Digital Transgender Archive

Two amateur actors, one in drag as 'Charley's Aunt', greet each other in front of painted scenery. Photographic postcard, 191-.

The man in drag is dressed in white and is holding a small fan. He is greeted by a man in smart attire with a top hat. Amateur drag behind the lines, early in World War I, with the same backdrop as in another photograph (Wellcome Library no. 2043401i). One performer wears a 'Victorian' style outfit which appears to have been hastily improvised from a bedcover and a few hand props. It resembles the costume typically worn by the lead actor in productions of Brandon Thomas' 1892 farce 'Charley's aunt', the plot of which has a young undergraduate masquerading as another's elderly aunt. This popular figure created by the actor W.S. Penley in 1892 in the farce by Brandon Thomas of the same name was always played wearing the distinctive black bonnet seen here

Part of James Gardiner Collection: photographs of military, naval, and prisoner-of-war camp drag.