Miss Jack May, Lady Farmer in England and Canada

ABSTRACT This paper was inspired by the incomplete story of Englishwoman Isabel ‘Jack’ May (1875–1970), a media sensation from 1905 to 1912 because she was a ‘lady farmer’, wore ‘male attire’ and adopted the name ‘Jack’. Already well-known in England, May’s celebrity was enhanced when she purchased land in Alberta, Canada in 1911, where she farmed with a female companion. In late 1912 however, May sailed to England, never to return, and disappeared from public view. In Sarah Carter’s 2016 book Imperial Plots, May’s fate was a mystery, but Carter surmised May did not feel welcome in the Canadian West where gender transgressors were shunned. The authors, inspired by Laite’s ‘small history in a digital age’ methodological approach, discovered a deeper, richer and more complex life history. This paper reconstructs May’s life and analyses the intense media scrutiny which positioned her as an aberration against traditional femininity to understand more about the lives of other non-conforming women of this period. While we argue that May was not transgender, rather living openly as a cross-dressing woman, her self-identification as ‘farmer’ and decision to spend her adult life with same-sex companions, offers an alternative view of trans and queer ‘spaces of possibility’.


Introduction
One of Western Canada's most famous women farmers was Englishwoman Isabel 'Jack' May, who settled in Sedgewick, Alberta in the spring of 1911. 1 Her arrival in the eastern seaport of Saint John, New Brunswick, placed her immediately in the media spotlight as she was arrested and detained by immigration officials because she was 'attired in male costume'. 2 Her hair was cropped short, she wore leggings, a skirt that was not visible beneath a man's overcoat and was carrying a rifle. She was accompanied by a woman companion, Louisa Wittrick, and it was reported that they were mistaken for man and wife while travelling across Canada to Sedgewick. 3 Wittrick had purchased her own land, but she maintained the domestic realm for them both while May farmed. During her stay in Alberta, which lasted about twenty months, Jack May was subjected to intense international press scrutiny. She stood out, not only because of her attire, but because of her occupation; she was one of fifty farmers (all but two male) headed for 'ready-made' farms in a programme intended to bolster the British fabric of prairie Canada. 4 Yet, despite realising her long-time dream of farming in Canada and being touted as a success in the press, Jack May embarked for England at the end of 1912 and never returned. Undaunted by this fact, however, the press continued to publish articles about Jack, Louisa and their farming exploits for many years afterwards, seemingly oblivious of her departure. 5 In this paper we re-trace and reconstruct the life of Isabel 'Jack' May and argue that, by daring to venture into masculine territory-both literally by becoming a settler farmer in Western Canada, and figuratively by dressing in masculine clothing and adopting mannerisms and behaviours considered to be male-she acts a lens to understand more about the lives of other non-conforming women of this period. The 'small history' of Jack May illuminates the types of gender and sexuality constraints under which women lived and worked, as well as illustrating how individuals used their agency to usurp such conventions and expectations. 6 We seek to use 'the concept of queerness to complicate the women's resistance to the status quo and the potential challenge the women [May and Wittrick] posed to the heteronormativity of the region' of the prairie West. 7 In our view, although Isabel's identity as 'Jack' at times became dominant, she was not transgender. Unlike other gender-crossing women who were never discovered, or those who were revealed as female after years of passing as men, Jack was not intentionally masquerading as a man, rather living openly as a cross-dressing woman. 8 During her twenties and thirties, Isabel preferred to be called 'Jack', however she was widely known as 'Miss Jack May' or 'Lady Jack', ensuring her femaleness was visible, despite her outward mannish appearance. 9 Nevertheless, although we argue that Jack did not adopt a transgender identity, we acknowledge that transgender, as a category of analysis, has a part to play in understanding the context of, and reaction to, Jack's appearance. 10 Her masculine clothing, mannerisms, behaviour and short hair, all of which she claimed were adopted originally for practical occupational reasons, soon became habitual, whether in workrelated or social contexts, and continued even after retirement from farming (see Figure 1). Regardless of whether living in England or Canada, Jack did not conform to national or societal expectations of femininity; we argue that she created her own queer space between and across transnational binary understandings of man/ woman or masculinity/ femininity within which she manipulated the dominant models of gender and (hetero)sexuality to suit her specific circumstances.
