Ethel Kimball’s Crime Spree, with Joan Ilacqua (episode 364)

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Transcript

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.

Ethel Kimball’s Criminal Double Life

Jake:
[0:14] This is episode 364, Ethel Kimball’s Crime Spree, with Joan Ilacqua. Hi, I’m Jake. In just a few minutes, I’m going to be joined by Joan Ilacqua for her second appearance on Hub History. We’re going to talk about Ethel Kimball, who earned a reputation as a career criminal in Boston in the 19-teens and Roaring Twenties.

Jake:
[0:40] Ethel’s known to history through the many newspaper articles about her many crimes, including fraud, kiting checks, and grand theft auto. But it’s her life between the newspaper stories that makes her interesting. She lived and worked as a man for years at a time, marrying three different women along the way. Ethel’s story gives us a chance to reflect on how we talk about gender and sexuality for historic figures if we don’t know how they would have talked about themselves. Way back in episode 105, we talked about Emma Snodgrass, who defied gender roles in Boston in the 1850s. I really struggled with how to describe someone who’d choose to live and work as a man in a time before the term transgender was common. A half-century later, Ethel’s story is similar, and Joan’s going to help us figure out how to navigate it. But before we talk to Joan Ilacqua about Ethel Kimball and her story, I just want to remind all our listeners that we’re celebrating a decade of hub history with our first-ever live episode on November 13, 2026.

Jake:
[1:49] On Friday the 13th, join me at Old North Church on Salem Street in the North End for a conversation with Laurie Rogers Stokes and Jonathan Chu. Have you ever wondered how Puritan Massachusetts transformed itself from the most conservative British North American colony into the most progressive American state? We’ll be talking about the Puritan legacy that created the Boston culture that we all live in and still shapes Boston and wider New England today. Despite their stern and unbending reputation, 17th-century Puritans saw themselves as progressive reformers committed to continuous learning and adaptation, and the vast woodlands of New England would be the garden where the seeds of a new culture could grow unimpeded by the religious and governmental constraints of old Europe. We’ll examine how the Puritans helped create our modern values of universal literacy and education, direct participation in government, and, eventually, not at first, separation of church and state. Then we’ll discuss how subsequent generations of reformers in Boston and beyond expanded the scope of these rights beyond white male Congregationalists to all Americans.

Jake:
[3:07] The event’s going to be free, but registration is required, so I know how many refreshments to buy and what to expect for the night. You can register by going to hubhistory.com slash live and following the link to Eventbrite. Again, please come out for our first ever live podcast episode on Friday, November 13th, 2026. Information registration link at hubhistory.com slash live. I’m joined now by Joan Ilacqua. Since 2020, Joan’s been the Executive Director of Queer History Boston, which was known until recently as The History Project. Before taking over as ED, Joan served as co-chair of the History Project’s Board of Directors, and she worked for Harvard Medical School as the Archivist for Diversity and Inclusion. She also serves on the Boston 400th Anniversary Commemoration Commission and the Community Archives Collaborative Steering Committee. Regular listeners will know Joan from her appearance on the show just a few episodes ago. We’ve been collaborating on her new podcast, Queer Boston’s Pursuit of Happiness, and she came on Hub History just a few weeks ago to talk about it. At the time, we told ourselves that she needed to come back soon and tell us one of the stories that didn’t make the cut for her podcast. And now here she is.

Inside Queer History Boston

Jake:
[4:30] Joan Ilacqua, welcome back to Hub History.

Joan Ilacqua:
[4:33] Thank you for having me.

Jake:
[4:35] Just in case any of our listeners missed your last appearance on the show, can you start us out by talking a little bit about the organization that you head up, Queer History Boston, and the work you do there?

