#jack bee garland

Gay transgender activist Lou Sullivan spent years researching the life of Jack Garland, an obscure early 20th century transgender man who evidently loved men. He rifled though archived newspapers and letters in local libraries for any scrap relevant to Jack, and finally managed to get the completed novel published only very shortly before his death by AIDS in 1990. The book made a single run from a now-defunct publishing company, so a very limited number of copies of the book exist today. Approximately 30 libraries carry it across the US and certain sellers have another handful of copies available for upwards of $200+ each. However, I could afford to shell out that $200, and I think Lou would want his book to be accessible to the modern trans population. So I've bought a copy and scanned it and converted the pages into a PDF,

which is now public on google drive

Jack Bee Garland (deceased)

Gender: Transgender man

Sexuality: Queer/gay

DOB: 9 December 1869

RIP: 19 September 1936

Ethnicity: White

Occupation: Veteran, writer, nurse, journalist

Jack Bee Garland aka Babe Bean, Jack Beam, Jack Maines, and Beebe Beam.

5 fast facts:

Born December 9th, 1869 in San Francisco, CA to a former Mexican consul and army veteran father from Mexico and an upper-class American mother from Texas.

Jack passed as a younger than his true age cisgender man and claimed to have lost his voice in an accident which necessitated communication solely through writing

Despite being revealed as “a woman posing as a man” Garland was granted access to a Bachelor’s Club in the San Francisco suburb of Stockton, CA and began employment as a social commentator for the Stockton Evening Mail.

Garland worked for the American Red Cross as a nurse following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires

Fellow transgender man Lou Sullivan wrote the biography, From Female to Male The Life of Jack Bee Garland about Garland which can be found in the Hormel Center

Jack Bee Garland was born on Dec. 9th, 1897 in San Francisco, CA to a Criollo father named Jose Marcos Mugarrieta and American mother named Eliza Garland. From childhood, Garland was considered such a tomboy that his mother sent him to a convent school to learn to be ladylike. Determined to live his truth Garland escaped the nunnery by marrying a friend of his sibling’s and after six months of a sham marriage left his husband and moved to Stockton, CA. After moving from his hometown he began using the pseudonym Babe Bean and began claiming medical muteness to jumpstart a journalism career writing social commentary and crime stories for the Stockton Evening Mail Newspaper.

After murmurs of Garland possibly being a woman circulated around town he was tracked down and arrested on cross-dressing charges. Ever the charmer though Garland confessed to being a woman wearing man’s clothing and claimed he had not intended to “deceive” people into thinking he was born a man which allowed him to avoid any legal repercussions. In 1899 he continued his legal limbo by following the United States Army to the Philippines for a year in order to write about the Philippine War. Though unable to officially enlist Garland worked as a cabin boy in efforts to pay his way to the Philippines and shadow army soldiers. Sadly, in a stroke of rotten luck Beam became ill on the voyage and was left in Hawaii after the captain found out he had not been assigned male at birth. While this may have been the end of the road for anyone else in his position Garland was so beloved that army soldiers purchased him a ticket to return to the ship and tried to get him back on the ship.

Enraged by their insubordination the captain refused Garland’s ticket and it seemed like he might stay in Hawaii. However, his comrades were undeterred and the soldiers dressed Garland in a uniform and stowed him away until they were miles from shore. Eventually, he was found again, but due to being dressed as any other soldier he was able to escape capture and follow the regiment to their local base. While in the Philippines Garland served as a Spanish language interpreter, a nurse and also lived in camps with the United States Volunteer Infantry Regiments. 

In 1900, Garland published "My Life as a Soldier," in the San Francisco Examiner Magazine and was mortified when the newspaper marketed the story as one of a woman soldier abroad. Rightfully upset by the Examiner’s blatant sensationalism, Garland abandoned writing under his former alias of Babe Beam and assumed the identity Jack Bee Garland which he held firm to ’till his death in San Francisco on September 19, 1936. After falling in the street, hospital staff discovered Garland had been assigned female at birth which led to tabloid-style series of newspaper articles and a battle about whether or not he should be buried with military honors. 

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