Who Was Jack Bee Garland (aka Babe
Bean)?
Jack Bee Garland, also known by various
other names including Babe Bean, was a pioneer on multiple fronts,
crossing boundaries of gender, ethnicity, class, and geography.
Garland was born Elvira Virginia Mugarrieta
in December 1869 in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, the
child of an upper-class white woman and a Mexican military officer who
became the city’s first Mexican consul. A rebellious tomboy, Garland was
sent to a convent school, but longed to escape, later recalling, “How
often I wished I could enjoy the liberty that the world sees fit to allow
a boy.”
To get out of the convent, Garland married
a family friend at age 15, but divorced a few months later. Eschewing his
privileged background, Garland began dressing most of the time in men’s
clothing, spending the next several years working odd jobs, traveling, and
living in various temporary residences including hobo camps.
In 1897, Garland was arrested in the
central California town of Stockton for masquerading as a man. Perhaps to
avoid being given away by voice, Garland claimed to be mute due to an
accident and communicated in writing. Garland gave his name as Babe Bean
and made no attempt to hide that he was biologically female, stating that
he dressed as he did in order to “travel freely, feel protected, and
find work.”
For reasons that are unclear—but were
perhaps related to his class background—the authorities soon released
Garland, much to the chagrin of a group of young women who wrote a letter
to the editor demanding that if Babe Bean could dress in men’s clothing,
“the rest of us ought to have the same privilege.” Garland, who lived
alone on a houseboat in a lake, was accepted as an eccentric local
celebrity. The press often speculated about his gender, referring to him
as the “trousered puzzle” and “the mysterious girl-boy,
man-woman.” Garland was hired as a reporter by The Stockton Evening Mail
and was made an honorary member of the town’s bachelors’ club.
When the Spanish-American War broke out in
1898, Garland left for the Philippines, taking a job as a cabin boy on a
troop transport ship. Using aliases including Beebe Beam and Jack
Garland—and contending with various brushes with authority when
discovered to be biologically female—Garland worked as a Spanish
language interpreter, a medic, and a war correspondent (usually writing as
a man, but occasionally as a woman); accounts differ, however, as to
whether Garland ever actually served as a soldier.
While many “passing women” throughout
history were butch lesbians who cross-dressed in part to legitimize their
same-sex relationships (including, in some cases, legal marriages),
Garland had no apparent romantic interest in women. “Many have thought
it strange that I do not care to mingle with women of my own age, and seem
partial to men’s company,” he once wrote. “I am never happy nor
contented unless with a few of ‘the boys.’” Garland preferred the
company of male chums and was somewhat misogynistic (for example, opposing
women’s suffrage), but there is no clear evidence that his relationships
with men were homoerotic.
After leaving the Philippines, Garland
returned to San Francisco. Though at first adopting women’s clothing,
Garland soon resumed cross-dressing as a man, despite a 1903 ordinance
that made it illegal to wear the apparel of the opposite-sex. Following
the 1906 earthquake and fires, he served as a nurse (uncommon for men at
the time) and volunteered with the Red Cross. By now making a more
concerted effort to pass as a man, he worked for the next three decades as
a freelance social worker, serving homeless men who affectionately dubbed
him “Uncle Jack.” In contrast to his former notoriety, he lived a
quiet life, residing in a series of rooming houses, and generally escaped
being hassled by police.
In September 1936, Garland collapsed on a
sidewalk and died in the hospital due to peritonitis resulting from an
ulcer. After performing an autopsy, medical authorities announced that
Garland was anatomically female, and his family background was revealed.
Since no record of his service could be found, requests that he be buried
with military honors were denied.
Since his death, Garland has been reclaimed
both as a passing woman and as a transgender man. The San Francisco Gay
and Lesbian Project’s “She Even Chewed Tobacco” slide show, compiled
in the late 1970s, situated Garland within a tradition of butch woman who
identified as female—and often as lesbian—but cross-dressed to take
advantage of the freedom and opportunities available to men.
But in his 1990 book From Female to Male,
FTM International founder Louis Sullivan claimed that Garland was a
transman, and possibly gay as well. “Jack Garland demonstrated, though
his lifelong adherence to his male identity, that his reasons for living
as a man were more complex than just his dissatisfaction with the way
society expected women to dress,” Sullivan wrote.
Garland’s
story illustrates the way understanding of identities can shift over time.
From today’s vantage point, it is impossible to know how Garland—who
sometimes seemed to purposefully straddle the genders—would have
identified.
Liz Highleyman can be reached at PastOut@qsyndicate.com.
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