The 'Miss Jack May' we first encountered as researchers was a media creation, a sensationalised story of a cross-dressing woman apparently choosing to move away from her middle-class society background into the dirty, physically hard, and predominantly male occupation of farming. 11 Her celebrity was broadcast throughout Britain and across British Colonies as far apart as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Alison Oram argues that such cross-dressing stories were part of a tradition of early twentiethcentury media reporting, which ' … were safely entertaining, yet sowed the seeds of the insurrectionary idea that gender was not innate but a social sham'. 12 We demonstrate in this paper how the media's emphasis on Jack's transgressive appearance was used to police both hers and other women's femininity and behaviour, while simultaneously at times being used to bolster and applaud such a bold departure from gender norms. Nevertheless, newspaper articles, while being the original medium of making Jack visible, were frequently the source of misinformation. After her departure from Canada, the reality of Jack's life was supplanted with a fiction in which she did not age and read as though she was still in Canada fulfilling the colonial settler dream when, in reality, she was an anonymous farmer in England. Additionally, we assert that these stories served another important purpose, that of providing a means by which the curious and the queer alike, under the benign safety of the 'sensational story' could hear about, read about and understand that there were alternative ways of living as a woman. 13 Oram's study examined the mass-circulation press ' … since it reached into almost every home and both reflected and informed the everyday landscape of gender and sexuality'. 14 The fact that such transgressive women existed enabled others to risk adopting similar lifestyles, to test the boundaries of femininity and sometimes even to seek out such well-known individuals for themselves. 15 The originality of this paper lies in its methodological approach. Inspired by Julia Laite's 'small history in a digital age', the authors benefited from the growing availability of diverse digital records which transformed the methodological landscape and enabled us both to 'find Jack' and reconstruct her biography from birth to death across geographical spaces. We now know that Isabel 'Jack' May lived a long and fulsome life; she died in England in 1970 aged 95 years, unnoticed and forgotten by the press which had once been so interested in every detail. She spent the latter 57 years of her life with the same woman, Ada Norah Summers (known as Norah), whom she met in the Spring of 1912 when Norah visited the Sedgewick farm in Alberta. This is therefore also a history of three women's lives and how they intersected: Isabel 'Jack' May, Louisa Wittrick, her friend, companion and business partner in Canada, and Ada Norah Summers, her life partner.

Materials and methods
Researching women in history often requires a different methodological approach to make visible lives traditionally seen as unimportant, one that frequently requires more time and draws on alternative resources than afforded to similar research on men. 16 This paper is the result of several years of searching for tiny snippets of Jack's story, which emerged gradually and in fragments, and which would not have been possible without the access to digitised resources made available in the past decade. 17 As Lara Putnam argues, '[s]ource digitization has transformed historians' practice in ways that facilitate border-crossing research in particular'. 18 The digital trend, therefore, enabled us to cross both geographical space and time and ignore the restrictions of physical archives to ' … zoom in on one person's life and then zoom out to think about that person within the global context of wider society'. 19 The authors of this paper were both inspired by Sarah Carter's original research on Miss Jack May and intrigued that, despite the widespread media coverage of her non-conforming appearance and behaviour, so little was known about her fate. 20 Jack was one of several women farmers Carter encountered and discussed in her book and her research helped provide the context for Jack's arrival and limited stay in Canada. 21 The discovery of a deeper, richer and more complex life history for Jack May cast doubt on some of Carter's arguments about why she left Canada, as well as illustrating that much of the press coverage was embellished, misleading or, indeed, false.
This paper analyses the intense media scrutiny which positioned Jack as an aberration against traditional femininity, reminding readers of how 'real' women should dress and behave. It is also testament to the alternative narratives and interpretations that can emerge when collaborative research takes place, where different skillsets are pooled, and questions asked. Our research on Jack May provides an object lesson in the challenges of writing women's history and of using disaggregated, diverse digital sources in historical research. We seek to illustrate the importance of triangulating or crosschecking the accuracy of published information with primary or trustworthy secondary sources. We have press reports, genealogical sources and other documentary glimpses of Jack, but nothing she herself wrote. Nevertheless, we can illustrate with a high degree of accuracy what happened after her return to England, including how Jack's 'queer' appearance persisted throughout her life.