Joan Ilacqua:
[4:47] I am the Executive Director of Queer History Boston. We are an LGBTQ plus community archives. Our collections, documents, New England broadly, but mostly Eastern Massachusetts. And we have materials dating from at the earliest now, the late 1800s. We have these photos of probably cross-dressing women from the North Shore, but the bulk of materials are gay liberation era, 60s, 70s, 80s into the 90s. We are completely independent. We’re not associated with a university, but that means that we can do fun things like create podcasts together, which is what you and I have been doing. I, myself, am a public historian. I was trained at UMass Boston, and I’m really excited today to talk about one of my favorite historical criminals.

Jake:
[5:34] Well, as you mentioned, we have been working on another podcast together, which is Queer Boston’s Pursuit of Happiness. And part of the reason you’re here today is to tell us a story that I don’t think is going to make it into the arc of that podcast. So I appreciate your saving a story for Hub History. And so I guess the place to start is with some newspaper headlines from 1921, when John Hathaway ends up getting arrested in Boston for attempting to steal a car on State Street. And, you know, I don’t think attempted auto theft was that uncommon of a crime in 1921. What makes this arrest in particular newsworthy in Boston?

Arrested as John Hathaway

Joan Ilacqua:
[6:20] So, when John is arrested, the arresting officers soon find out that John is in fact Ethel Kimball. Ethel is born in the late 1800s. They’re in their about 30s at this point. And they have a history of cross-dressing and committing crimes. And so they’re not cross-dressing in order to commit crimes. This is not like a Silence of the Lambs story or something. But incidentally, they are cross-dressing, they’re living as a man full-time for years at a time, and then also committing crimes and getting caught for it.

Jake:
[7:08] Not only is Ethel living as John at the point of this arrest, but Ethel John is married to a woman at the time that they’re arrested in 1921. What do we know about that marriage?

Joan Ilacqua:
[7:22] Ethel is married at this point to a woman named Louise Eichler of Somerville. When they’re arrested, Louise claims that she had no idea that Ethel was a woman.

Jake:
[7:33] After how long they were married?

Joan Ilacqua:
[7:35] I’m not sure how long they were married. They had been together for a while. I’m a little skeptical here. They probably were. I can’t think of a good puritanical euphemism for they knew each other.

Jake:
[7:49] In the biblical sense.

Joan Ilacqua:
[7:51] Exactly. That’s it. And so there is a marriage certificate for James Hathaway and Louise Eichler. Ethel used multiple names when dressed masculinely. Thomas Scollins comes up. John or James Hathaway comes up. Ethel, as James Hathaway, married Louise Eichler in Somerville in December of 1921. December 19th, 1921.

Jake:
[8:18] All right. So maybe I can believe that the bride had no idea if they were only married for about a month or so. But newlyweds, I don’t know. I’m still a little skeptical here.

Joan Ilacqua:
[8:28] According to Ethel’s arrest records themselves, which we have about 160 pages of, Louise comes forward later on and says, no, I knew.

Jake:
[8:39] It’s interesting to note that Ethel’s crimes weren’t only what’s reported, not just stealing the car, not just her other crimes we’ll talk about.

Jake:
[8:48] But just the mere act of dressing and living as a man was a crime at that time. What were either city or commonwealth laws here in Massachusetts like around cross-dressing in the 19-teens or 20s when this is happening?

Massachusetts Laws Policing Dress

Joan Ilacqua:
[9:05] Massachusetts has a long history of attempting to litigate what people wear, how they dress, what they look like. The earliest specific anti-cross-dressing law dates to the 1690s. So, in the historical records, we can find people actually before 1696 who are arrested for, you know, in the case of a woman named Deborah Byer in 1961, she’s arrested for putting on man’s apparel. Another man, Joseph Davis, in 1652, is charged with putting on women’s clothing. They’re both fined. Deborah was told to stand on a stool in a public place wearing a paper that read for putting on man’s apparel. Very puritanical.

Jake:
[9:51] In the very early days of the colony, the Puritans had laws restricting the way people could look and dress. And it wasn’t even gendered dress necessarily, but there were laws against people dressing too flamboyantly for their social class, essentially, and laws about men having too, flowing of a hairstyle. Like there were very restrictive appearance laws.

