Female foot boy! : An account of the extraordinary life and adventures of Catherine Wilson, an interesting young woman, about twenty years of age, daughter of respectable parents, near Perth, who assumed man's apparel at the age of fourteen, and hired herself to a drover, when she came to Edinburgh, and got into a respectable gentleman's family as foot boy, but being discharged was compelled to work as a bricklayer's labourer; how she assumed the name of John Thomson, and married her landlady's daughter, Mary Gray, and on Saturday last resumed her petticoats.
Maidment, James,1793-1879,former owner.StEdNL.
[Edinburgh] : R. Reynolds, printer 489 Lawnmarket, Edinburgh,
[ca. 1830?]
According to this account, Catherine Wilson assumed the name of John Thomson during her time disguised as a man. The creation of an alter ego was apparently in response to losing her parents at the age of six or seven.
Provenance: Bound in a volume carrying the inscription 'This collection is understood to have been formed by the late James Maidment and it has been added to by me. John A. Fairley' on first fly-leaf.
Male impersonators