A Gender Variance Who's Who

 Moore was born in the then slum area of Oakwellgate, Gateshead (just across the River Tyne from Newcastle), and raised as a boy called Robert. Moore and her siblings were raised by their mother. From an early age she had declared herself to be Jennie, a female, and attempted to live as girl. By 1901 13-year-old Robert was incarcerated at the Abbot Memorial Ragged and School, where children under 14 were sent after arrest for vagrancy, truancy and/or begging, or if vulnerable to abuse and neglect. This was an ‘industrial school’ where children were offered skill training and ‘moral education’. 

By 1911, when she was 24, Jennie, listed as Robert, was living at a seaman’s boarding house in South Shields and working there as a servant, and was so recorded in the Census of that year.

Daily Mirror 1913

By 1913 Moore was living as Jennie, and was convicted of keeping a disorderly house in Hartlepool, County Durham. She was taken to Durham for trial, and a street photograph of her was published in the Daily Mirror. Many so charged would have appeared in court in male clothing to mitigate the sentence, and claimed the transvesting as a lark or fancy dress. Jennie however was now confirmed in her gender, and appeared as her true self.

Jennie and her brother Fred Coulthard were in Gateshead in 1915. They were observed by the police, and charged with “being a reputed thief he did loiter in Gateshead for the purpose of committing a felony”. Jennie was, as usual, initially taken to be a cis woman, until she was examined at the police station. She explained that she had lived as female when she could since childhood. When asked why, made no reply. A search of Jennir’s home found no male clothes at all, but did find a well-kept neat flat with a piano and a gramophone, good curtains and carpet. The police also found correspondence with a soldier serving in the already ongoing war. Jenny was committed to a men’s prison for three months, and Fred was fined £1/7/-. 

In 1916 she was arrested in Liverpool charged with living an immoral life and ‘permitting a house to be used for immoral traffic’. She had been living as Mrs Jennie Gray, wife of James Gray – who was also charged with the same offence. Initially the arresting officers again accepted that she was a cis woman.

• “Man who dresses like a woman”. Daily Mirror, 16 December 1913 p9.
• "Man as a Woman: A Remarkable Masquerade: Gateshead Man Sent to Prison". Greenock Telegraph. 2 August 1915 p6.
• "Man dressed as a Woman: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Strange Disclosures". Newcastle upon Tyne Journal, 2 August 1915 p8.
• "Man-Woman at Gateshead: Extraordinary Case of Masquerading". The Darlington North Star, 2 August 1915 p5.
• “Man in woman’s clothes: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Remarkable evidence at the Police Court”. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 2 August 1915 p9.
• “Man dressed as woman: Extraordinary Liverpool disclosures”. Liverpool Evening Express, 29 June 1916 p3.
• “Man and ‘Wife’: Male Prisoners sent to Assizes”. Liverpool Daily Post, 30 June 1916 p3.
• Nic Aaron & Jeanie Sinclair. "Remembering Jennie Moore" in Kit Heyam & Jon Ward (eds). New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity: Forging A Home For Ourselves. Bloombury Academic, 2025: 87-113.

Unfortunately all we have as primary sources are newspaper articles that give her male name, and treat her as a curiosity. We can however see past these and see a lone trans woman unable to get a regular job, and without information about other trans persons.

1913 was almost the last time that fashionable women wore ankle-length skirts/dresses.  The changes brought about by the 1914-8 war led to more practical shorter skirts, and in the 1920s the demands of fashion took this further.

The government had passed the National Insurance Act 1911. All workers who earned under £160 a year had to pay 4 pence a week into the scheme; the employer paid 3 pence, and general taxation paid 2 pence. This provided some sick care and a small income whilst ill. This was the beginning of the welfare state, and was copied from the system that had been introduced in Germany in 1883. This was obviously a good step forward, but the associated NI cards, which were required when starting a job, would have outed Jennie and other trans persons, and thus made it very difficult to get a legal job.

The 1915 conviction re loitering would have been under the 1824 Vagrancy Act, while the 1913 and 1916 convictions of keeping a disorderly house would have been under the 1751 Disorderly Houses Act.

In January 1916, military conscription was introduced for the first time in British history, despite the previous raising of one of the largest all-volunteer armies in history for the Great War. Presumably Jennie’s male persona was called. Did her female persona result in rejection? Did she serve, voluntarily or otherwise, and die on the Western Front (as did the trans protagonist of the novel The Scarlet Pansy)? We have no record of her after 1916.