Joan Ilacqua:
[10:12] The Puritans were really concerned about the morality and action of the entire community, that that reflected back on the community as a whole. And so if people are stepping out of line, that gets in the way of your own faith and morality. So, anything transgressive is shut down pretty quickly. I mean, Marymount in Quincy is destroyed. Those kinds of things are happening. By the time we get to the 20th century, there’s not a specific anti-cross-dressing law. We do still have laws that declare that, quote, any and all unnatural and lascivious acts—, are outlawed in Massachusetts. There are versions of that law as far back as the 1870s, if not earlier. We don’t actually make consensual sodomy legal until 1974 in Massachusetts.

Jake:
[11:01] Wow.

Joan Ilacqua:
[11:02] Yeah. So anyway, you have, I think, in this early 20th century period, different groups, different actors who are trying to police what people are doing. Part of this is the New England Society for the Suppression of Vice starts in 1879 after a public event with Anthony Comstock of the Comstock Act fame. Eventually, that group is called the Watch and Word Society. And so they’re famous for the term band in Boston, that certain plays, theater performances are deemed inappropriate.

Jake:
[11:42] My understanding is that the name was because they were meant to watch for and ward off evil in Massachusetts.

Joan Ilacqua:
[11:49] Some theater productions would try to get banned in Boston because it created press, and then they could go put on their performance in Quincy or Somerville. And there’s anecdotally some stories of some performances that are not banned in Boston but want to be and are upset that the morality police are like, it’s not that bad.

Jake:
[12:06] The backdrop to this era is the Great War in Europe. How does the U.S. entry into World War I intersect with or reflect the growing interest in watching for evil in Boston?

Vice, War, and Boston’s Morality Police

Joan Ilacqua:
[12:20] Part of this is about venereal disease i didn’t realize this episode was going to be so sexy we’re talking about vd, vd and sodomy but in the early 20th century syphilis in particular there’s not an effective treatment until 1909 and so, with boston being a port town in particular by the time world war one comes around, People are anxious about the health of the armed forces. If sailors are on shore leave and they’re seeing sex workers, are they coming down with syphilis or gonorrhea? Are they, you know, a fit army? And so we start to see across the country different attempts to curb this. We have attempts to create laws to curb the visits of sailors to sex workers in Boston.

Jake:
[13:14] It’s funny because the same period in other places has a very different reputation. I think about, you know, Weimar Berlin has this reputation with these hedonistic nightclubs and anything goes sort of performances and lifestyles. Does Boston have that sort of reputation at the time? Does it have a nightlife where there are drag shows and these sort of anything goes nightclubs? Or is that outside of our reputation at the time?

Joan Ilacqua:
[13:42] I don’t know when anything goes. We do have, you know, this is the time period where Scully Square still exists, where there are theaters and dime shows and there are nationally famous crossdressers that come out of Boston. Julian Elting is one of those. But at the same time, we have this push by social hygiene activists to curb some of that late-night activity. I can’t think of better euphemisms for that.

Joan Ilacqua:
[14:12] There are two ways that Massachusetts social hygiene activists were looking at sex work. One of them was actually around protecting the sex workers themselves. We’ve heard in the last several years a lot about saving people from sex trafficking. They’re also talking about that in 1914. And so there’s actually a commission created for the investigation of white slave traffic, comma, so-called. They, in this report, come to the realization that sex work can’t be hindered.

Joan Ilacqua:
[14:45] People are going to become sex workers. People are going to work with sex workers. You can’t just shut it down. And so there’s this idea that you could regulate where men are meeting with women sex workers, that that might aid in this fight against immorality. We don’t do what they do in New Mexico, actually, which is to sort of vet which sex workers are healthy enough to go meet with sailors and soldiers. But we do have this really interesting law called the True Name Law that gets passed in 1918. This law is supposed to be a way to stop enlisted men from meeting with sex workers in hotels with the idea that the men and the sex workers would be giving false names to check into hotels. That it passes in 1918 is funny because World War I is effectively over by that point. And so we don’t have that specter of, you know, what if syphilis makes an ineffective army over us anymore?

