Murray Hall (politician)

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

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

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

His last home was an apartment in Greenwich Village, half a block north of the Jefferson Market Courthouse (now the Jefferson Market Library).[4] The building was renumbered in 1929, when Manhattan's Sixth Avenue was extended south, and is now 453 6th Avenue. The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project lists the building.[2]

Hall died from breast cancer,[2] treatment for which he seemed to have delayed for fear of exposing his assigned sex.[3] He was buried in women's clothes in an unmarked grave in Mount Olivet Cemetery.[2][5]

References
  1. "New York Times: death of Murray Hall, January 19, 1901". Archived from the original on October 23, 2017. Retrieved October 23, 2017.
  2. Sharpe, Gillian (August 16, 2019). "The 19th Century politician who broke gender rules". BBC News. Retrieved August 16, 2019.
  3. Beemyn, Genny. Erickson-Schroth, Laura (ed.). Transgender History in the United States: A special unabridged version of a book chapter from Trans Bodies, Trans Selves (PDF). Oxford. p. 2.
  4. "MURRAY HALL FOOLED MANY SHREWD MEN" (PDF). New York Times. January 19, 1901. Retrieved October 14, 2010.
  5. "MURRAY HALL'S FUNERAL.; The Man-Woman Was Dressed for Burial in Woman's Clothes". New York Times. January 20, 1901. Retrieved October 29, 2009.

Further reading
  • The San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project, "She Even Chewed Tobacco": A Pictorial Narrative of Passing Women in America, in Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. Edited by Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey, Jr. (New York: Meridian, 1990), 183–194.
  • Karen Abbott, "The Mystery of Murray Hall," Smithsonian, July 21, 2011.


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