In this paper we make a conscious choice to use the name 'Isabel' when referring to her life prior to 1905 when she first revealed in the Daily Mirror that she preferred to be known as 'Jack', a name adopted while serving as a nurse during the South African War. 22 Jack was not alone in her time in developing a new identity as an unconventional woman, or adopting a male nickname and male attire and so likely would have been aware of the sexual connotations of the name 'Jack'. 23 We also choose to revert to 'Isabel' post 1913, when 'Miss Jack May' becomes a fictitious figure promulgated by the media for their own purposes. 24 Throughout the article the pronouns 'she/her' are used; this supports our argument that Jack was not attempting to 'pass' as a man, but living openly as a cross-dressing woman in both England and Canada.
There are four main contexts for understanding and locating the experiences, representations, and reception of Jack May. The first is that of Western Canada as a settler colony of the British Empire, where political and legal authorities were determined to marginalise and displace Indigenous people and farm out the land to settlers, preferably British males. We need to understand Jack and the Sedgewick colony within the context of settler colonialism as a distinct and enduring mode of domination, but one in which the settler woman enjoyed an ambiguous status. 25 Unmarried women were denied access to the Canadian homestead land system because they were deemed unable to be a 'head of a household', meaning that many such women emigrated instead to the United States of America where the homestead system was less pejorative. 26 The alternative in Canada was to purchase land independently, or through sponsored schemes such as the 'ready-made' farms of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). 27 A second context for understanding Jack is that she arrived in Alberta when enthusiasm and optimism about the prospects of British women farmers for Canada was at its height, at least in England. The campaign centred there through the work of various women's organisations, emigration associations, colonial training schools, and imperial-minded journalists and travel writers. As Lisa Chilton argues, the women at the core of British female emigration societies had an intensely imperialist agenda. They saw the 'right sort' of white British women as civilisers; domesticity and motherhood as a means to ensure the racial integrity of British colonial territory. 'In the female emigrators' imperialist discourse, women were empowered to act as agents of the empire'. 28 Other campaigners urged that the 'surplus women' problem could be solved if only they could be lured across the ocean by promises of becoming landowners and enterprising farmers in Canada. 29 There were supporters as well as critics in Canada of women as farmers and there was intense debate on the issue. 30 The third context to understanding Jack May in Alberta is the short-lived promotion of British women settlers by the CPR that permitted unmarried women, such as Jack and Louisa who could demonstrate their farming acumen, to purchase a ready-made farm. The CPR had a massive amount of land, twenty-five million acres of 'railway grants' that they wanted to sell, and they did not care much if purchasers were male or female. They were competing with the U.S.
West where single women could homestead and did so in the thousands. It was imperative to show there were also opportunities for women in the Canadian West. 31 The final context for understanding Jack May is that of debates around appropriate behaviour for women, not just by class, but how womanhood, femininity and sexuality were portrayed in the 'uber-British' environment of Anglo-Canada. 32 Dress, appearance and behaviour play important roles in reassuring the viewer that the presentation of the self being displayed is cogent with what is expected. 33 It was considered vital that the gender values of the British Empire became embodied in the settlers; their physical and behavioural displays of appropriate masculinity and femininity acting as a vehicle to convey the values of the British Empire itself. 34 Women like Jack, especially unmarried, independent women like Jack, provided a counter-narrative to the perceived 'natural' order of things. 35 Our study draws and builds on histories of how gender has shaped and restricted opportunities for women to own and farm land but also how women have challenged and resisted these restrictions. 36 For the purposes of our study, historian Nicola Verdon's article 'Business and Pleasure: Middle-Class Women's Work and the Professionalization of Farming in England, 1890-1939' is most relevant and useful. 37 The article focuses on women who owned or rented land, and on how ' … debates about gender, and professionalization intersected in a unique way around farming'. She concludes that after intense debate for years, 'farming came to be seen as a viable occupation for middle-class women in England' … but 'the discourse was framed in such a way to assuage unease over gender roles and class position'. Verdon traces how a growing number of middle-class women in England, many not from rural communities, found farming an attractive proposition, and they were assisted by the concurrent growth of agricultural and horticultural training for women. Verdon argues that 'Farming … cultivated an independence of body and mind, and fulfilled a range of middle-class women's personal ambitions that had previously been stymied'. While Verdon's work is useful for understanding Jack May as a product of England, her arguments do not readily transport to Western Canada where there was much less tolerance for women as landowners and farmers; such women remained an oddity and those who persisted were subjected to intense scrutiny.