Whatever happened to her after 1916, Jennie Moore is what we might call a primary transsexual, although she would not know the term. When she was asked in court why she lived as a woman, she did not answer, probably because she had not encountered any suitable jargon even though ‘travesty’ and ‘transvest’ as a verb had been in use in England since the beginning of the 18^th century, and 'Travestiment' was being used by 1832, and 'Travestier' by 1883. It is likely that Jennie did not associate herself with those terms in that they were mainly used for cross-dressing, and she did not voluntarily cross-dress as a man.

Original July 2023, revised and updated December 2025

During the 1970s travesti sex workers in Brazil became more accepted by some members of the public, if not by the police, and along with that there were two other developments:

1) the injection of silicone rather than the more dangerous oil or paraffin to feminise the body. Such pumping (bombadas) was first done in New York by competent doctors such as Dr David Wesser, but a few years later was being done by non-doctors (such as Jimmy Treetop in New York).

2) A few Brazilian travestis had managed to get to Paris, and returned rich enough to buy not one but two or more apartments. The first was almost always for their mother: a casa da minha mãe. Then greater numbers went. At the peak of the migration there were – for a short while – special charter flights for travestis (although in mufti). It was estimated that of 700 prostitutes in France, 500 were from Brazil – and they had taken over the main prostitution venues in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne. They were treated somewhat better than in Brazil – they were addressed as Madame or Mademoiselle, but they were still living on the margin, subject to violence and having to pay both the police and a travesti boss for a place to stand. The French prostitutes’ union protested their presence, accusing them of unfair competition in that as illegal immigrants they did not pay taxes.

Elisa was from a relatively well-off family in Rio de Janeiro.  She participated in some Carnival balls, and performed in the Săo Paulo stage show Les Girls when it came to Rio

Elisa (in Et il voulut)

.  She had been able to afford to be pumped in New York. She learned how to do it, and after buying silicone in New York, she set up in business in Paris in 1973 as a bombadeira. She did have a gig at Chez Madame Arthur, but mainly controlled the prostitution ‘stands’ and was known as la Reine de Pigalle. If a Brazilian sex worker did not accept her terms, she could get the worker deported, as happened to Jaqueline Welch. 

Elisa was featured in the film  Et il voulut être une femme, about travestis and other trans women in Paris in the 1970s.  The film includes Elisa's surgery.

Competition came from Claudia Tavares, who was also a bombadeira, who sourced her silicone in Paris and had cheaper prices. Elisa put a lot of pressure on Claudia, to get her to leave France. Threats and violence mounted until Claudia killed Elisa.

Claudia in later years,

Claudia was convicted for the killing, served seven years in a men's prison, afterwards obtained completion surgery in France, found a husband and became a celebrity chef providing Brazilian cuisine.  She has written some books, giving her version of things. 

After the murder, many rivalries, envy, scandals, and threats surfaced among the immigrant travesti sex workers themselves. At the same time, the pressure from the French authorities grew: between 1980 and 1984, expulsions were multiplied because of irregularities in their visas. Migration of Brazilian travestis to Italy and other European countries commenced.

• Michel Richaud (dir).  Et il voulut être une femme, with Elisa.  France 76 mins 1978.  IMDB. Part 1 online. 
• “Reavesti brasileiro é assassinado em Paris”. Cidade de Santos, 1.11.1980: 7.
• "Elisa morreu na Praça Pigalle. Mataeam o maior travesti do mundo”. Diário da Manhã, 2.11.1980: 1.  
• Joao S Trevisan translated by Martin Foreman. Perverts in Paradise. Gay Men’s Press, 1986: 165.
• Don Kulíck. Travesti : Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes. Univeristy of Chicago Press. 1998: 178, 217.
• Julieta Vartabedian. Brazilian Travesti Migrations: Gender, Sexualities and Embodiment Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 : 89, 197.
• Igor Danin, research 2025.

• Claudia Tavares. A volta da gata. Livaria Editoria, 1983.
• --  La femme inachevée.  Editions R Deforges, 1987. *
• -- Circonstances atténuantes : Récit.  Nicolas Philippe, 2002. *
• -- A Rejeitada. Cia, dos Livros, 2011. 
• -- Claudia.  Faralonn éditions, 2022.
• -- La volonté d'exister. Nombre 7, 2023.

