'The Tattooed Lady'
an excerpt from "A Woman's World", my new book in collaboration with Dan Jones
Born in Kansas in 1877, Maud Stevens was an accomplished trapeze artist and contortionist when she met Gus Wagner at the St Louis World’s Fair in 1904. On their first date, at her insistance, Gus demonstrated the art of tattooing on his assistant and Wagner herself. Later that year she and Gus married. By 1907, Maud had hundreds of tattoos, and was known as ‘The Tattooed Lady’, star of the sideshow the couple staged at carnivals, circuses, amusement arcades and fairs for the next three decades. These were the tattoo parlours of their era, and Wagner was recognized as the first female tattooist in America, practising the hand-pricking method of tattooing, using ink and needles, which Gus had learned from indigenous people in south-east Asia during his time in the marchant navy.
Tattooing was considered subversive, even deviant, by many in the West during the early part of the twentieth century. The thrill of the taboo mean that tattooed people - women, especially - were popular carnival attractions, and photograph souvenirs sold just as well as tickets.
Maud’s neck-to-toe decoration included birds, palm trees, butterflies, monkeys, lions, horses, women, a tiger’s head, a cowboy on a steer and a snake climbing a tree. According to her daughter Lotteva, also a tattoo artist, Wagner also ‘sat on two baby elephants’. Wagner lived to see her groundbreaking work acknowledged by the growing tattoo community and was hand-pricking tattoos up until her death, aged 83, in 1961.
This is an excerpt from our new book, A Woman's World, publish on August 4th by Head of Zeus. Pre-order the book today to support my work. Thank you so much!