In our study of Jack May, we also engage with queer and trans histories drawn from the United States, Britain and Canada. We consider how Jack's transgression of normative expectations of femininity demonstrates how transgender can be used as a category of analysis to more fully understand nonconformity. Her gender (and sexual) identity became less fixed, moving away from the middle-class social expectations of her upbringing but stopping short of intentionally passing as male. Her particular story also contributes to the wider body and variety of experiences which might be included now within both queer and trans histories. 38 Clare Sears' work on 'cross-gender practices' during California's male dominated gold rush migrations of the mid nineteenth-century illustrates that 'spaces of possibility' emerged within frontier lands in which cross-dressing occurred. 39 However, 'wearing the apparel of the other sex' was prohibited in many cities across the USA in the mid nineteenth century, with California also introducing state level legislation to criminalise the act of 'disguise' or 'masquerade' in public ' … for the purpose of avoiding identification'. 40 Similar legislation was introduced in Canada, which Carter argues was the reason Jack was arrested by immigration officials in New Brunswick. 41 Peter Boag, in his study of cross-dressing in the US West, concludes that it was 'clearly a place and process where gender and sexuality were unstable, contentious and transgressive'. 42 Many women viewed the gold rush and the expansion of European influence westwards as an economic opportunity, dressing and adopting masculine behaviour to 'pass' as men. The true number of these women is unknown, as Sears and others argue we know only of those subsequently revealed to be women through accident, death or other circumstance. 43 Some gender-crossing women 'married' other women, living as though man and wife within their communities, often very successfully and for many years before discovery. 44 The history of female husbands is a long one, as demonstrated by the work of Oram, Sears, Jen Manion and Rachel Hope Cleves. However, Cleves' research on the relationship between Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake of Vermont, USA, demonstrates that not all such relationships followed the same model. Charity and Sylvia also considered themselves to be married but did not adopt cross-dressing practices. They lived openly as women together and 'Charity struggled to gain acceptance as a female husband from townspeople … without passing as a man'. 45 It is interesting to see here how their resistance to adopting the binary gender model was considered potentially more disruptive to society, even though passing as a man might have been illegal.
We also want to stress that the perceived sexuality of Jack May was threatening, not just her gendered unconventionality. Scholars in queer history have focused on the policing of sexual and gender norms, allowing us new ways to look at the surveillance and scrutiny Jack May faced, including her arrest upon arrival in Canada. 46 It is difficult to categorise the relationship between Jack and Louisa. On the one hand they represented a gender-binary couple to the outward gaze, with Jack adopting the masculine role in both dress and occupation, and Louisa displaying her femininity through her retention of female clothing and taking responsibility for the domestic space. On the other hand, despite frequently being mistaken for a man, Jack was continuously revealed to be a woman. Although we have found no evidence to confirm or deny that Jack and Louisa were in a sexual relationship, once they set up home together in Sedgewick, it was easier to consider that possibility, mainly because Jack dressed and behaved in the way she did.
We argue, nevertheless, that while aspects of Jack's life appear similar to other transgressive individuals from other nations, she needs to be understood with the specific gendered British colonial space of Western Canada in the early twentieth century. 47 Historian Valerie Korinek writes that: Thinking queerly of Prairie settlement … offers us useful ways to reframe part of the attraction of western immigration and settlement. Those women sought spaces to move away from families and friends, to resist the conventional life of marriage and child-rearing, and to shake off the derogatory labels of 'spinsters' and 'surplus women'. Instead, they chose the identity of 'farmer'. 48 This was also a strategy adopted by Jack May. In every official document examined from 1911 to 1939, including the England & Wales censuses of 1911 and 1921, the 1911 census of Canada, the shipping manifest for 1911 and the 1939 Register for England and Wales, Isabel 'Jack' May describes herself as 'Farmer'. 49 This may have been simply an honest way of describing herself in official documentation, but it may also have been a way to visibly reject conventional womanhood.

