Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. And today's topic features a really fun figure of the early twentieth century. There is a little high society in this one, a lot of money, some gender bending, a good amount of debauchery, a very unique doll, and loads of speedboats. So this may actually be a true scenario where there really is something for everyone. The topic of today's podcast is Joe car Stairs. And first I have to mention that this was actually suggested by a listener, and I am a disorganized mess and I cannot find the listener's name, and I feel really really bad because I would love to credit them because this has been really nothing short of a delight to research. Uh. Second, we have to contextualize pronouns on this one a little bit. Joe was a woman, and though she took a man's name and she lived in many ways as a man, she would also introduce herself as a woman. So while she may have identified in many ways as male, since she generally referred to herself as a female, we're going to use feminine pronouns here, and she does make it a little bit tricky because even throughout her life she kind of delighted when people would mistake her for a boy or a man, but she would usually then always also delight in telling them, no, I'm actually a woman, kind of to watch their shocked reaction. She really played that edge of gender fluidity. And so we're going with feminine pronouns. It's possible if she lived today, where there is sort of a different vocabulary around gender and how it works and the fluidity of it, she may have chosen a different one for herself, but since she seemed to stick to feminine pronouns, we are going to do the same. Uh. And as I was reading up on Joe, I found myself really delighting in so many of the details of her life, really eccentric and interesting and fascinating. Eating So this one is going to end up being a two parter. She did lead a wild and eccentric life, some of which we only know of through her telling of it, and she was a very big personality. So her primary biographer that that wrote the one existing biography of her, really continually points out that there is every possibility that some of these stories are embellishment. Uh As, she was definitely really into storytelling and she was very much into this idea of creating her own persona. So just keep that in mind as we go. Joe Carstairs came from money. Her grandfather was Jabez Able Bostwick, who made this fortune working as the treasurer of Southern Improvement Company, which was a venture of John D. Rockefeller. Her grandmother, so job as his wife, was Helen Celia Bostwick, and this is one of the few family members that Joe really seemed to admire and identify with through her whole life. She would describe Nellie, as Helen was called as tough, wicked, a wonderful person in a very strong will. When Jabez died in a fire in eighteen ninety two, he left behind a ten million dollar fortune. Yeah, definitely some cash in the family. And just in case you do not recognize the name the Southern Improvement Company, that group later changed its name to Standard Oil, which you probably will recognize. Javis and Nellie had three children. They had a daughter who was also named Nellie, a daughter named Evelyn, and a son named Albert. And Evelyn was born Francis Evelyn Bostwick on June eighteen seventy two. And as she grew up, this middle child was a vivacious and strong willed woman herself. She had a bit of a party reputation, and she had some early brushes with drug use that actually turned into a habit. Later on, she was known as something of a fem fital, complete with a story about backing out of an engagement right at the last minute. But then Evelyn met scottsman Albert Carstairs while traveling in Europe. There's a lot of haziness around this marriage, which lasted for ten years. We know that Albert was a captain in the second Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles and that he served in both Egypt and Malta, but it seems like he left the army when he married Evelyn. We don't actually know if there, if they were happy or not, but there was definitely some infidelity on Evelyn's part. Yeah, it was kind of one of those sudden I met this guy and I'm marrying him. And she was such a wild child at this point that that just was what it was. It all seems sort of a tumultuous thing and We do know that Evelyn and Albert were in London in nineteen hundred, because that's where and when Joe was born as Marian Barbara Carstairs on February first of that year. Whether or not Albert Carstairs was actually Joe's biological father is unknown. We do know that Albert joined the army once again just a week before Joe was born. When she was five, Joe was thrown off a camel she was riding at the London Zoo and she was knocked unconscious. When she regained consciousness, people started calling her Tuffy, and she took this nickname to heart. In fact, she once told a friend that her biography should start off with that story, and writer Kate summer Scale actually obliged her in a book about the Carstairs And even at this young age, Joe's life, which was privileged in terms of financial comfort, was really something of a mess. Her parents had divorced at this point, and Albert Carstairs had basically vanished from her life. Her mother was regarded by Europe as being a socialite simply by way of dirty money that was gained, possibly by nefarious means. But in spite of all these questions about the origin of her wealth, Evelyn managed to make a place for herself in British society. She eventually became a Lady in waiting to King Edward the Seventh, wife Queen Alexandria. Evelyn also remarried in nineteen o three to a British Army captain named Francis Francis, and she had two children with him. Evelyn Francis, who was called Sally, was born in nineteen o four, and Francis Francis Jr. Was born in nineteen o six. Joe was not very enthusiastic about these new siblings. She had some jealousy over her mother's tendency to dote on her brother Frank, presumably because he was a boy, although it should be noted that Evelyn was never really consistent with her affection for any of her children. Conversely, Joe's tomboyish ways weren't exactly a source of delight for her mother and stepfather either. Captain Francis wanted to find a way to cure Joe of her wildness, and Joe herself had never really identified in a girlish way. Later on in her life she would remark that she quote was never a little girl, I came out of the womb queer. At one point, when Joe was eight, Francis actually caught her stealing his cigars, and in a manner that many people have tried to cure their children of dabbling and smoking. He thought he would teach her a lesson and forced her to sit down and smoke the whole thing because he thought she's gonna get sick as a dog. But little did he know that Joe had actually been stealing and smoking cigars for a while at that point, so her eight year old self was pretty relaxed as she sat and smoked her cigar with him right to the end. Evelyn and the Captain did not stay together. They stayed legally married until nineteen fifteen, but they really had not been together as a couple for years by that point. As was the case in her marriage to Albert Carstairs, Evelyn also had numerous affairs. Captain Francis tried to keep his two children away from her as much as possible due to her unpredictable behavior, which was fueled by alcohol and a heroin addiction, although Joe really did not have that same level of protection. Yeah, Captain Francis was very protective of the two children that he had had with