Joan Ilacqua:
[15:48] But we still have that morality policing attitude in Massachusetts.

The True Name Law

Jake:
[15:54] That has to be a concern for somebody like Ethel Kimball, who’s living under a whole series of assumed names. James Hathaway, John Hathaway, whatever all the other names are. What did a true name law mean for somebody like Ethel?

Joan Ilacqua:
[16:13] The true name law essentially says you cannot check into a hotel or other lodging using a false name. You must use your legal name or your, you know, kind of as known by name. And…

Joan Ilacqua:
[16:28] According to newspaper articles from that time period, the people who are being arrested for the tree name law tend to be sex workers. They tend to be sometimes people who are public drunks. It’s not really sailors and soldiers who are getting arrested. And people who are keeping inns at this time are told to report people who are coming back and using different names or who are coming and checking into hotels over and over again. So they’re trying to get at this sort of at the source. So the funny thing about the true name law, too, though, we see all the way in 1949, President Truman is supposed to come to Boston. Harry S. Truman, the S doesn’t stand for anything. And a, local Democratic representative says that, well, if the president is going to come here and perform, and by performing, he means standing up, giving speeches, campaigning, that, he would have to register. Or his real name with the state public safety department under the state’s true name law. So they’re still swinging this around in the 1940s. This is also a time period where we see a crackdown on cross-dressing in cafes and cabarets. So yeah, we’re not beating the Boston is no fun allegations.

Jake:
[17:45] It’s interesting to note though that Ethel lived as John for some period of time. It seems like it’s not just for the basically one month that we can see

Jake:
[17:54] on paper that Ethel was married in 1921. How long was Ethel or John or James living as a man?

Years Living as a Man

Joan Ilacqua:
[18:05] I mean, for sometimes years at a time. So when Ethel is arrested as James Hathaway, I believe it’s been two years that Ethel has been masquerading is a word that they use in the time period to describe somebody cross-dressing. Masquerading as a man. The story was that Ethel was a graduate from MIT, was a widower, and went by James this whole time. There are a few photos. There’s not a ton. There are a couple that are in local newspapers that show Ethel in and out of drag or in and out of male attire, I should say, because it’s not drag exactly. And so Ethel, you know, is committed to this. And they get married, I think, at least three times. Louise Eichler from Somerville. There’s another woman named Pearl Davis from Maine, whose nephew turns the pair in because he is like, there’s something up with this Hathaway fellow. And then there’s another article from 1926 where Ethel is arrested in Manchester, New Hampshire for posing as the husband of Maude Allen, who’s a 23-year-old.

Jake:
[19:20] Well, we’re sort of getting to one of the struggles I’ve had in the past. Back in 2018, I recorded an episode about Emma Snodgrass, who in the 1850s, it was a very similar story. Emma gets arrested several times in Boston for cross-dressing. She’s living as a man for a while, gets a job as a man. And I really struggled with how to describe Emma, what pronouns to use for Emma, whether to use her given name or her chosen name. When you talk about people in history who lived before a time when terms like

Jake:
[19:58] gay and trans were in common parlance, how do you decide how to talk about somebody like that? How do you decide what terminology to use when you don’t know what terminology they would choose for themselves today?

