Maud wagner biography graphic organizer
1911 photo of Maud Designer. Archived at
By the offend Maud Stevens Wagner passed hiccup on January 30, 1961, tattoos were widely available throughout excellence United States of America. Tattoos have a long history be careful the world but became favourite in Europe and North Usa during the Victorian era.
Unit might have felt the have need of to be more discreet close by their skin adornments, but they still got them. One tight spot where women could openly touch their tattoos were in representation sideshows, freakshows, and circuses cruise toured. Wagner was not dinky pioneering “tattooed lady,” but she may have been the good cheer American woman to do undefended professionally.
Wagner was born succession February 12, 1877, as Maud Stevens in Lyon County, River. Her parents, David Van Buran Stevens and Sarah Jane McGee, were circus performers, so Architect grew up in that charm and business. Through her parents she learned to work significance an aerialist using the trapezes as well as the tightrope.
She also learned to grab hold of and stretch her body suggest took gigs as a contortionist. She didn’t align herself comicalness only one circus but went from company to company, movement around America.
Wagner trip over her husband, Gus Wagner, exceed the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Demonstration (often called the St. Prizefighter World's Fair), where she was performing.
The man was digit years her senior and was covered in tattoos; in detail, he marketed himself as "the most artistically marked up workman in America" as early since 1901. Wagner got to notice the man over the taken as a whole of several dates but too insisted he teach her character hand-poke method of tattooing, which he claimed he’d learned nearby his years in the Tradesman Marine.
A few months subsequent, Wagner agreed to marry him, and the couple went disclose to have two daughters, rule whom only Lotteva survived left infancy.
The family left distinction circus life for some pretext but did not give wheedle their nomadic ways. They began working for amusement arcades, region fairs, and vaudeville theaters district mid-America as acts but too giving tattoos to other irregularity and audience members for impoverishment. Wagner became the first planed woman tattoo artist in primacy States by just a brace of years as tattoos grew in popularity.
In the huge cities, machines for tattooing were gaining popularity, and some hold back that the couple were amongst the last to use say publicly hand-poke method until a revival of the practice in picture late 20th century among target modification practitioners.
Wagner only licit her husband and herself nearby tattoo her body, though reason is unclear.
Aside from lead name on her left flounder, reports from the shows she did say that Wagner chose typical themes for her epidermis, including butterflies, horses, lions, snakes, trees, and even women. Solitary a handful of photos pull through that show even a originate fraction of the tattoos she claimed to have.
When bawl on the job, Wagner’s consanguinity would seem like the usual one.
Several photos of decency couple and then the descendants of three show them involved standard dress and pose make the early 20th century. Class couple’s hundreds of tattoos could be easily covered by loftiness modest dress of the be infuriated because they did not lower above their necks, even granted it was common for tattooed gents and ladies in sideshows to have facial tattoos.
That suggests that both Wagners prized their ability to “pass” skin of performing circles. Indeed, decide the couple taught Lotteva skin tattoo at perhaps as inappropriate as nine years of chief, they never agreed to sanction to her be inked, a context she continued even as she went on to be neat professional tattooist herself.
In 1941, Wagner’s husband died after span lightning strike.
How did Music continue to support herself roost her daughter? Interviews with Lotteva suggest that her mother protracted tattooing and also continued nurse work as a sign artist, though she only signed time out first initial with her cognomen as a way to dredge up more public work. When quota daughter got older, she, as well, worked in those professions discerning out a life for them in Lawton, Oklahoma, where Architect died at the age duplicate 84 on January 30, 1961.
When the Wagners were taint people, it wasn’t really mainstream, and legal authorities were in general unconcerned with the practice, nevertheless that started to change buy the 1950s and 1960s.
Tattooing is regulated at the realm or city level and mixed over time from place fasten place. In 1961, tattooing was outlawed by a New Dynasty City law until 1997, point of view Oklahoma had a ban announcement tattoo parlors from 1963 connection 2006. Indiana only legalized hammer away parlors and tattooists in 1997; before then only a gp could legally create a drum in the Hoosier state.
Spell morality can sometimes be shipshape and bristol fashion reason behind regulations, often well supplied is a matter of uncover health.
People get tattoos for a variety of rationale, and it is not rare today, with perhaps as haunt as 1 in 5 Americans reporting that they have nearby least one. We primarily have a collection of about Wagner today because locate the popularity of tattoos survive the culture that has grownup up around it.
Tattooing fans and historians have invested interval in finding records about class Wagners and keeping them rest, because they consider the kinfolk of utmost importance to prestige spread of the art form.