Evelyn, but Joe kind of was on her own. Despite her inconsistency as a mother, Evelyn was also really jealous of other women who cared for her children. She even fired a nanny at one point because Joe had grown especially close to her and for her Joe was extremely rebellious. She bullied her younger siblings, and she was defiant. She spent a good deal of time sort of lost in her own fantasy world, which centered largely around kind of maritime interests in boats, which were the only things that she claimed to admire as a child. And then, at age eleven, Joe was sent back to America to go to boarding school. And while this was framed as some sort of punishment for her bad behavior, Joe really saw this as a door opening for her to have some fun, independent times of her own. She was put on an ocean liner to make the voyage across the Atlantic to Stanford, Connecticut, where she would attend the Low Haywood School. She fit in there really quickly, in part because she could do the French homework of the other girls at the school. Joe had picked up quite a bit of French while her mother had employed a French nanny, and though her life at the school really seemed pretty carefree, Joe was constantly afraid that Evelyn was going to suddenly change her mind and send word that Joe had to return to Europe, but that never actually happened. She didn't even see her mother for four years until Evelyn's third marriage in nineteen fifteen to yet another military man, this one French and also account named Roger de Peregny. Unlike Evelyn's first two husbands, Joe adored Parrene and he seemed to love her as well. The two of them became really great pals. They went carousing, they smoked cigars, they raced cars. Parny even altered one of his racing cars to fit Joe's frame so she could drive it. They even visited some brothels together, and perhaps one of the reasons that Joe was so very fond of Parignee was because he was not inclined, as others had been, to always follow her mother Evelyn's lead. In fact, the marriage did end as the others had, but this time because Evelyn couldn't stand Parrenees infidelities. Rather than the other way around. In nineteen sixteen, Joe headed back to Europe, but this time it was to drive ambulances in the or Effort. Joe was only sixteen at the time, and she had persuaded her grandmother, Nellie, to use her influence to get her into the job. Joe had told Nellie that she wanted the experience because she had hopes of eventually becoming a doctor. And before we get to the next phase of Joe's life, where she is going to meet some friends that she will stay close to for the rest of her days, uh, we're gonna have a quick word from one of the great sponsors that keeps the show going. So, while she was living in Paris with four other young women who were also driving ambulances, Joe really just watched the war unfold. She had quite a lot of sort of world experience through this set up. The flat that she shared with these other women had a glass ceiling so they could see planes overhead at night. Uh. And Joe watched buildings be shelled and she saw aircraft down. At one point, she struggled to pull a down pilot from the wreckage of his plane, only to realize that he was already dead. Joe's time in Paris was also when she had her first sexual experience, which was with a woman. Despite having had crushes while in boarding school, she insisted that these relationships were always chased, and while she visited brothels with her French stepfather, she claimed to have never taken part of any sexual activities there. And soon after she had this first experience, she also had an affair with a woman who Joe would later say changed her life, and that was Dorothy Wilde known as Dolly, who was the niece of the famed poet Oscar Wilde, and many people described Dolly as sort of the female counterpart to her infamous uncle, who had died in nineteen hundred. Dolly was a woman who was managed, she loved other women, She drove ambulances like Joe, and she actually lived in the shared flat that Joe was living in Paris. Joe learned from Dolly the art of cultivating this theatrical persona. Dolly was at the center of the bohemian social scene in Paris, whereas Joe was out on the edges. Joe watched as Dolly ar armed everybody around her, only to forget the promises and appointments that she made basically as soon as she made them. We don't know how the affair between Joe and Dolly came to an end, but this friendship left Joe with the sense that she could herself cultivate a male alter ego. Yeah, and it was never specifically spelled out in any of the things I read, but it seems that it was during this time in Paris that she started going pretty much exclusively by the name Joe Uh and her mother was actually also living in Paris at this time. She met her fourth husband there in nineteen seventeen, when Evelyn became a laboratory assistant at the College de France, and his name was Sergei Voronov, and he was a surgeon, and she was assigned to him as an assistant. And Voronov conducted many experiments involving testicular pulpe as a cure as like a curative agent, as well as testicular grafting as a therapeutic measure. He did some kind of wacky science. Uh. Voronoff was not always taken seriously by the medical community, but Evelyn seemed to really believe in him. She presented papers with him. She worked dutifully at his side, and her family's money was funding most of his research. When rumors reached Evelyn that Joe was having lesbian affairs, she invited, or, as Joe characterized it, summoned her daughter to visit her. When Joe arrived, her mother confronted her about her sexuality and told her that she needed to get married or she would lose all her rights to the family money. And when Joe retold this, she made a series of tapes in the nineteen seventies with the intent that she was going to find a ghostwriter to write her autobiography. The way she talks about it is that she completely didn't care. She blew off her mother's threat. She told her to go ahead and disinherit her, but in truth she actually acquiesced through a bit of a loophole. In nineteen eighteen, Joe actually married her childhood friend, Count Jacques du Pray, who was rumored to actually be one of Evelyn's lovers. So there's some speculation that Joe particularly selected this man just to spite her mother by saying, fine, I'll marry a guy that you are romantically involved with. Uh, Jacques and Joe never consummated their marriage. They basically agreed to split the ten thousand dollar dowry and go their separate ways immediately after the wedding. When the war ended, Joe moved from Paris to London, and she often spoke of having met her father, Albert Carstairs, quite by chance in a pub there. In this story, which may or may not be true, he mistook her for a boy and then she introduced herself as his daughter, but two of them shared a cigar and a drink and then parted ways, never to see one another again. Yeah, we have no idea whether this actually happened or not. Her biographer that we mentioned before is quick to point out that some of the things that Joe said happened during this discussion or that she talked about with her father, including the death of her mother, hadn't actually happened yet. Her mother was still alive at this point, so the timeline does not match up in Joe's recollection. So there are some red flags that there at least some falsehoods in this whole thing. So we don't know if it actually took place. But eventually Joe made her way to Ireland to drive British officers in the ongoing war against Shinfane as part of the Women's