Born in Kansas in 1877, Maud grew up to be the first white female tattoo artist in the United States.
Show Notes:
image:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/maud-wagner
Maud Stevens Wagner http://www.theheroinecollective.com/maud-wagner/ List
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to brain junk. I’m Amy Barton and I’m Trace Kerr and it’s time for a Brain Storm.
TK: So I found this website, theheroincollective.com heroin. It sounded weird like the lady. Yeah, like you know, male hero. Right. And they had an article about this woman named Maude Stevens Wagner.
AB: I like her name.
TK: I like her name too. You need to Google her and take a look because she is the first known female tattoo artists in the United States.
AB: Really?
TK: Yes. Born in Kansas in 1877 Maud Stevens Wagner was a young adult in Kansas. She began her career as a circus performer. She was doing acrobatics and contortionists and things like that and she worked her way up from local circuses to a bigger circus. And then she was at the St Louis World’s fair in 1904.
AB: Really?
Yup. Here we are. Circling back around. Remember for a while there, it seemed like everything happened at the Saint Louis world’s fair.
AB: Well, I think it did.
TK: Maude happened there and there she met Gus Wagner who was called the tattooed globe trotter.
AB: Awesome.
TK: And he had, uh, tattoos all over his body.
AB: I’m hoping he was bald with a map on his head.
TK: Yeah. And he was known for stick and poke tattoos.
AB: Ooh. So like the traditional tribal.
TK: Well kind of. So machines were already becoming a thing then tattoo machines and it’s got, you know, a whole bunch of little needles in there poking into the skin will stick and poke is one needle and you’re getting ink on it and then yes, you’re doing your tattoo.
AB: Oh, that sounds laborious. Dot by dot by dot.
TK: Yeah. So, and there’s some debates about how it went down, but it is thought that in return for a date. So Gus Wagner was like, Hey, contortion actually want to go out. She demanded lessons on how to Tattoo.
AB: I like the idea.
TK: So she learned how to do the stick and poke method from Wagner and they got married and she was soon covered with tattoos herself.
AB: I just looked up a picture, she totally was.
TK: Let me describe some of them. So she had a woman sitting astride, a lion on her chest, a patriotic, patriotic eagle, and an American flag on her left bicep along with her name, monkeys, horses, butterflies, trees, like palm trees, swallows. These were tattoos that were very popular at the time.
AB: Okay.
TK: And also popular for the stick and poke particular style. And as she got more tattoos on her body, not only was she tattooing other people, but then she also became a circus sideshow.
AB: She was a tattooed woman.
TK: Yeah. That would’ve been pretty rare outside of the sailors. So she was doing her contortions and things like that, but she was more of a headlining kind of thing than one of the group.
AB: So Maud, Gus, they had a daughter Loveta and Maude began teaching Lavetta the stick and poke tattoo method when she was nine.
AB: Wow. Really?
TK: Yup. But here’s the interesting thing. So Maud refu...
