Set Reminder2021-06-26 12:00:002021-06-26 12:00:00America/New_YorkBidsquareBidsquare : Circus, Sideshow & Oddities https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/potter-potter/circus-sideshow-oddities-21965 Several fine collections make up this year’s auction, including one of our largest offerings to date of vintage circus and sideshow photographs, banners, and posters, as well as show memorabilia, books and autographs, and an array of bizarre and unusual objects.
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[TRANSGENDER] Lot of 4 ?Man-Woman? Items of Nicholai De Raylan and Others. Including a cabinet photo by Mrs. W.A. Reed (Quincy, IL); a photo postcard (RPPC) by Kite Studio (Chicago), annotated and dated 1906 on the face; a pitch booklet, ?The Story of Nicholai DeRaylan;? and a 19th century quarter-plate daguerreotype of a ?man-woman? or gender ambiguous subject, in a later wooden case. DeRaylan was born in Russia around 1873, the possible illegitimate child of a member of the nobility. In order to seek a share of her mother?s fortune, DeRaylan presented to authorities as a boy, hoping to better the chances of receiving an inheritance. Faced with a medical examination to determine her sex, De Raylan fled the country, eventually settling in Chicago around the 1893 World?s Fair. De Raylan lived and worked as a man in Chicago, even marrying two women, before dying from tuberculosis in 1906. It was only after De Raylan?s death when the story of his ?secret,? ?18 year masquerade? as a man became a sensationalized news story, reported across the country.