Choosing Language for Historical Figures

Joan Ilacqua:
[20:12] I think it can be difficult. There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer. And like you said, so terms like transgender dates to the 1960s, I believe, officially, the first time it’s used in print. It doesn’t become a very widely known or used term until the 90s. There are other terms for cross-dressing that are used before that that might be considered slurs now, so I tend not to use them out of context. In terms like gay, gay has been around for hundreds of years, but to be used to describe like a homosexual person isn’t until the 1950s. So the language changes, it updates. When we as historians are talking about the past in this way, I think that using the terms we use today is appropriate as we’re talking about somebody and trying to understand them as historians and lovers of history today. That being said, I wouldn’t look at Ethel and say, that’s definitely a transgender person. One, we have no idea what Ethel thought about gender. And two, that’s not doing very much for us to pick someone out, put a label on them. I think it’s more interesting to dig into someone’s life story and try to understand some of their motivations and the way they’re moving through the world with pronouns. And we, you and I went back and forth and talked about this a lot for the first episode of Queer History Boston’s podcast. Pronouns are hard because one…

Joan Ilacqua:
[21:41] I don’t think that Ethel in particular was using they pronouns in the 1920s. You know, the public universal friend is using they pronouns in the 1700s, but that’s a different story. And so when we’re talking about someone, you know, I tend to jump between sometimes when Ethel is John, they’re he. Sometimes when Ethel is Ethel, they’re they or she. And definitively, we don’t know. I think as long as we’re being respectful that that’s the most important thing.

Jake:
[22:11] You mentioned something about trying to intuit or uncover how somebody like Ethel would have thought about themselves or referred to themselves and not really having access to that, but…

Tracing Ethel’s Paper Trail

Jake:
[22:23] How much could you uncover about Ethel Kimball’s life before this sort of more sensational arrest in 1921? How far back does the paper trail go for them?

Joan Ilacqua:
[22:33] So in newspapers, and I will say as states and libraries digitize new newspapers, new old newspapers, this kind of access becomes a lot better. So the earliest arrest I could find was from 1911 as Thomas Scollins attempting to buy a car using a false check.

Jake:
[22:56] Thomas Scollins is a great assumed name. Scollins.

Joan Ilacqua:
[22:59] And the newspaper article, it’s in the Boston Daily Globe, and it says, Ride ends an arrest. Young woman placed in custody after a long struggle in Pemberton Square. So the documents about Ethel’s life sort of before and around the arrests, I’ve been able to learn more about by going to the state archives. So the Massachusetts state archives, you can’t go and say, I need you to give me the arrest record of every person arrested for lewd, lascivious conduct. They can’t do that. But if you have a specific name or a specific person, they will look into it for you. And they’ll redact information that, you know, like medical information or medically used terms put onto someone. That’s the 160 some odd pages I mentioned earlier come from the state archives. Ethel’s family is interviewed so that they can better understand what her deal is. Ethel actually marries a man early on and takes his last name Wilson. I don’t know what happens to the husband. I don’t think that he sticks around, or that she sticks around considering the amount of girlfriends we have learned about. And so one thing I think about a lot when I look at Ethel’s story is that for the most part, we’re talking about somebody who is documented, somebody who’s not necessarily documenting themselves.

Joan Ilacqua:
[24:28] And so the information that we have about Ethel is through the lens of newspaper articles that are sensationalized and trying to sell newspapers. They’re through arrest records and court records, and there’s not as much that we know about Ethel themselves. They do say in one of their arrests when they’re asked, you know, why are you wearing men’s clothing? They say, well, I wanted to approach life’s problems from the perspective of a male, namely the problem of employment, which I think is funny because Ethel’s job is crimes.

Jake:
[25:07] Career criminal.

Joan Ilacqua:
[25:09] Exactly.

Jake:
[25:11] It’s funny though, in the earlier case of Emma Snodgrass that I had an episode about almost a decade ago, she said almost word for word the same thing, that she was assuming the identity of a man because it was easier to get a job because she needed to make a way in the world.

Joan Ilacqua:
[25:26] Yeah, you could look at somebody like Debra Sampson, who we talk about. I’m just trying to get people to go listen to Queer History Boston’s podcast. But we talk about Debra Sampson, this person who’s born, assigned female at birth, enlists in the army, serves for a couple of years, is honorably discharged, sort of becomes or uses the name Debra Sampson again, gets married, and then when she’s trying to get a pension later in life, kind of picks back up the uniform. And tells her story in order to help get that pension. Some historians that I’ve met who try to make a distinction between trans as an identity versus trans as an action or trans because women couldn’t survive any other way. I don’t know how helpful it is, again, for us in 2026 to try to put that kind of label onto somebody. We might not know someone’s motivation beyond what they say, which is they’re trying to approach the difficulty of employment. And maybe they were, and maybe they were also interested in getting married three different times like Ethel was.