Legion Mechanical Transport Section. And while she was doing this, she befriended two sisters, Molly and Bartieklklow, who took her in and the three were really fast friends. In n the three of them all volunteered to go to northern France to relieve mail drivers there. This was not an easy job. They were driving in areas that had been destroyed and the rough terrain really took a toll on all the cars. The young women, along with another friend named Joan McKern handled all the needed repairs themselves while also tending to soldiers, reburying fallen men who had been put into temporary graves, and trying to clear debris. Joe and her friends were demobilized on April twenty, nineteen twenty, and just a week after this driving service ended, Joe's grandmother, Nellie, died from a heart attack. Nellie had actually had several strokes before this and had survived them all every time people thought that this was her time to go, but it was finally a heart attack that took her. And while Joe claimed to have been living on almost no income at this point, while she awaited the execution of her grandmother's will. That information was a fabrication. Nellie had actually set up a trust so that her grandchildren would be taken care of, and Joe never once wanted for money. For example, in ninety one, she was paid out an income of a hundred and forty five thousand dollars, and in nineteen twenty two that income jumped to two hundred thousand dollars. Evelyn died in nine While her was likely Drugger alcohol related, it was officially recorded as being from natural causes. Joe, however, blamed or enough, even suggesting that he had somehow murdered her mother. After Evelyn's passing, Joe had her marriage to her childhood friend annulled. Yep, that was just for show for her mom. Uh. But despite the generous annual income that Joe was getting, she still didn't own up to it. She still claimed that she wasn't getting any money. She They're even stories that she went so far as to like steal things that she needed, like food, when she could have easily paid for them. She seemed to really just love living this more humble life and spending time with her friends, and this is after their again their war services drivers has had ended, so she suggested that they all pool their earnings. Joe, at this point, again living this life where she feigned to not have an income, was perfectly happy to take jobs, working as a bartend, her on a chicken farm. At one point she worked as a car demonstrator. But she wanted all of these women she had become friends with to pool their money and set up a chauffeur business in London. The service, which was called X Garage, was successful, and because such a service run by women was really novel, it got the attention of a lot of the press. At one point, partner Joan McKern told the press that they had decided to hire only women. She said, after employing both men and girls, we have found that the girls are much more adaptable and trustworthy. And during this time Joe had secured an estate to live on in Hampshire. There were two army huts on the property that were converted into a bungalow and Joe named this little house Bostwick and she lived there more or less in seclusion. This is also when she bought her first boat, which was a yacht named Sonja, and Joe quickly became extremely skilled as a yachts woman, and so she started racing. Would prove to be quite a year for Joe. For one thing, Sonia was extremely successful. It won almost every race in its class. This is also the year that the wills of Nellie and Evelyn were finally settled. In the case of Evelyn's estate, both Francis Francis and Sergei voronoff ward with Joe about how the will would be executed. The men clearly felt that in having annulled her marriage, Joe had given up the rights to the family money. Eventually, though, Evelyn's estate was all div divvied up, and Joe also came into a large inheritance from her grandmother's will as well, so she could really no longer hide the fact that she was wealthy. At this point, these sorts of things were being reported in the papers and so in. At this point, Joe was flush with cash, and she decided that she was going to commission a hydroplane to be built for her. And that's hydroplane in the sense of the very fast vote. Celebrated designer Samuel Saunders was and trusted the TA with the task of creating this speedboat for Joe, and it was only one of two boats built at the East Cow's Yard on the Isle of Wight that year. These were extremely expensive boats, so they really didn't make that many of them. And initially this boat was going to be called Gwen, but when it capsized during testing, Joe decided to simply reverse the name and call it nug Any w g instead, so it was re christened. This boat came with saunders own mechanic, Joe Harris the Joe's Carstairs and Harris were devoted friends from that point on. Harris rode with Joe in almost every race and was steadfast and loyal even when they were in dangerous situations. Yeah, Joe often pointed out Joe Carstairs that when Harris rode with her, his seat by design, was just not as safe as hers. If something happened, he was going to go flying, whereas sort of the captain's seat, the driver's seat would had some safety measures around it. Uh. They are said to have had sort of a fatherly daughterly relationship in many ways, but they were incredibly close. However, a new figure that is very unusual is about to enter Joe's life, and we're going to talk about that right after a brief word from one of our fabulous sponsors. So getting back to Joe Carstairs. At the end of Joe and her girlfriend at the time, Ruth Baldwin, traveled to the Swiss Alps for Christmas, and it's there that Ruth gave Joe what would become a lifelong prize possession. This was a small leather doll. It was stuffed with jointed arms and legs, and it was a little man. And Joe named this small leather gentleman Lord Todd Wadley, and she treasured him utterly. Joe and Ruth set up a house together near King's Road in Chelsea, and Joe had a plaque made for the front door that read Marian Barbara Carstairs and Lord Todd Wadley. While Joe and Ruth seemed to have a really deep and abiding love for one another, their relationship was not exclusive. In Joe and her boat nug raced for the Duke of York's trophy on the Thames, an event attended by tens of thousands of spectators, and in the end it came down to Nuke and a German boat called Seagreed four, but the German hydroplanes connecting rod Broke Nug had trouble as well. The propeller got caught on a piece of rope that was in the water, and Joe hacked at the rope to cut it free and eventually finished the race and was the only competitor to do so. From then on, Joe's fame and her career as a speedboat racer really grew. There's a famous portrait taken of Joe in those early days, and she had gotten drunk and had her arms tattooed, and in the photo they're bared showing off her tattoos, and she also has Lord Todd Wadley sitting underneath facing her. She's wearing men's clothes, there's a cigarette in her mouth, and she's then profile gazing down at this doll. It is it's quite a striking image, and she and Lord Todd Wadley are dressed almost the same. It's a very wonderfully strange, sort of beautiful moments. Uh in the nine twenties in Europe were really sort of the perfect time and place for Joe. She loved her speedboats, which were wildly popular. She loved the debauchery and rule bending that was going on at the time. She had affairs with numerous actresses at the London stage, including to Lula Bankhead, all the while sort of playing the dandy