Finding Isabel 'Jack' May
Canadian press articles from 1911 onwards published the same mantra; Miss Jack May was the daughter of an Admiral in the British Navy and a 'society lady'. 50 Establishing the veracity of this information provided the first indication as to the unreliability of media information. 51 As the documentary fragments of Jack's life were not discovered in a neat chronological order, triangulating the information was essential, firstly to check accuracy and secondly, to contextualise these micro-history milestones within wider UK and Canadian society. This research required extensive use of digital resources, including newspapers in several different countries using multiple search terms, archival research in national and regional archives in both Canada and England, as well as extensive genealogical research to place her within a family unit, the members of which themselves had to be researched to understand Jack's place within her birth family. In addition, statutory records, census information, military records, trade and telephone directories, and wills and probate documents all contributed to our understanding and to the reconstruction of Jack's life. These combined methods helped to locate her at different periods of her life within specific contexts and helped create her 'small history'. There were many wrong turns, often caused by embellishments by the press, which were later republished as if the truth. We discuss this further towards the end of the paper.
Isabel 'Jack' May was, in fact, the daughter of a retired mid-ranking officer in the Royal Navy, Samuel Weller George Festing May (1832-1917) and his wife Jane Elizabeth Hunter (1834-1892). 52 Born in St. Vincent in the West Indies in 1832 to a British Army Officer father, 53 he joined the Royal Navy at Greenwich, London, as a cadet aged thirteen years. 54 He served until 1858 when, as a Lieutenant, he was moved to the 'Reserved List', later being granted the right to assume the rank of Retired Commander. 55 In the early 1860s, he became a Superintending Inspector with His Majesty's (HM) Factory Inspectorate working in Staffordshire, Cheshire and Yorkshire for many years before returning to London in his retirement. 56 Samuel W. G. F. May married Jane Elizabeth Hunter of Greenwich in 1856 and had eleven children, two boys and nine girls, all of whom survived to adulthood. 57 His ninth child and seventh daughter, Isabel, was born in Congleton, Cheshire on 15 June 1875. 58 Her mother died in 1892, shortly before Isabel's seventeenth birthday and by 1901 her father had retired and moved back to London. 59 Of Isabel's siblings, only two married -brother Eliot (1871-1962) and sister Helen (1876-1942), the latter when she was fifty years of age. The remainder followed callings in the church, in teaching and in music, with Isabel the only one drawn to the horticultural/ agricultural life. Mary (1860-1933) remained in the family home with her father until his death in 1917. 60 Isabel's oldest brother, Alston (1869-1940), attended Oxford University and became a Church of England clergyman. He was ordained as the Bishop of Northern Rhodesia in 1914 and died there in 1940. 61 Sisters Edith (1858-1935) and Frances  were also called to serve the Anglican church, Edith as a Deaconess and Frances as a missionary in South Africa. 62 Laura (1863-1952), Janet (1868-1962), Helen and Eliza (1879-1949) were all teachers and Catherine (1866-1952) became a professional pianist. 63 Isabel's second brother, Eliot, the only one of Isabel's siblings to have a child, followed his father into HM Factory Inspectorate. 64 Reconstructing Isabel's background from a variety of archival sources helped us to 'place' her during her formative years and demonstrate how far she had separated herself from the privileges and norms of middle-class society and family networks in her quest to be a farmer. Her background was one of relative privilege, of education and good housing, as well as exposure to London's cultural scene and wider society as she matured. Other fragments of information from early articles included that she had served as a nurse in the South African War of 1899-1902 and it was during this period that she adopted the name 'Jack'. 65 It has not been possible to independently corroborate her nursing service due to the paucity of documentation regarding civilian women travelling to South Africa for this purpose. This is not to doubt the accuracy of this information, but to demonstrate the difficulty of reconstructing women's lives, when their existence and role in a particular event is often overlooked, or the records are incomplete. 