism and classism. He lives in New York City.

More by Leo DeLuca

This article was originally published with the title "Trailblazing Transgender Doctor Saved Countless Lives" in SA Health & Medicine Vol. 3 No. 5 ()

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Trailblazing Transgender Doctor Saved Countless Lives

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After transitioning in 1917, Alan L. Hart helped alter medical history

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This fictional novel by Alan Hart follows young doctor Richard Cameron’s quest to find an effective treatment for anemia, beginning in the west coast city of Seaforth, a fictional representation of 1920s Seattle. Within the medical-research plot, Hart intricately weaves the stories of two men—Cameron and radiologist Sandy Farquhar—whose personalities and bodies do not conform to the norms of the social or medical establishment.
Dedicated to medicine and the belief that scientific knowledge can alleviate human pain and suffering, these men must pursue their careers at great personal cost. Praised in its time for its insights into the inner workings of the medical field.
Alan Hart was the first known transgender graduate of the University of Oregon Medical School, earning his degree in 1917. His pioneering work on tuberculosis saved countless lives.

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Queer voices and identities have and always will exist, across time, the matrixes of identity, cultural definitions, and in spite of erasure, hatred, and bigotry. Their accounts of their lived experiences, love for self, their lovers/partners, and their community permeate art, literature, and poetry, and leave an impression of their existence for those that follow after. In exploring the repressive Victorian era and following queer people and their works through the turn of the century, we can see the lasting impact of their lives and very existences as human experiences.