in these impeccably tailored suits, and in some ways it was a uniquely free time to be doing these sorts of things. So she was taking on the boyishness that was to some degree already in vogue and women's fashion. You know, women that were playing hyper femininity even were you know, binding their breasts so that they looked like they had more boyish figures, and there was the bobbing of hair, and femininity was even being played with. So Joe sort of took that kind of concept and really just floored it into a full gender switch, which seemed to be really sort of oddly accepted, at least in the theater and party set of London that she ran in. And as Joe had basically conquered the speedboat world in Nuke's class, she wanted to move on to another challenge. She once again commissioned Samuel Saunders, and this time she wanted to create three incredibly fast hydroplanes for her she wanted the fastest craft on water, and they were reputed to be able to zip along at a hundred miles an hour. That sounds terrifying to me. I am clearly not a speed freak. I was just on a boat that was going much slower than that, and it was still like a but being up in the front of it just a pounding experience. Yeah, my dad really loved, loves, continues to love speedy things. He raced cars when he was younger. He really loved speedboats, and I always remember just being terrified on them when I was a kid. But the first of these, uh, the first two of these three boats that Joe had commissioned were unveiled in and they had the names Estelle one and a Stell too, after her mother. If this sounds weird, it is because this ended up being a little bit of a whoopsie Daisy scenario. Joe, who had always been so intent on bucking off her family history in favor of creating her own identity, had actually forgotten that her mother's name was in fact Evelyn and not a Stell. And when Carstairs realized her error, she wasn't even dismayed about it. She thought it was all rather amusing, but both of the watercraft proved to be pretty problematic. A Stell one sank on one of its first outings and a Stell too had problems as well, causing Joe to withdraw her entry from the Harmsworth Trophy Race. But then she heard that her main competitor was also having trouble with his boats, so she once again announced her intent to participate. That meant that she had to travel to Detroit for the race, and initially she had planned to take another boat designed by Saunter's firm across the Atlantic, but that ship too had problems during testing, and this series of failures actually resulted in one of the designers that worked under Shaunders being fired from the firm, and instead of one of her custom design speedsters, Joe ended up making the trans Atlantic crossed crossing in the Cunard Liner Berengaria, which she apparently fell in love with. When she reached the United States, Joe posed for photos with Lord Todd Wadley and she made headlines. One paper called her a puzzler Colan Mannish thanks us paper for that in fight. Another another referred to her as the pretty English motor boat racer. The press has also called her Betty, and some of their coverage based on her middle name of Barbara, which she really hated. She super duper hated that Betty thing. And it's funny looking back at, uh, some of the old accounts of it where they're talking about, you know, famed woman speedster Betty Carstairs, and I'm like, where did they even come up with? She really really disliked it a great deal. The important thing was the race. Uh. Joe, with Joe Harris at her side, as usual, did incredibly well. This race was really close and it was really exciting right up until a stell To capsized, throwing both Joe's from the vessel. Joe Carstairs initially seemed unharmed. Joe Harris they were a little bit worried about. They had to pull him out of the water and it turned out he had broke into ribs. Later it was revealed that the Heiress had actually also cracked three of her ribs. But she didn't want to miss any parties, so she didn't tell anybody and just went about her business. Uh. She also as she went to these parties, started rumors that American competitors had purposely sabotaged her boat. Despite her difficulty in the race, she was praised in the press for her prowess. She returned to London and dismayed at the series of blunders on the part of the Saunders Farm, set up her own boatyard, headed by Joe Harris as chief engineer. And that is actually where we're gonna, cliffhang you, uh. In the next episode, We're gonna talk about the next stages of Joe's racing career. We're eventually going to veer off to the Bahamas. Things get a little more eccentric and odd. Uh. But she's so fascinating. I just I really want to take the time to talk about all of these sort of strange little snippets of her life. So in lieu of listener mail today, I actually have a listener thank you that I have to send out to our listener, Heather. I think it was on Facebook and I have had difficulty locating it. But at one point things had come up about Roly Crump, who was an imagineer at the Haunted Mint for the Haunted Mansion and other Disney projects, and Heather had mentioned that she had this comic book called Seekers of The Weird, which I also have in love that was based on his early drawings that got kind of put aside that weren't part of the museum that was supposed to eventually be built as part of the attraction by Walt, but was, as I said, discarded. So this comic came out in the last couple of years. It's very, very fun. And Heather had mentioned that she had an extra copy that had been signed and she would happily send it to me, and I actually never responded to her because I almost didn't know how like I'm reluctant to be like yes and me stuff, but I was also just so touched by the offer that I didn't know what to do. And then the comics showed up last week, and um, it's spectacular because it's signed by Roally Crump, which is incredibly meaningful as well as the other creators, and it's so fabulous, and it came on a day when I was just having not my finest hour, so it was really like perfect timing and so touching. And Heather, You're so generous. I cannot thank you enough. I treasure it. Uh, it's absolutely a delight, So thank you, thank you, Thank you. We have so many great listeners and they are often so kind and generous to us, and I feel like we have to point those out when we can, so if you would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at house stepworks dot com. You can connect with this at Facebook dot com, slash missed Industry on Twitter, at mis in History at pinterest dot com, slash missed in History at misston History dot tumbler dot com. You can visit us at mist in History dot spreadshirt dot com if you would like to purchase some stuff to miss in History class goodies, and we have a brand new Instagram account as missed in History and we'll be posting some hopefully fun kookie at times pictures there. If you would like to research a little bit more about what we talked about today, you can go to our parents site, how stuff Works. Type in the word gender in the search bar, and one of the articles that you're gonna come up with is how fluid is gender? Uh. You can research at that at how some Works. You can visit us at mist in history dot com for all of our episodes, show notes on any of the episodes that Tracy and I have worked on as well as the occasional other additional blog post or goodie, so we encourage you to come visit us at how st work dot com and miss in history dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it has to works dot com into

