Bad Boys And Tough Tattoos - A Social History Of The Tattoo With Gangs, Sailors And Street-corner Punks 1950-1965

AND TO ATTOOS A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors, and Street-Corner Punks, 1950-1965 BY SAMUEL M. STEWARD, PhD Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors and Street-Corner Punks 1950-1965 ISBN 0 -‘ftfl3e13-7b-D Published by Harrington Park Press, 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13004-1580 EUROSPAN/Haworth, 3 Henrietta Street, London WC2E 8LU England Harrington Park Press is a subsidiary of The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, New York 13904-1580. © 1990 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Cover design by John Paul Lona Library of Congress Cataloglng-in-Publication Data Steward, Samuel M. Bad boys and tough tattoos : a social history of the tattoo with gangs, sailors, and streetcorner punks, 1950-1965 / Samuel M. Steward, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-918393-76-0 (alk. paper) 1. Steward, Samuel M. 2. Tattoo artists —United States —Biography. 3. Tattooing —Psy­ chological aspects. 4. Tattooing —Social aspects. I. Title. GT5960.T36S747 1990b 391'.65'0973 —dc20 90-33832 CIP For Dr. C. A. Tripp Mover and Shaker OO ALL HARRINGTON PARK PRESS BOOKS ARE PRINTED ON CERTIFIED ACID-FREE PAPER CONTENTS Foreword 1 Wardell B. Pomeroy, PhD Introduction 3 Part I: From Academia to Skidrow 7 Part II: A Cut-Throat World 19 Part III: Dr. Kinsey [Prometheus] and the Shop 37 Part IV: Sex and the Tattoo: Motivations 45 Part V: The Folklore of Tattooing 81 Part VI: The Clientele 91 Part VII: Barnacles and Leeches 139 Part VIII: Excuses —Mine and Theirs, Before and After 149 Part IX: Masters, Methods, and Maladies 157 Part X: Art and the Tattoo 167 Part XI: The Tattooist and His World 173 Part XII: The Vanishing A r t. . .? 179 Appendix A: A Brief Historical Sketch of Tattooing 183 Appendix B: A Note on the Literature of Tattooing 193 Index 199 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Samuel M. Steward, PhD, was a tattoo artist in Chicago and Oak­ land-under the name of Phil Sparrow—for 18 years. Prior to that, he was a university professor of English for 20 years. A contributor to World Book Encyclopedia and the author of several hundred sto­ ries that have appeared in European magazines, Dr. Steward has also published many books, including The Caravaggio Shawl (Alyson, 1989), Murder Is Murder Is Murder (Alyson, 1984), Parisian Lives (St. Martin’s, 1984), Chapters From an Autobiography (Grey Fox, 1981), and Dear Sammy: Letters From Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, With a Memior (Houghton, 1977). He has also written several erotic novels under the pseudonym Phil Andros, in­ cluding Different Strokes (Perineum, 1984), The Boys in Blue (Peri­ neum, 1984), and Below the Belt and Other Stories (Perineum, 1981). Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors and Street-Corner Punks 1950-1965 Foreword It has been my pleasure to have known Sam Steward for forty years, more or less, and to have spent many hours with him in his shop watching him “ operate.” This was sometimes done with Dr. Alfred Kinsey, and sometimes alone or with other members of the Institute for Sex Research. Sam also would, on occasion, wrench himself away from his fascinating job in Chicago