-----

No surname is given by either Vartabedian or Kulíck. Vartabedian has no entry in her index for any Elisa. Kulíck has an index entry for a different Elisa, but not this one.

Vartabedian writes: “During the beginning of the 1970s, the first ‘pumped up’ (bombadas) travestis did it in the United States, in New York, with the practitioner Wesser.” Apparently she did not know that Wesser was a doctor, even though I wrote of him two years before her book came out.

The practice of pumping silicone spread across Brazil and south America during the 1980s. In 1983 there was a sort of epidemic in São Paulo where many travestis were dying painfully after industrial silicone was sold as filtered silicone. (Trevisan p165).

Claudia's books are very hard to find.   As is the film, Et il voulut être une femme.

Health warning:   estrogen is far better than silicone for feminisation.

Kitzing was born and raised with the name Fritz in the garrison town of Neuruppin, northwest of Berlin. Kitzing trained as a bookkeeper and moved to Berlin in the late 1920s. In late 1933 Kitzing was arrested on Augsburger Straße while in female clothing and charged with prostitution under §361/6 (which dealt with female but not male prostitution) which led to four weeks in jail and then six months in the Rummelsberg workhouse as “protective custody”. Kitzing managed to escape 16 March 1934 while en route to the dentist, and with family help made it to England. However an arrest in London for prostitution led to deportation back to Berlin, although not to re-imprisonment.

Fritz, realising the political situation, was now mainly wearing male clothes. However in June 1935 it was alleged that while walking in female dress near Kurfürstenstraße, he met a Sturmabteilung (SA) man, Herman Rank, out of uniform, and made a pass. Kitzing admitted being gay but denied solicitation. Simply being gay was not a crime up to that point but the Nazi government was about to change the rules. Kitzing was dismissed with a warning.

The police kept watch on Kitzing, but did not catch him in female dress. However, in July 1935 a neighbour complained to the police of a transvestite making trouble. This was taken to be Kitzing, but arrest was eluded until March the next year. A search of her apartment revealed her female clothing, which was confiscated and put in storage. After finally being arrested Kitzing was obliged to dress in the stored clothing and be photographed. 

The police wrote to the Gestapo that “It would be a great service to the public—and even to these morally depraved people themselves—if we sent Kitzing to a concentration camp”. Despite this, Kitzing’s family, especially the brother Hans Joachim, continued to be supportive. Kitzing served five months in the Lichtenburg camp, and was then transferred to Sachsenhausen, before being released in April 1937.

In March 1938, a fellow inmate from Sachsenhausen recognised Kitzing although she was then dressed as female, and informed the police, who told the Gestapo who made an arrest. They discovered letters to friends in London describing conditions in Sachsenhausen. Kitzing was accused of distributing “atrocity propaganda”. He, as were many others, was compelled to enlist in the Wehrmacht, and was in occupied Belgium for most of WWII. 

Afterwards he returned to West Berlin and worked in an antique shop. Kitzing lived until the 1990s. The brother Hans Joachim, a writer, was a war correspondent in Rostov. He never returned from the war.

• Andreas Sternweiler. “Er ging mit ihm alsbald ein sogenanntes ‘Festes Verhältnis’ ein: ganze normale Homosexuelle”in Joachim Müller & Andreas Sternweiler, eds. Homosexuelle Männer im KZ Sachsenhausen. Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 2000: 58-78.
• Clayton J Whisnant. Queer identities and politics in Germany : a history, 1880–1945. Harrington Park Press, 2016: 231
• Jennifer Evans & Elissa Mailänd. “Cross-dressing, Male Intimacy and the Violence of Transgression in Third Reich Photography”. German History, 39,1, June 2020: 2-10, 19, 22-4.
• W Jake Newsome. “Fritz Kitzing”. LGBTQ+ Stories from the Holocaust, Online.
• Jennifer V Evans. The queer art of history : queer kinship after fascism. Duke University Press, 2023: 36, 92-7.
• Joanna Ostrowska. “Non-heteronormative victims of the Nazi regime” 39-45 Chronicles of Terror. No date: 3. Online.
• Jennifer Evans summarises Kitzing’s story in Twitter/X.