Murray Hall (politician)

Depictions of Hall in The Evening World, January 18, 1901, night edition

Murray H. Hall (1841 − January 16, 1901) was a New York City bail bondsman and Tammany Hall politician who became famous on his death in 1901 when it was revealed that he was a biological female.[1]

He was born in Govan, Scotland under the name "Mary Anderson" and with the assigned gender of "female".[2] At 16, he began wearing male attire and using the name "John Anderson".[3] Hall reportedly migrated to America after being reported to the police by his first wife and lived as a man for nearly 25 years, able to vote and to work as a politician at a time when women were denied such rights.[2] He also ran a commercial "intelligence office."[4] At the time of his death, he resided with his second wife and their adopted daughter.[2] His biological sex had been a secret even to his own daughter and friends, who continued to respect his expression after death. After his death, an aide to a state senator remarked "If he was a woman he ought to have been born a man, for he lived and looked like one."[4]

His last home was an apartment in Greenwich Village, half a block north of the Jefferson Market Courthouse (now the Jefferson Market Library).[5] The building was renumbered in 1929, when Manhattan's Sixth Avenue was extended south, and is now 453 6th Avenue. The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project lists the building.[2]

Hall died from breast cancer,[2] treatment for which he seemed to have delayed for fear of exposing his biological sex.[4] He was buried in women's clothes in an unmarked grave in Mount Olivet Cemetery.[2][6]

References

  1. ^ "New York Times: death of Murray Hall, January 19, 1901".
  2. ^ a b c d e f Sharpe, Gillian (August 16, 2019). "The 19th Century politician who broke gender rules". BBC News. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
  3. ^ "Murray Hall Residence". NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. Retrieved February 2, 2024.
  4. ^ a b c Beemyn, Genny. Erickson-Schroth, Laura (ed.). Transgender History in the United States: A special unabridged version of a book chapter from Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (PDF). Oxford. p. 2.
  5. ^ "MURRAY HALL FOOLED MANY SHREWD MEN" (PDF). New York Times. January 19, 1901. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  6. ^ "MURRAY HALL'S FUNERAL.; The Man-Woman Was Dressed for Burial in Woman's Clothes". New York Times. January 20, 1901. Retrieved October 29, 2009.

Further reading

  • The San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project, "She Even Chewed Tobacco": A Pictorial Narrative of Passing Women in America, in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. Edited by Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey, Jr. (New York: Meridian, 1990), 183–194.
  • Karen Abbott, "The Mystery of Murray Hall," Smithsonian, July 21, 2011.
  • Melanie Senn, Murray: A Novel ISBN 979-8989109005, September 4, 2023. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHL9FLYL


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