Jake:
[26:33] Yeah, I guess we know that Ethel, in her various identities,

Jake:
[26:38] married women at least three times. Does it let us make any assumptions or judgments about their transness as we use that term today?

Gender, Sexuality, and Queer Boston

Joan Ilacqua:
[26:47] I think not based on their interest in women sexually, because transgender is about gender. Sexuality is about who you are romantically or physically attracted to. I just want to make the distinction that they’re not the same thing. And there are definitely trans people who are straight and trans people who are queer and everything in between. And so, I don’t know. I don’t know if Ethel would have known either.

Jake:
[27:16] At the time of these arrests, especially this 1921 arrest that we sort of opened with, this is also an era when folks that we’ve talked about on this podcast in the past, like, Charlie Gibson or Prescott Townsend, were able to live fairly openly as gay men in Boston. But these are sort of rich Boston Brahmin class gay men in Boston. It’s also a time when Harvard is having this big purge of gay faculty and students. It’s a time that our past podcast guest, Russ Lopez, discussed as sort of the end of a golden age for queer Boston. What was it like to have a queer identity in Boston in the 1920s if you didn’t have the armor of that sort of Brahmin class and male gender that somebody like Charlie Gibson or Prescott Townsend would have had?

Joan Ilacqua:
[28:10] Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because in a lot of ways we don’t know. In queer history, most of the figures we can find, the further back we go, are either folks, like you mentioned, who have privilege, who have station, who have money, who are, you know, maybe considered eccentric. Charlie Gibson, in particular, was called an eccentric. You know, there’s stories of him walking around the neighborhood in a fur coat, and like his, you know, silk pajamas, that kind of thing. But people without that kind of privilege to either be writing about themselves or living very openly, the only times we know about them in a lot of cases is because they are arrested or they’re written about in newspaper articles or in court records or even in medical records. We’re in an age in the early 1900s where eugenics is the norm, where you’re looking at somebody and trying to determine, you know, do you have a moral failing and is that because of your physicality? So, yeah, so it’s hard to say that. Exactly what the experience would have been like. I do think there’s also another layer of cover during this time period. Something that we don’t have today are rooming houses in the same way, boarding houses. And so, you know, you put a bunch of single women or a bunch of single men into a boarding house together and there’s your cover. You don’t have to worry about, you know, we’re living in sin together.

Jake:
[29:38] Just living down the hall from one another.

Joan Ilacqua:
[29:40] Yeah, they were roommates. And there’s in particular, actually, in the South End, a women’s boarding house where it turns out most of the women are lesbians in it. There’s a little documentation. There’s not enough. I’ve tried a few times to dig into it. And I have kind of the story more so than I have hard evidence that I could share. But trying to find normal people in queer history um prescott townsend is super interesting for that reason he has this brahmin armor like you said brahmin shield, for folks who don’t know prescott’s whole story actually theo linger i think has a whole podcast episode with you about prescott townsend yeah yeah but prescott’s born and i believe the 1880s goes to harvard serves in world war one in the 20s he becomes a patron of the arts in provincetown which is not a euphemism But the time we get to the 40s, he gets arrested for, committing an unnatural and lascivious act.

Joan Ilacqua:
[30:35] I’ve heard that described as a kiss. I’ve heard it described as more than a kiss. And for that kind of crime, you would have to pay a fine. And that would be sort of the end of it for a person like Prescott Townsend. And he decides that it’s not right. And he refuses to pay the fine. He ends up imprisoned on Deer Island. And when he comes out of prison, literally his name is stricken from the social register in Boston, New York. And so he becomes a gay activist for the latter part of his life. And so he’s, you know, really living as the gay liberation movement is kicking off. But he’s been exiled from the society. Yeah.

