Robert Gaffney
"Say that Robert Gaffney is and always was a real woman. It has been conceived by evil minds, I know, that no woman could do what Robert Gaffney did, and be normal. Evil motives, criminal probably, degenerate perhaps, have been attributed to me. I want you to say that Robert Gaffney is and always was a genuine woman: that she tried to help Margaret Hart because she pitied her."
The language of the Family Abandonment act doesn’t explicitly exclude women, but it is implied by its structure. As far as we know, the King County Stockade was only used to house male prisoners, though there was at one point some discussion of building a facility for women on the same site. This conclusion is supported by the details of Robert A. Gaffney’s case, though the events do not take place at the Stockade.
Like many Stockade prisoners, Robert was tried in a Seattle court for family abandonment under the “Lazy Husband Act.” Mrs. Margaret Gaffney claimed that Robert had deserted her and three children after five years of marriage.
Robert was found guilty on February of 1916, and sentenced to hard labor at the County Stockade. At sentencing, Robert informed the court that she was a woman*, and therefore could not reasonably be incarcerated at the Stockade. At that time, Robert had been dressing, working, and otherwise living as a man for about twenty years.
Robert had worked as a shingle weaver, department store porter and janitor, among other things. In news articles, Robert’s voice is said to be husky, with a curt manner of speech. She is also described as slender and neatly dressed, with dark hair that is iron gray at the temples and hands roughened by hard work. Reportedly, men who worked with Robert had never doubted her identity.
Robert had married Margaret just five years previously, in Spokane, and claimed that Margaret knew she was a woman before the marriage.
Robert explained that she felt sympathy for Margaret and had agreed that they would live as a family, until Margaret regained her health and could support the children independently.
However, Margaret claimed that she married Robert believing he was a man and that she did not suspect differently until about a year after the marriage. She said that when asked about it, Robert laughed it off, but threatened her with a revolver when she pushed the subject further.
In July of 1915, Robert quit her job as foreman of janitors at the Colman building and left town – cycling to California. Robert claimed she left because she had fairly fulfilled her commitments to Margaret and they had quarreled due to domestic differences.
This same year, Margaret first approached the prosecuting attorney regarding her "suspicions" about Robert. The prosecutor told her that if she could not swear to her suspicions there was nothing to negate her marriage or prompt an investigation. Margaret later said that the primary reason she filed the family abandonment complaint, to find out the "truth" about Robert.
Once Robert’s sex was disclosed publicly, she was put into a cell in the women's section of the jail. Thinking Robert was a man, her cellmate assaulted her before deputy sheriffs could rescue her. The woman was held for examination as to her sanity, but Robert suffered from bruises about the neck and face. Following this incident, Robert was held in a juvenile detention cell alone.
She was eventually released under a $500 bond while her case was appealed. Throughout her legal troubles in Seattle and in the accompanying news coverage, no previous or legal name was used to refer to Robert Gaffney.
After her release she moved to Oregon, and began living as a woman. Six months later she contacted a reporter for the Seattle Star to tell her story and correct the garbled bits that had been printed about her. The reporter gave his word not to reveal where she lived, or the name she was using.
The reporter began his Sept. 7, 1916 article with a quote from Robert.
“I sent for you because I want the public to know that ‘Robert Gaffney’ is not the strange sinister creature the reporters judged her to be. I want people to know that ‘Robert Gaffney’ is a clean, honest woman, and that the practice of wearing men’s clothes, which got me into a terrible dilemma six months ago, was not as outlandish a thing to do as conventional folks suppose. That is all I want. I want to be put right before the world. Will you carry my message?” The reporter agreed and the article continued.
Two days later, an identical article appeared in the Sept. 9, 1916 edition of the Tacoma Times. This article had the byline of Fred L. Boalt, a known
reporter for both the Star and Times. The headline for this article was: “WOMAN TELLS OF HER REMARKABLE STRUGGLE TO BRIDGE SEX GULF.” Mr. Boalt then tells her story as follows.
Robert first married at 17, and she and her husband spent a lot of time in the mountains. They enjoyed fishing and hunting; and Robert wore men's clothes to keep up with her husband on hikes. They were happy together for ten years; then they had a disagreement, and chose to each go their own way.
Robert decided she did not want to return to petticoats, and wanted to maintain the freedom men's clothing afforded her. She left her hometown and moved to Spokane, becoming “Robert A. Gaffney, working man.” She worked as a photographer, house painter, farm hand and janitor.
About five years later she met Margaret Hart, an abandoned wife with a baby and another on the way. Robert was touched by the woman's helplessness. She offered to take care of Margaret until the baby came and Margaret was well enough to go to her father’s place in Colorado. She told Margaret that she was a woman. Robert said that “Our relations were the relations of two women, a strong one and a weak one. She was helpless so I fended for both.” Margaret insisted on a marriage for propriety. It was done and they moved to Seattle.
The article goes on to say that to anyone meeting Mr. and Mrs. Gaffney, “Bob” was head janitor at the Colman Building. She managed five men and ten women, making $90 per month. She smoked a little and had an occasional glass of beer.
Margaret had her second child, “THEN CAME A THIRD!” Robert’s response, when asked by Mr. Boalt, was “Oh, she was all feminine!”
“All woman was Margaret, and weak as so many women are-–slaves of men and having no wish to escape from bondage. I knew, or suspected, who the father was. A married man! Poor Margaret!”
When asked about how she felt when congratulated about the birth by the neighbors Robert said “It was plain hell. I couldn’t reason with Margaret. So I flew the coop. Margaret really didn’t want to be helped.”
After leaving, Robert says she had the pleasantest time of her life rambling alone in the Siskiyou mountains. She had and lost several jobs in California. She eventually returned to Seattle and found she was wanted for failing to support her family.
Robert tells the reporter she was visited in jail by Margaret, following her arrest. She asked Margaret “How can you have me convicted of nonsupport of your children when you know they are not mine?”
Margaret responded “But, if you prove they are not yours, you will have to tell your secret—that you are a woman. You don’t dare do that.” But Robert Gaffney dared and she was released, though it came at the cost of the freedom she had enjoyed living as a man.
Speaking about Robert, Mr. Boalt writes “The petticoats bind her legs when she walks. The waist is too tight for comfort, and the sleeves retard the free swing of her strong arms. Her hat, a simple thing as women’s hats go, has—oh height of absurdity—a feather, a ribbon and a flower on it. And the brim flops!”
“Cook? She has forgotten how. Sew? She is as clumsy with a needle as I am. Fancywork. She laughs bitterly. And, oh, the loneliness of the prison she had been driven back to! Where shall she find friends! When she was a ’man’ she could make friends anywhere, as all men can. Lend a man a match on a street corner, or share with him your ‘makings,’ and presently you have a friend. ‘As a man I was never lonely,’ she told me. But now? If she speaks to a man in a public place, he will say to himself: A woman of the street. If she speaks to a woman in a public place, she will be rebuffed. When she asks for work, if work is to be had—janitor work say—she is offered $30 a month. When she was a ‘man’ she got $90. That’s the difference, in wages, between pants and skirts.”
*We use the pronoun "she" for Robert in this article, in an effort to best honor her preferences, as she used feminine pronouns to refer to herself when interviewed directly.