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. And today's topic features a really fun figure of the early twentieth century. There is a little high society in this one, a lot of money, some gender bending, a good amount of debauchery, a very unique doll, and loads of speedboats. So this may actually be a true scenario where there really is something for everyone. The topic of today's podcast is Joe car Stairs. And first I have to mention that this was actually suggested by a listener, and I am a disorganized mess and I cannot find the listener's name, and I feel really really bad because I would love to credit them because this has been really nothing short of a delight to research. Uh. Second, we have to contextualize pronouns on this one a little bit. Joe was a woman, and though she took a man's name and she lived in many ways as a man, she would also introduce herself as a woman. So while she may have identified in many ways as male, since she generally referred to herself as a female, we're going to use feminine pronouns here, and she does make it a little bit tricky because even throughout her life she kind of delighted when people would mistake her for a boy or a man, but she would usually then always also delight in telling them, no, I'm actually a woman, kind of to watch their shocked reaction. She really played that edge of gender fluidity. And so we're going with feminine pronouns. It's possible if she lived today, where there is sort of a different vocabulary around gender and how it works and the fluidity of it, she may have chosen a different one for herself, but since she seemed to stick to feminine pronouns, we are going to do the same. Uh. And as I was reading up on Joe, I found myself really delighting in so many of the details of her life, really eccentric and interesting and fascinating. Eating So this one is going to end up being a two parter. She did lead a wild and eccentric life, some of which we only know of through her telling of it, and she was a very big personality. So her primary biographer that that wrote the one existing biography of her, really continually points out that there is every possibility that some of these stories are embellishment. Uh As, she was definitely really into storytelling and she was very much into this idea of creating her own persona. So just keep that in mind as we go. Joe Carstairs came from money. Her grandfather was Jabez Able Bostwick, who made this fortune working as the treasurer of Southern Improvement Company, which was a venture of John D. Rockefeller. Her grandmother, so job as his wife, was Helen Celia Bostwick, and this is one of the few family members that Joe really seemed to admire and identify with through her whole life. She would describe Nellie, as Helen was called as tough, wicked, a wonderful person in a very strong will. When Jabez died in a fire in eighteen ninety two, he left behind a ten million dollar fortune. Yeah, definitely some cash in the family. And just in case you do not recognize the name the Southern Improvement Company, that group later changed its name to Standard Oil, which you probably will recognize. Javis and Nellie had three children. They had a daughter who was also named Nellie, a daughter named Evelyn, and a son named Albert. And Evelyn was born Francis Evelyn Bostwick on June eighteen seventy two. And as she grew up, this middle child was a vivacious and strong willed woman herself. She had a bit of a party reputation, and she had some early brushes with drug use that actually turned into a habit. Later on, she was known as something of a fem fital, complete with a story about backing out of an engagement right at the last minute. But then Evelyn met scottsman Albert Carstairs while traveling in Europe. There's a lot of haziness around this marriage, which lasted for ten years. We know that Albert was a captain in the second Battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles and that he served in both Egypt and Malta, but it seems like he left the army when he married Evelyn. We don't actually know if there, if they were happy or not, but there was definitely some infidelity on Evelyn's part. Yeah, it was kind of one of those sudden I met this guy and I'm marrying him. And she was such a wild child at this point that that just was what it was. It all seems sort of a tumultuous thing and We do know that Evelyn and Albert were in London in nineteen hundred, because that's where and when Joe was born as Marian Barbara Carstairs on February first of that year. Whether or not Albert Carstairs was actually Joe's biological father is unknown. We do know that Albert joined the army once again just a week before Joe was born. When she was five, Joe was thrown off a camel she was riding at the London Zoo and she was knocked unconscious. When she regained consciousness, people started calling her Tuffy, and she took this nickname to heart. In fact, she once told a friend that her biography should start off with that story, and writer Kate summer Scale actually obliged her in a book about the Carstairs And even at this young age, Joe's life, which was privileged in terms of financial comfort, was really something of a mess. Her parents had divorced at this point, and Albert Carstairs had basically vanished from her life. Her mother was regarded by Europe as being a socialite simply by way of dirty money that was gained, possibly by nefarious means. But in spite of all these questions about the origin of her wealth, Evelyn managed to make a place for herself in British society. She eventually became a Lady in waiting to King Edward the Seventh, wife Queen Alexandria. Evelyn also remarried in nineteen o three to a British Army captain named Francis Francis, and she had two children with him. Evelyn Francis, who was called Sally, was born in nineteen o four, and Francis Francis Jr. Was born in nineteen o six. Joe was not very enthusiastic about these new siblings. She had some jealousy over her mother's tendency to dote on her brother Frank, presumably because he was a boy, although it should be noted that Evelyn was never really consistent with her affection for any of her children. Conversely, Joe's tomboyish ways weren't exactly a source of delight for her mother and stepfather either. Captain Francis wanted to find a way to cure Joe of her wildness, and Joe herself had never really identified in a girlish way. Later on in her life she would remark that she quote was never a little girl, I came out of the womb queer. At one point, when Joe was eight, Francis actually caught her stealing his cigars, and in a manner that many people have tried to cure their children of dabbling and smoking. He thought he would teach her a lesson and forced her to sit down and smoke the whole thing because he thought she's gonna get sick as a dog. But little did he know that Joe had actually been stealing and smoking cigars for a while at that point, so her eight year old self was pretty relaxed as she sat and smoked her cigar with him right to the end. Evelyn and the Captain did not stay together. They stayed legally married until nineteen fifteen, but they really had not been together as a couple for years by that point. As was the case in her marriage to Albert Carstairs, Evelyn also had numerous affairs. Captain Francis tried to keep his two children away from her as much as possible due to her unpredictable behavior, which was fueled by alcohol and a heroin addiction, although Joe really did not have that same level of protection. Yeah, Captain Francis was very protective of the two children that he had had with