By MICK ROBERTS ©
Bill Edwards was said to be “a shade too handsome for a barman”.
Although reportedly skilled, quick, and obliging, with a joke for his customers, the barman’s small hands and feminine features sometimes raised curiosity. However, in the main Edwards managed to hide his secret for almost 20 years.
You see, Bill Edwards is widely regarded as Australia’s first known transgender bartender. In fact, Bill is considered the country’s first transgender celebrity.
Born Marion Edwards in Murchison, Victoria in 1874, she left home at the age of 13 and shortly after started living as a man.
Edwards held a range of what was considered masculine occupations, from horse-training to furniture-manufacturing, while holding a strong interest in sports such as shooting and horse-training. He mingled with men, drinking, smoking cigars, and gaining a reputation as a reliable tipster when it came to the track.
Edwards also worked in various Melbourne pubs as a barman and cellarman. There are also references that he partnered in managing a number of Melbourne pubs. With an unknown partner, Edwards reportedly held the license of the hotel at the corner of Webb, and Napier Streets, Fitzroy, and the Bulla Hotel, 18 miles from Melbourne, and Dean’s Bluestone Hotel, four miles nearer Melbourne on the same road.
Edwards married Lucy Minihan (Nee Repacholi) at St Francis’ Catholic Church, Melbourne on New Years Day in 1900. Minihan was a 30 year old widow who owned a lodging-house. Although they remained friends, the marriage did not last and was short lived.
Edwards had a reputation as a ‘ladies man’, and was often seen with pretty young women on his arm at the horse races.
A short, thickset figure, with a decidedly masculine voice, Edwards reportedly had “an incipient growth of down on the upper lip”, and could hold his own with Melbourne’s best barmen. He was known to have had no problem throwing drunken customers from his bar. The Melbourne Age reported on September 29 1906 that Bill’s work as a barman “was always accomplished with a neatness and despatch that won him the respect of the rowdy element” of customers in the pubs in which he worked.
In April 1905, Edwards was arrested for burglary when – with another person – he was found at 3am lurking in the shadows of the Studley Arms Hotel in Collingwood. At the time, he was employed as a barman at the pub.
Edwards said he was trying to catch a prowler. However, authorities never bought his excuse, and he was charged with attempted burglary.
Fearful that his gender would be discovered Edwards did ‘a runner’ to Queensland, where he gained work as a barman. His estranged ‘wife’, Lucy, who had put up bail of £50, was sentenced to one month’s gaol for Edward’s default.
Police were tipped-off that Edwards was in Brisbane, and the barman was arrested. Edwards’ celebrity was born soon after his arrest when police discovered that he was, in fact a woman by birth – Marion Edwards.
Huge crowds gathered at the three Brisbane court hearings to return Edwards to Victoria to face the burglary charges.
At his Melbourne trial on 1 November 1906 Edwards was found not guilty.
About this time his memoir was published, illustrated with photographs of him posing in male and female clothes. Interviewed by Lone Hand in 1908, Edwards was described as a modern Mademoiselle De Maupin, from the novel dealing with bisexuality.
Taking advantage of the publicity, he performed as a sharpshooter in an exhibition between film shows at the Fitzroy Cyclorama. He also appeared at Kreitmayer’s Bourke Street waxworks, billed as ‘The Far-famed Male Impersonator’.
Edwards died in the Royal Melbourne Hospital at the age of 82 in 1956. His final years were in the Mount Royal Geriatric Home, where he cruelly was prevented from wearing male clothing.
© Copyright Mick Roberts 2024
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