66 Shortly after her return from South Africa, Jack enrolled at Swanley Horticultural College in Kent. 67 As part of the training, students were placed with local farms to gain experience and Jack was sent to work on the farms of Mr Smith of St. Mary Cray, not far from Swanley. In her inaugural press interview of May 1905, 68 Jack said that she had already been with Mr Smith for eighteen months, meaning that her registration at Swanley can be more accurately dated to sometime in 1903, possibly at the point when the college became 'women only'. 69 In addition, although many press reports implied that Jack completed her training and graduated from Swanley, 70 she is reported also as saying that she found the work 'easy-going and finicking', more geared to horticulture than agriculture. 71 She wanted to learn the more 'practical and strenuous' side of farming and ' … so at the end of a year I left and came here [to Mr Smith's farm]'. 72 This would gel with her early statement about being at St Mary Cray for eighteen months, rather than the requisite six required by the training course. 73 A consistent theme of the early articles of 1905 and 1906 was the intention of Jack to go to Canada ' … when she has a little further experience, and turn some capital that she has to account in farming on a large scale'. 74 The key point to make here is that it was farming in Canada that was attractive to Jack, not just Canada itself. There had been opportunities for women to emigrate to Canada for decades, so Jack could have moved there at any time. However, she wanted to own her own farm and was limited by the amount of capital she had available, as well as the rules on homestead land and land purchase, both of which disadvantaged unmarried women. Jack moved to Norfolk in 1906-1907 to gain further skills and knowledge, firstly managing a fruit and flower farm and then spending several years as a bailiff or farm manager. 75 This was corroborated by local newspaper reports which revealed that she was the bailiff at the Mettingham Castle Farm, 76 owned and operated by John Wittrick, the father of the same Louisa May Wittrick who, in the Spring of 1911, also travelled to Canada, purchased the neighbouring 'ready-made farm' from the CPR and farmed in partnership with Jack May for the next two years. 77 The CPR introduced the 'ready-made farm' scheme in 1909, 78 which must have provided new hope to Jack of one day owning her own farm in Canada. The idea was that, instead of going to 'wild' unploughed land like the homesteader, the farmer would have on arrival a house, barn, well, land broken, fenced, and a number of acres seeded. All the occupant needed to do was cut, thresh and deliver the first crop to the elevator. The qualifications were that the applicant have £400, and 'he should, if possible, be married, and that he should have farmed in the British Isles'. 79 The farmers were to pay for their land in ten equal annual instalments and would be located among congenial neighbours of their own British stock and therefore be less isolated than more scattered homesteaders. 80 CPR president Thomas Shaughnessy hoped that the plan would strengthen the British foundation of the West, counteracting the massive immigration of American settlers. 81 In January 1910, Shaughnessy gave a talk on the ready-made farm scheme in London at Whitehall. It was attended by Georgina Binnie-Clark, English journalist, lecturer on opportunities for women in Canada, Saskatchewan farmer, and leader of the homesteads-for-women campaign. 82 She asked Shaughnessy if the scheme would apply to women, and he replied that 'lady farmers' were welcome, adding that they might raise poultry and eggs for the CPR dining cars. In her subsequent lectures in England in 1910, while trying to raise funds to assist British women to farm on the prairies, Binnie-Clark complimented the scheme, praised Shaughnessy, and mentioned readymade farms in her publications. 83 She said Shaughnessy would 'welcome women settlers … on the same terms as men'. Under the ready-made farm scheme: a girl would reap her first harvest, in all probability with gratifying success, and in a year's time, it is hoped that women of ordinary capacity, with proper application, will be able to take their land and forge ahead towards prosperity. 84 It is possible that Jack May was inspired by press reports of Binnie-Clark, who was touted as a 'living, zealous, charming example of what an Englishwoman can do as a farmer'. 85 However, we know for certain that Jack purchased her farm at Sedgewick through local Norfolk CPR agent, Archie Newhouse, who had a travel bureau in Norwich, England. 86 Newhouse organised a lecture there in January 1911 specifically on the benefits of the ready-made scheme, detailing the requirements for eligibility and stating that he was going 'out again this year to inaugurate a scheme whereby a Norfolk colony would be formed in Alberta'. 