Evelyn, but Joe kind of was on her own. Despite her inconsistency as a mother, Evelyn was also really jealous of other women who cared for her children. She even fired a nanny at one point because Joe had grown especially close to her and for her Joe was extremely rebellious. She bullied her younger siblings, and she was defiant. She spent a good deal of time sort of lost in her own fantasy world, which centered largely around kind of maritime interests in boats, which were the only things that she claimed to admire as a child. And then, at age eleven, Joe was sent back to America to go to boarding school. And while this was framed as some sort of punishment for her bad behavior, Joe really saw this as a door opening for her to have some fun, independent times of her own. She was put on an ocean liner to make the voyage across the Atlantic to Stanford, Connecticut, where she would attend the Low Haywood School. She fit in there really quickly, in part because she could do the French homework of the other girls at the school. Joe had picked up quite a bit of French while her mother had employed a French nanny, and though her life at the school really seemed pretty carefree, Joe was constantly afraid that Evelyn was going to suddenly change her mind and send word that Joe had to return to Europe, but that never actually happened. She didn't even see her mother for four years until Evelyn's third marriage in nineteen fifteen to yet another military man, this one French and also account named Roger de Peregny. Unlike Evelyn's first two husbands, Joe adored Parrene and he seemed to love her as well. The two of them became really great pals. They went carousing, they smoked cigars, they raced cars. Parny even altered one of his racing cars to fit Joe's frame so she could drive it. They even visited some brothels together, and perhaps one of the reasons that Joe was so very fond of Parignee was because he was not inclined, as others had been, to always follow her mother Evelyn's lead. In fact, the marriage did end as the others had, but this time because Evelyn couldn't stand Parrenees infidelities. Rather than the other way around. In nineteen sixteen, Joe headed back to Europe, but this time it was to drive ambulances in the or Effort. Joe was only sixteen at the time, and she had persuaded her grandmother, Nellie, to use her influence to get her into the job. Joe had told Nellie that she wanted the experience because she had hopes of eventually becoming a doctor. And before we get to the next phase of Joe's life, where she is going to meet some friends that she will stay close to for the rest of her days, uh, we're gonna have a quick word from one of the great sponsors that keeps the show going. So, while she was living in Paris with four other young women who were also driving ambulances, Joe really just watched the war unfold. She had quite a lot of sort of world experience through this set up. The flat that she shared with these other women had a glass ceiling so they could see planes overhead at night. Uh. And Joe watched buildings be shelled and she saw aircraft down. At one point, she struggled to pull a down pilot from the wreckage of his plane, only to realize that he was already dead. Joe's time in Paris was also when she had her first sexual experience, which was with a woman. Despite having had crushes while in boarding school, she insisted that these relationships were always chased, and while she visited brothels with her French stepfather, she claimed to have never taken part of any sexual activities there. And soon after she had this first experience, she also had an affair with a woman who Joe would later say changed her life, and that was Dorothy Wilde known as Dolly, who was the niece of the famed poet Oscar Wilde, and many people described Dolly as sort of the female counterpart to her infamous uncle, who had died in nineteen hundred. Dolly was a woman who was managed, she loved other women, She drove ambulances like Joe, and she actually lived in the shared flat that Joe was living in Paris. Joe learned from Dolly the art of cultivating this theatrical persona. Dolly was at the center of the bohemian social scene in Paris, whereas Joe was out on the edges. Joe watched as Dolly ar armed everybody around her, only to forget the promises and appointments that she made basically as soon as she made them. We don't know how the affair between Joe and Dolly came to an end, but this friendship left Joe with the sense that she could herself cultivate a male alter ego. Yeah, and it was never specifically spelled out in any of the things I read, but it seems that it was during this time in Paris that she started going pretty much exclusively by the name Joe Uh and her mother was actually also living in Paris at this time. She met her fourth husband there in nineteen seventeen, when Evelyn became a laboratory assistant at the College de France, and his name was Sergei Voronov, and he was a surgeon, and she was assigned to him as an assistant. And Voronov conducted many experiments involving testicular pulpe as a cure as like a curative agent, as well as testicular grafting as a therapeutic measure. He did some kind of wacky science. Uh. Voronoff was not always taken seriously by the medical community, but Evelyn seemed to really believe in him. She presented papers with him. She worked dutifully at his side, and her family's money was funding most of his research. When rumors reached Evelyn that Joe was having lesbian affairs, she invited, or, as Joe characterized it, summoned her daughter to visit her. When Joe arrived, her mother confronted her about her sexuality and told her that she needed to get married or she would lose all her rights to the family money. And when Joe retold this, she made a series of tapes in the nineteen seventies with the intent that she was going to find a ghostwriter to write her autobiography. The way she talks about it is that she completely didn't care. She blew off her mother's threat. She told her to go ahead and disinherit her, but in truth she actually acquiesced through a bit of a loophole. In nineteen eighteen, Joe actually married her childhood friend, Count Jacques du Pray, who was rumored to actually be one of Evelyn's lovers. So there's some speculation that Joe particularly selected this man just to spite her mother by saying, fine, I'll marry a guy that you are romantically involved with. Uh, Jacques and Joe never consummated their marriage. They basically agreed to split the ten thousand dollar dowry and go their separate ways immediately after the wedding. When the war ended, Joe moved from Paris to London, and she often spoke of having met her father, Albert Carstairs, quite by chance in a pub there. In this story, which may or may not be true, he mistook her for a boy and then she introduced herself as his daughter, but two of them shared a cigar and a drink and then parted ways, never to see one another again. Yeah, we have no idea whether this actually happened or not. Her biographer that we mentioned before is quick to point out that some of the things that Joe said happened during this discussion or that she talked about with her father, including the death of her mother, hadn't actually happened yet. Her mother was still alive at this point, so the timeline does not match up in Joe's recollection. So there are some red flags that there at least some falsehoods in this whole thing. So we don't know if it actually took place. But eventually Joe made her way to Ireland to drive British officers in the ongoing war against Shinfane as part of the Women's