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Charlie 😊
@kimabutch.bsky.social
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Charlie, butch lesbian, 29. They/them. Mostly into gay books and AP podcasts. Significantly more active on tumblr!
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Sally's Joe...

Published in the Newcastle Chronicle on 27 January 1894.
In February, 1823, whilst the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the western terminus of which was originally at a colliery near Etherley, was in course of construction, a young man, to all appearances, gained work at one of the pits in the neighbourhood, giving the high-sounding name which appears in the register, and took up his residence in Toft Hill Lane, a continuation of the village of Etherley. “He” was then apparently about 20 years of age, and soon afterwards married a girl employed as domestic at the Black Bull Inn named Sally, and was known thenceforth, after the custom of the colliery villages of that day when an outsider married a girl born in the village, as “Sally’s Joe.” The birth of a son followed much earlier upon the marriage than was regarded as fitting by the gossips, but did not appear to affect the harmony of Sally and Joe, who lived contentedly and even happily together for thirty long years. Joe worked at the pits in winter, and in harvest and other field work in summer, being renowned as the fastest shearer in the district, and therefore in great demand at a time when all corn was reaped with the sickle. After thirty years Sally died, and Joe buried her with much, and apparently sincere, mourning. Joe had saved her from disgrace, and in return Sally had faithfully kept Joe’s secret through all the intervening years. Whether advancing age had brought the reverse of wisdom to Joe is uncertain, but at all events “he” some time afterwards again entered the bonds of matrimony, this time with a widow. The union was not a happy one, and the pair soon separated. Village tradition has two accounts of the quarrel. One is that the widow roundly declared that her second husband was a woman, but that the story was scouted by those who had known Joe for so many years as a ridiculous fabrication on the face of it. The other version is that the pair parted friends, and that the “second wife kept her husband’s secret as faithful through life as Sally had done. Joe henceforward lived alone, at first in a little cottage attached to a turnpike gate, which gained him the cognomen of Joe Piker, by which “he” was invariably known and addressed in his later years, and eventually in a miserable two-roomed cottage in a courtyard. In the latter part of 1869 Joe fell ill, but steadfastly refused to allow any one to approach him. It was only when the kindly neighbours went on to perform the last offices for the body that Joe’s well-kept secret was revealed, and the twice-married pitman, who had gone in and out among the villagers for nearly 50 years, was discovered to be a woman. Joe is always claimed to hail from Berwick-on-Tweed, and spoke the strong Doric of the border district, but inquiries set on foot by the then rector, the Rev. W. B. Findlay, failed to throw the slightest light on either the history or the motives of the woman who called herself Joseph Josiah Charles Stephenson. The above is from the “Auckland Chronicle.” Forster Lee, Newcastle.
July 31, 2025 at 6:55 PM