Joan Ilacqua:
[31:18] I think he’s sort of a special case where, as you have people in the earlier part of the 20th century, A. Pyatt Andrew, the congressman, Henry Davis Sleeper, everyone who hung out with Isabella Stewart Gardner on the North Shore. Like, you know, those guys are having raucous parties and they’re teaching at Harvard and they’re alums. And it’s a very, I think, a stark difference between what we know about some queer figures and what we just can’t know.

Jake:
[31:46] Well, thank goodness that Ethel Kimball was such a prolific criminal so that, as you say, she does show up in newspapers and we at least have that sort of oppositional history of her to draw from.

Ethel’s Criminal Schemes

Jake:
[31:58] And since these headlines about all her crimes are the way you can retrace her life, what kind of schemes, besides the marriages that became so scandalous and headline worthy, what were the sort of day-to-day crimes that Ethel was getting arrested for?

Joan Ilacqua:
[32:13] Ethel is passing fake checks. She gets arrested for forgery, and that’s usually in regards to writing and cashing fake checks. There’s larceny and attempted larceny a few times, although I’m not sure what she is trying to steal. There is a crime in 1912 of evading taxi fares that she gets arrested for. I’m looking at Ethel’s criminal record report from 1916. Right now, 1913, she gets arrested for common drunkenness. And then 1914, forging and uttering. And I believe uttering is lying in addition to trying to forge a check. So, Ethel’s not… I will say, as a historical figure, I love Ethel. I’d love to hang out with Ethel. I think Ethel would try to steal my identity in 2026. Because that seems to kind of be the person Ethel is. There’s sometimes when we’re doing queer history, I’ve encountered people in doing queer history where you’re looking for these, like, hero stories, people you can look up to and learn about and feel good about. And like, Ethel, I think you can look up to as somebody who lived life the way that she wanted to, but was definitely a criminal at the same time.

Jake:
[33:33] Do we know the end of Ethel’s story? Does she get caught for one of these schemes and rot in prison for the rest of her life? Does she live happily ever after with a new bride under an assumed identity?

Jake:
[33:44] Does she ride off into the sunset and start over in a different city? Do we know the end of the story?

Ethel’s Uncertain Ending

Joan Ilacqua:
[33:50] We know some of it. Ethel does go to jail more than once. She ends up at the Women’s Reformatory in Framingham, which is, I think, famously run by a lesbian during this time period. At one point, she ends up in the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, as I mentioned. Eugenics is a big thing then. But the last time I have found Ethel is in about 1930 or 1931, and it seems like she moves to New York City. And supposedly, the police in New York right back to Boston asking, what’s the deal with this person? And Boston’s like, good luck. She has a long record. For a split second recently, in doing some research actually at Mount Auburn Cemetery, there is an Ethel Kimball buried at Mount Auburn. And I was like, is it my Ethel? And after digging in, there is somebody born in the same time period with the same middle name, who is not this Ethel. That one didn’t commit any crimes, went and was a teacher in Washington, D.C., but never married. So she might still be part of the club as they say but I’m not sure what happened to Ethel in the end as more records become available like I said with digitized newspapers I kind of wonder about the state archives in New York, if there’s you know kind of an end to the story but, For now, Ethel rides off into the sunset to probably get married again and write some more fake checks.

Jake:
[35:17] And we get to imagine whatever end of the story we wish to.

Joan Ilacqua:
[35:21] Exactly. Ethel in a, I’m thinking a Model T car, which I don’t think they were driving in 1930, but forgive me, I’m not an automobile historian. But yeah, Ethel dressed as Thomas Scullins in a top hat in a Model T, riding off into the sunset.

How Joan Discovered Ethel

Jake:
[35:37] So I have to ask, as we’re sort of moving toward a wrap-up here, how did you first encounter Ethel Kimball? How did you get turned on to the story and decide to go down the newspaper archive rabbit hole to learn all this about her?

