The best-known photograph of Charlie Wagner at work shows him bent over the thigh of a teenage boy, in a room lettered “Prof. Wagner, 223½ Bowery.”[1] The boy is Andrew “Andy” Stuertz, an orphan from Philadelphia, covered from head to toe so that he could earn a living as a tattooed attraction.[1][3] There was no age law. As the Mariners’ Museum notes, consent was enough.[1] He toured for a decade, married a snake charmer, and later tattooed in Norfolk, Virginia. This page follows that arc, and it keeps the two birth years in view.
Quick facts
- Born
- June 4, 1892, to Andrew Sr. and Lizzie Stuertz (Tatuteket and a Bray catalog give 1893)
- Died
- May 15, 1962, Norfolk, Virginia
- Known as
- Andy Stuertz; “The Tattooed Boy”; “The Tattooed Marvel”
- Tattooed at
- Charlie Wagner’s room at 223½ Bowery, when Stuertz was about 13 to 16
- Toured
- From 1907, including T.E. Caffrey’s show, Gollmer Brothers, Hagenbeck-Wallace and Barnum & Bailey, through about 1917
- Later work
- Tattooer in Norfolk, Virginia, alongside August “Cap” Coleman
Philadelphia, an orphan, and 223½ Bowery
The Mariners’ Museum, which owns a print of the Wagner photograph and has published the most careful biographical work on him, gives his birth as June 4, 1892, to Andrew Sr. and Lizzie Stuertz.[1] Tatuteket and a Bray & Co. catalog give 1893.[3][4] He was orphaned by about the age of six — Tatuteket says between six and nine — and was raised by his mother’s family in Philadelphia.[1][3] In his early teens, around 1906, he reached New York.[1]
There he agreed to let Charlie Wagner cover him. The Mariners’ Museum dates the well-known photograph, a gelatin silver print in its catalog, to 1905–1907 and identifies complete versions of the image by the 223½ Bowery sign.[1][2] Some later copies have that number painted over to read 208 Bowery, Wagner’s later supply address, a reuse the museum noted as a piece of business history.[1] Our archive print still shows 223½.
Stuertz was one of several young men Wagner covered for the stage. The museum’s research, working from a set of photographs, also names Charles Craddock, Jack Tryon, Anthony Gallo and Wagner’s brother Stephen.[1] The performers typically paid little or nothing. Their skin was the advertisement.
“The Tattooed Boy,” 1907 to about 1917
From 1907 he toured as “The Tattooed Boy” and “The Tattooed Marvel,” with shows that included T.E. Caffrey’s Imperial Dog and Vaudeville Show, the Gollmer Brothers Sideshow, Hagenbeck-Wallace, and Barnum & Bailey, through about 1917.[1][3][4] On the circuit he met August “Cap” Coleman, who would matter later.[1]
He married Dagmar Franciska Hansen of Copenhagen, a snake charmer billed as “Maxine” with Barnum & Bailey.[1][3] Their daughter, Venetia, was born in 1925.[1]
Norfolk, a tattooer’s second life
In his twenties Stuertz became a tattooer himself and moved to Norfolk, Virginia, a navy town, where he worked with Cap Coleman.[1] Naval Station Norfolk had been established in 1917, and the port trade was the same kind of business Sands Street had been in Brooklyn.[1]
After Dagmar died in 1945, he lived with his daughter’s family and worked in his son-in-law’s jewelry shop.[1][3] His granddaughter Frances later recalled the long sleeves he wore, and the occasional tattoo job done from binders of flash.[1][3]
He died by suicide on May 15, 1962, at the age of 68 or 69, and was interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Norfolk, where Cap Coleman is also buried.[3][1] The boy in the Bowery photograph had become an old tattooer in another port, still in the trade Wagner had started him in.
NYC Tattoo Shop is at 141 Canal St, a short walk from the old 223½ Bowery block. The history here belongs to New York. We’re proud to work nearby.
Photo gallery
From the NYC Tattoo Shop History Digital Archive. The Mariners’ Museum holds another print of the same photograph. Some copies have had the address painted over to read 208 Bowery, Wagner’s later supply address.