Legion Mechanical Transport Section. And while she was doing this, she befriended two sisters, Molly and Bartieklklow, who took her in and the three were really fast friends. In n the three of them all volunteered to go to northern France to relieve mail drivers there. This was not an easy job. They were driving in areas that had been destroyed and the rough terrain really took a toll on all the cars. The young women, along with another friend named Joan McKern handled all the needed repairs themselves while also tending to soldiers, reburying fallen men who had been put into temporary graves, and trying to clear debris. Joe and her friends were demobilized on April twenty, nineteen twenty, and just a week after this driving service ended, Joe's grandmother, Nellie, died from a heart attack. Nellie had actually had several strokes before this and had survived them all every time people thought that this was her time to go, but it was finally a heart attack that took her. And while Joe claimed to have been living on almost no income at this point, while she awaited the execution of her grandmother's will. That information was a fabrication. Nellie had actually set up a trust so that her grandchildren would be taken care of, and Joe never once wanted for money. For example, in ninety one, she was paid out an income of a hundred and forty five thousand dollars, and in nineteen twenty two that income jumped to two hundred thousand dollars. Evelyn died in nine While her was likely Drugger alcohol related, it was officially recorded as being from natural causes. Joe, however, blamed or enough, even suggesting that he had somehow murdered her mother. After Evelyn's passing, Joe had her marriage to her childhood friend annulled. Yep, that was just for show for her mom. Uh. But despite the generous annual income that Joe was getting, she still didn't own up to it. She still claimed that she wasn't getting any money. She They're even stories that she went so far as to like steal things that she needed, like food, when she could have easily paid for them. She seemed to really just love living this more humble life and spending time with her friends, and this is after their again their war services drivers has had ended, so she suggested that they all pool their earnings. Joe, at this point, again living this life where she feigned to not have an income, was perfectly happy to take jobs, working as a bartend, her on a chicken farm. At one point she worked as a car demonstrator. But she wanted all of these women she had become friends with to pool their money and set up a chauffeur business in London. The service, which was called X Garage, was successful, and because such a service run by women was really novel, it got the attention of a lot of the press. At one point, partner Joan McKern told the press that they had decided to hire only women. She said, after employing both men and girls, we have found that the girls are much more adaptable and trustworthy. And during this time Joe had secured an estate to live on in Hampshire. There were two army huts on the property that were converted into a bungalow and Joe named this little house Bostwick and she lived there more or less in seclusion. This is also when she bought her first boat, which was a yacht named Sonja, and Joe quickly became extremely skilled as a yachts woman, and so she started racing. Would prove to be quite a year for Joe. For one thing, Sonia was extremely successful. It won almost every race in its class. This is also the year that the wills of Nellie and Evelyn were finally settled. In the case of Evelyn's estate, both Francis Francis and Sergei voronoff ward with Joe about how the will would be executed. The men clearly felt that in having annulled her marriage, Joe had given up the rights to the family money. Eventually, though, Evelyn's estate was all div divvied up, and Joe also came into a large inheritance from her grandmother's will as well, so she could really no longer hide the fact that she was wealthy. At this point, these sorts of things were being reported in the papers and so in. At this point, Joe was flush with cash, and she decided that she was going to commission a hydroplane to be built for her. And that's hydroplane in the sense of the very fast vote. Celebrated designer Samuel Saunders was and trusted the TA with the task of creating this speedboat for Joe, and it was only one of two boats built at the East Cow's Yard on the Isle of Wight that year. These were extremely expensive boats, so they really didn't make that many of them. And initially this boat was going to be called Gwen, but when it capsized during testing, Joe decided to simply reverse the name and call it nug Any w g instead, so it was re christened. This boat came with saunders own mechanic, Joe Harris the Joe's Carstairs and Harris were devoted friends from that point on. Harris rode with Joe in almost every race and was steadfast and loyal even when they were in dangerous situations. Yeah, Joe often pointed out Joe Carstairs that when Harris rode with her, his seat by design, was just not as safe as hers. If something happened, he was going to go flying, whereas sort of the captain's seat, the driver's seat would had some safety measures around it. Uh. They are said to have had sort of a fatherly daughterly relationship in many ways, but they were incredibly close. However, a new figure that is very unusual is about to enter Joe's life, and we're going to talk about that right after a brief word from one of our fabulous sponsors. So getting back to Joe Carstairs. At the end of Joe and her girlfriend at the time, Ruth Baldwin, traveled to the Swiss Alps for Christmas, and it's there that Ruth gave Joe what would become a lifelong prize possession. This was a small leather doll. It was stuffed with jointed arms and legs, and it was a little man. And Joe named this small leather gentleman Lord Todd Wadley, and she treasured him utterly. Joe and Ruth set up a house together near King's Road in Chelsea, and Joe had a plaque made for the front door that read Marian Barbara Carstairs and Lord Todd Wadley. While Joe and Ruth seemed to have a really deep and abiding love for one another, their relationship was not exclusive. In Joe and her boat nug raced for the Duke of York's trophy on the Thames, an event attended by tens of thousands of spectators, and in the end it came down to Nuke and a German boat called Seagreed four, but the German hydroplanes connecting rod Broke Nug had trouble as well. The propeller got caught on a piece of rope that was in the water, and Joe hacked at the rope to cut it free and eventually finished the race and was the only competitor to do so. From then on, Joe's fame and her career as a speedboat racer really grew. There's a famous portrait taken of Joe in those early days, and she had gotten drunk and had her arms tattooed, and in the photo they're bared showing off her tattoos, and she also has Lord Todd Wadley sitting underneath facing her. She's wearing men's clothes, there's a cigarette in her mouth, and she's then profile gazing down at this doll. It is it's quite a striking image, and she and Lord Todd Wadley are dressed almost the same. It's a very wonderfully strange, sort of beautiful moments. Uh in the nine twenties in Europe were really sort of the perfect time and place for Joe. She loved her speedboats, which were wildly popular. She loved the debauchery and rule bending that was going on at the time. She had affairs with numerous actresses at the London stage, including to Lula Bankhead, all the while sort of playing the