The name on Charlie Wagner’s 1924 photographs is “Miss Trixie Richardson.”[4] A birth name, and dates of birth and death, have not been found; Sunny Buick, who has written the fullest recent note on her, doubts that “Trixie” — and perhaps “Richardson” — was a name she was born with.[1] What the photographs and a 1933 book do record is precise enough. Wagner tattooed her at 11 Chatham Square in 1924. She toured with Ringling Bros. And in the summer of 1925, Albert Parry wrote, she tattooed women along the New Jersey beaches.[2][1] This page stays with those documents and does not invent a biography around them.
Quick facts
- Born
- Not found; Sunny Buick doubts that “Trixie,” and perhaps “Richardson,” was a birth name
- Died
- Not found
- Known as
- Miss Trixie Richardson
- Tattooed by
- Charlie Wagner, at 11 Chatham Square, season 1924, as printed on his promo photographs
- Look
- Black bob, kohl-rimmed eyes, flapper costume; three-quarter sleeves
- Tattooed at
- New Jersey beaches, summer 1925, according to Albert Parry; later listed, Buick says, as a tattoo artist in New Jersey
Season 1924, 11 Chatham Square
Wagner’s promotional photographs are captioned on the negative. One reads “Miss Trixie Richardson, Season 1924, Tattooed by Wagner, Black Eye Barber Shop, 11 Chatham Sq. N.Y.C.” Others say “Tattooed by Prof. Chas. Wagner, 11 Chatham Sq. N.Y. City, Season 1924,” and, on a back view, “Tattooed by Chas. Wagner, 1924.”[4] A later seller, describing a set found tacked inside the lid of a tattooer’s travel kit that held Wagner machines, thought Wagner had handed the pictures out like business cards.[4]
The look is specific: a black bob, kohl-rimmed eyes, a flapper costume, and sleeves that stop at three-quarter length, leaving the hands and lower forearms bare.[1] Sunny Buick has argued that she and Wagner started a three-quarter-sleeve fashion later worn by Betty Broadbent, Mae Vandermark and Artoria Gibbons.[1] That is a historian’s reading of the photographs, and it is offered here as such.
A cabinet card of her was later shown in the New-York Historical Society’s 2017 exhibition Tattooed New York.[3]
The Jersey Shore, 1925
She did not remain only an attraction. Sunny Buick writes that she toured with Ringling Bros. and that she probably learned to tattoo from Wagner.[1] The strongest period description of that second career is Albert Parry’s 1933 book Tattoo: Secrets of a Strange Art. Parry wrote that in the summer of 1925 alone she put some 10,000 butterflies, forget-me-nots and other small designs on women along the New Jersey beaches.[2] He tied the work to shorter postwar bathing suits, and to women who preferred a woman tattooer, working from a show platform.[2]
The figure of 10,000 is Parry’s, and it has the sound of a showman’s season total. We present it as what a 1933 book claimed, not as a count from a shop ledger. Hyperallergic, covering the 2017 exhibition, likewise said she gave thousands of 1920s women butterflies and forget-me-nots.[3] Buick adds that she was later listed as a tattoo artist in New Jersey.[1]
Which beaches, and which towns, Parry does not say. Atlantic City and Asbury Park are obvious places to look, and those newspapers have not been searched for this page. The important fact that is documented is the shore itself: a New York–tattooed woman, already a Ringling attraction, spending a summer tattooing other women on the Jersey beaches, a few years before Broadbent’s better-known suit was begun.
NYC Tattoo Shop is at 141 Canal St, a short walk from 11 Chatham Square, where Wagner photographed her in 1924. The history here belongs to New York. We’re proud to work nearby.
Photo gallery
From the NYC Tattoo Shop History Digital Archive. Wagner’s 1924 promo photographs were captioned on the negative with her name, the Chatham Square address and the year.