Joan Ilacqua:
[35:53] I first learned about Ethel from Libby Bouvier. Libby was the archivist of the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts. She was a founder of Queer History Boston. And I showed up at Queer History Boston as a grad student thinking, it would be fun to write a paper about drag in the early 1900s. I can write about anything. I’m going to write about drag. And Libby said, well, actually, we have this figure who’s kind of interesting. The meeting was supposed to be an hour. I think I was there for about three hours talking with Libby and taking notes. Ethel is mentioned in the book improper bostonians that queer history boston put out in 1998 and so the very first place but once i started, digging into newspapers and looking for ethel ethel’s popped right up and then i’ve been sort of obsessed ever since but the story really starts with libby, I think generationally, there was an urge to be like, Ethel is a lesbian. And now it’s like, who knows? Ethel was cross-dressing. Ethel could have had other gender experiences than solely her interest in women, which I think is a really cool, development and evolution of the way that we look at figures who transgress gender and sexuality norms of their own times.

Jake:
[37:16] Well, if people want to hear more stories about people who transgress gender

Jake:
[37:20] and sexuality norms of their times, there is another podcast that is a great way to learn about that. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about your podcast, Queer Boston’s Pursuit of Happiness?

Queer Boston’s Pursuit of Happiness

Joan Ilacqua:
[37:32] Absolutely. So, in honor of the 250th anniversary of the revolution, we have been working on this podcast called Queer Boston’s Pursuit of Happiness. It begins with the Revolutionary War, with that time period, specifically looking at folks who transgressed gender and sexuality norms of their time. The first episode is all about Deborah Sampson and a couple of other lesser-known figures who are either dressing masculinely or being documented in the newspaper for changing genders. And really, our goal with this podcast is to highlight some of these, I think, lesser-known figures who are an important part of Massachusetts history and the ways in, to make the world what they wanted it to be. And so our second episode, which just dropped a couple days ago, gets into the transcendentalists who have a lot of same-sex longing and into, what we can and can’t know about sexuality and gender in the 19th century. If you’re into history podcasts, it’s really fun. We’ve had a great time. And it’s meant that you and I get to work together, which has been really, really wonderful.

Jake:
[38:45] Yeah, that has been a lot of fun. And if people want to find Queer Boston’s Pursuit of Happiness or more of Queer History Boston’s work online, where should they look? Where should they follow that work?

Joan Ilacqua:
[38:57] We are at Queer History Boston on Instagram and YouTube, where we have a whole archive of queer history talks and events. If you go to QueerHistoryBoston.org slash podcast, the podcast will pop right up and we should show up in your podcast app of choice.

Joan Ilacqua:
[39:14] So just look for Queer Boston’s Pursuit of Happiness and you’ll find us.

More Queer History and Podcast Links

Jake:
[39:19] Well, Joan, thank you very much for joining us again on the podcast and talking a little bit about Ethel Kimball and her many reinventions.

Joan Ilacqua:
[39:28] My pleasure. I always love talking about Ethel.

Jake:
[39:33] To learn more about queer and trans history in Boston, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com slash 364. We’ll have links to Queer History Boston’s website and social media, as well as more information about the podcasts we’ve been making together, Queer Boston’s Pursuit of Happiness.

Jake:
[39:53] Check out the QHB website for their blog, public events, podcast, and resources for researchers. If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubhistory.com. I maintain profiles for Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and over on Mastodon as at hubhistoryatbetter.boston. These days, the only social media site where I regularly post and I interact with listeners is Blue Sky. You can find me on Blue Sky as hubhistory.com. If you’re off of social media, just go to hubhistory.com and click on the Contact Us link. While you’re on the site, make sure you sign up for our live event. Again, hubhistory.com slash live. Also, hit the subscribe link, and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please consider writing as a brief review. If you do, drop me a line, and I’ll send you a Hub History sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.