dandy in these impeccably tailored suits, and in some ways it was a uniquely free time to be doing these sorts of things. So she was taking on the boyishness that was to some degree already in vogue and women's fashion. You know, women that were playing hyper femininity even were you know, binding their breasts so that they looked like they had more boyish figures, and there was the bobbing of hair, and femininity was even being played with. So Joe sort of took that kind of concept and really just floored it into a full gender switch, which seemed to be really sort of oddly accepted, at least in the theater and party set of London that she ran in. And as Joe had basically conquered the speedboat world in Nuke's class, she wanted to move on to another challenge. She once again commissioned Samuel Saunders, and this time she wanted to create three incredibly fast hydroplanes for her she wanted the fastest craft on water, and they were reputed to be able to zip along at a hundred miles an hour. That sounds terrifying to me. I am clearly not a speed freak. I was just on a boat that was going much slower than that, and it was still like a but being up in the front of it just a pounding experience. Yeah, my dad really loved, loves, continues to love speedy things. He raced cars when he was younger. He really loved speedboats, and I always remember just being terrified on them when I was a kid. But the first of these, uh, the first two of these three boats that Joe had commissioned were unveiled in and they had the names Estelle one and a Stell too, after her mother. If this sounds weird, it is because this ended up being a little bit of a whoopsie Daisy scenario. Joe, who had always been so intent on bucking off her family history in favor of creating her own identity, had actually forgotten that her mother's name was in fact Evelyn and not a Stell. And when Carstairs realized her error, she wasn't even dismayed about it. She thought it was all rather amusing, but both of the watercraft proved to be pretty problematic. A Stell one sank on one of its first outings and a Stell too had problems as well, causing Joe to withdraw her entry from the Harmsworth Trophy Race. But then she heard that her main competitor was also having trouble with his boats, so she once again announced her intent to participate. That meant that she had to travel to Detroit for the race, and initially she had planned to take another boat designed by Saunter's firm across the Atlantic, but that ship too had problems during testing, and this series of failures actually resulted in one of the designers that worked under Shaunders being fired from the firm, and instead of one of her custom design speedsters, Joe ended up making the trans Atlantic crossed crossing in the Cunard Liner Berengaria, which she apparently fell in love with. When she reached the United States, Joe posed for photos with Lord Todd Wadley and she made headlines. One paper called her a puzzler Colan Mannish thanks us paper for that in fight. Another another referred to her as the pretty English motor boat racer. The press has also called her Betty, and some of their coverage based on her middle name of Barbara, which she really hated. She super duper hated that Betty thing. And it's funny looking back at, uh, some of the old accounts of it where they're talking about, you know, famed woman speedster Betty Carstairs, and I'm like, where did they even come up with? She really really disliked it a great deal. The important thing was the race. Uh. Joe, with Joe Harris at her side, as usual, did incredibly well. This race was really close and it was really exciting right up until a stell To capsized, throwing both Joe's from the vessel. Joe Carstairs initially seemed unharmed. Joe Harris they were a little bit worried about. They had to pull him out of the water and it turned out he had broke into ribs. Later it was revealed that the Heiress had actually also cracked three of her ribs. But she didn't want to miss any parties, so she didn't tell anybody and just went about her business. Uh. She also as she went to these parties, started rumors that American competitors had purposely sabotaged her boat. Despite her difficulty in the race, she was praised in the press for her prowess. She returned to London and dismayed at the series of blunders on the part of the Saunders Farm, set up her own boatyard, headed by Joe Harris as chief engineer. And that is actually where we're gonna, cliffhang you, uh. In the next episode, We're gonna talk about the next stages of Joe's racing career. We're eventually going to veer off to the Bahamas. Things get a little more eccentric and odd. Uh. But she's so fascinating. I just I really want to take the time to talk about all of these sort of strange little snippets of her life. So in lieu of listener mail today, I actually have a listener thank you that I have to send out to our listener, Heather. I think it was on Facebook and I have had difficulty locating it. But at one point things had come up about Roly Crump, who was an imagineer at the Haunted Mint for the Haunted Mansion and other Disney projects, and Heather had mentioned that she had this comic book called Seekers of The Weird, which I also have in love that was based on his early drawings that got kind of put aside that weren't part of the museum that was supposed to eventually be built as part of the attraction by Walt, but was, as I said, discarded. So this comic came out in the last couple of years. It's very, very fun. And Heather had mentioned that she had an extra copy that had been signed and she would happily send it to me, and I actually never responded to her because I almost didn't know how like I'm reluctant to be like yes and me stuff, but I was also just so touched by the offer that I didn't know what to do. And then the comics showed up last week, and um, it's spectacular because it's signed by Roally Crump, which is incredibly meaningful as well as the other creators, and it's so fabulous, and it came on a day when I was just having not my finest hour, so it was really like perfect timing and so touching. And Heather, You're so generous. I cannot thank you enough. I treasure it. Uh, it's absolutely a delight, So thank you, thank you, Thank you. We have so many great listeners and they are often so kind and generous to us, and I feel like we have to point those out when we can, so if you would like to write to us, you can do so at History Podcast at house stepworks dot com. You can connect with this at Facebook dot com, slash missed Industry on Twitter, at mis in History at pinterest dot com, slash missed in History at misston History dot tumbler dot com. You can visit us at mist in History dot spreadshirt dot com if you would like to purchase some stuff to miss in History class goodies, and we have a brand new Instagram account as missed in History and we'll be posting some hopefully fun kookie at times pictures there. If you would like to research a little bit more about what we talked about today, you can go to our parents site, how stuff Works. Type in the word gender in the search bar, and one of the articles that you're gonna come up with is how fluid is gender? Uh. You can research at that at how some Works. You can visit us at mist in history dot com for all of our episodes, show notes on any of the episodes that Tracy and I have worked on as well as the occasional other additional blog post or goodie, so we encourage you to come visit us at how st work dot com and miss in history dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it has to works dot com into