CONTENT WARNING : this episode includes a reference to sexual assault
They lived as a seamstress, a soldier and a servant — and then a court demands to know whether they’re a man or a woman, and the answer is: both.
This week, Zelah Glasson travels back in time with historian Kit Heyam to meet Thomas(ine) Hall, an extraordinary figure whose life crossed the boundaries of gender in 17th-century England and colonial Virginia.
Born Thomasine, they wore women's clothes before cutting their hair, dressing as a man and joining the army. Later, they returned to women's clothing, worked as a seamstress and eventually travelled to Virginia as a male servant.
But in 1629, Thomas(ine)'s neighbours began to question their gender. What followed was an extraordinary court case involving examinations, accusations and intense scrutiny of Thomas(ine)'s body and identity.
Thomas(ine)'s answer was clear: they were both a man and a woman. The court's eventual ruling was just as extraordinary — ordering Thomas(ine) to live publicly as both.
A seamstress. A soldier. A servant. A survivor. And someone who refused to fit neatly into the boxes of their time.
History has never been this queer.
#ttqpod
Website: www.timetravellingqueers.com
Instagram: @timetravellingqueers
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A Molly House Media Production.
www.mollyhousemedia.com
Host : Don One
Guest : Zelah Glasson
Historian : Kit Heyam
Creator, Writer & Director : David Mark Graham
Writer & Producer : Marie Horner
Executive Producer : Rishi Khosla
Editor : Lesley Posso
Set Designer : Ellie Koslowsky
Sound Designer & Dubbing Mixer : Jon Gray
Theme music Composer : Adiescar Chase
Recorded at www.storyhousestudios.co
CHAPTERS
0:00 - 2:20 intro
2:21 - 3:09 time travel
3:09 - 7:52 Pissing on everyone’s cornflakes
7:53 - 8:40 Thomas the Soldier. Thomasine the lacemaker
8:41 - 13:52 crossing the Atlantic and gender norms
13:33 16:30 Why is this gym bro hanging with the girls?- Zelah BB experience
16:31 - 19:40 Whats on Trend? Sad colours!
19:41 - 21:00 “A bit for my cat”
21:01 - 22:59 The examinations to “settle the matter’
23:00 - 25:55 the sentence for being both
25:56- 26:36 Gender anxiety
26:37 - 27:16 Native American two spirits
27:17- 31:27 Legacy
31:28 - 32:31 Outro
32:31- 32:47 Easter egg
REFERENCES
Kit Heyam, Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (Basic Books UK / Seal Press, 2022)
David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford University Press, 1989)
H. R. McIlwaine (ed.), Minutes of the Council & General Court of Colonial Virginia, 1622–1632, 1670–1676, with Notes & Excerpts from Original Council & General Court Records, into 1683, Now Lost (Richmond: The Colonial Press, Everett Waddey Co., 1924), pp. 194–195
Virginia General Court, 1622–29, Cases, with Minutes, ser. 8, vol. 15, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress
Jennifer Frangos, ‘The Early Modern Queer Atlantic: Narratives of Sex and Gender on New World Soil’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Atlantic Literary Studies (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 248–267
Kathryn Wichelns, ‘From The Scarlet Letter to Stonewall: Reading the 1629 Thomas(ine) Hall Case, 1978–2009’, Early American Studies, 12.3 (2014), 500–523