87 Whether Jack and Louisa attended this lecture is unknown, but the information about the ready-made scheme and the opportunity to travel to Alberta and settle with others from the local area appears to have provided the catalyst for Jack to pursue her dream. According to the glowing account of CPR publicity agent Norman S. Rankin, her application was received at the London office in early 1911. Jack wrote that she 'had occupied almost every kind of farm position from that of ordinary farm hand to bailiff, or manager'. 'Her application was considered', Rankin continued, 'her claims as a successful agriculturist investigated, and a farm at Sedgewick allotted her'. 88 As Louisa Wittrick also purchased a ready-made farm, we have to presume that she was required to provide similar evidence of farm work experience and that both must have had proof of sufficient capital. 89 Louisa May Wittrick was a year younger than Jack and the fifth of ten children (two boys and eight girls) born to John and Caroline Wittrick (neé Ward). Her father started out as a grocer and draper but moved into farming in his twenties. The family lived on the Norfolk/ Suffolk border and he owned several farms in the area, including Mettingham Castle Farm, where Jack worked as bailiff for approximately four years between 1907 and 1911. John Wittrick was 'one of the most well-known farmers and dealers in Suffolk and Norfolk, and was a familiar figure at all the local markets'. 90 Both his sons were farmers and several of his daughters, including Louisa, carried out dairy work. 91 His unexpected and sudden death in late 1909 meant considerable change for the family. At least two of the farms, their stock, machinery and contents were sold off. Under the terms of his will, Louisa received a share of his estate and it is likely that this bequest provided the capital that she was able to invest in her Sedgewick ready-made farm. 92 It is interesting to note here that Louisa's departure for Canada was not picked up by the press in Norfolk at all, yet she was the local woman, not Jack. It is Jack's picture that is published and Jack's adventure that is applauded, with no acknowledgement of Louisa's bravery in emigrating to an uncertain future in a new and challenging country. 93 Louisa purchased her ready-made farm on 24 April 1911 and Jack purchased the adjoining plot. 94 They worked their joint properties as if one farm; they lived together in one house and articles, some containing images of them there, were published in several press outlets in the UK and Canada over the next few years. 95 In the articles, many of which were also published in Australia and New Zealand, Louisa was always presented as feminine and domestic; she did not dress in male clothing: 'Miss Wittrick looks after the dairy and the house … and she is a beautiful butter maker and an excellent cook, but she takes a hand in the field work whenever there's need of extra help'. 96 Jack did the ploughing, discing, harrowing, reaping and binding, looked after the livestock and also marketed the grain. Their relationship was one based on years of friendship, of working together on a farm, albeit in very different roles. In Canada, they formed a business partnership, which had to be dissolved in 1913 when it became clear that Jack had decided to remain in England. 97 Was there any romantic or sexual dimension to their relationship? It is impossible to know for sure, as there are no records to support or, indeed, disprove this theory. The middle-class women agriculturalists of England that Verdon focused on frequently farmed in same-sex couples or groups, but she found in England there was little outright hostility or explicit comment about this. Verdon argues these arrangements made sense financially and socially and notes that if these relationships were also physical the women did not discuss this openly. In addition, as she notes: historians should recognize that, where women carved out meaningful lives for themselves with other women, 'whether they were having sex with these women is just another instance, but not necessarily the primary or only instance, of the emotional significance of single women to one another'. 98 Even if they did have such a relationship, perhaps Jack recognised that a long and settled future with Louisa in a same-sex relationship was unlikely. In October 1915 Louisa married David Moore, an Irishman who had been appointed as one of the supervisors of the CPR ready-made farms. 99 They bought more land and had two sons, though the eldest died in infancy. 100 In 1922, the Moores sold the farm and with their son, Jack, about four years old, left for Ireland. 101 Travelling as a tourist in a first-class cabin, Ada Norah Summers (known as Norah) came to Canada in April 1912. 102 The passenger manifest for the Empress of Ireland shows that Sedgewick, Alberta was her intended destination. She was twenty-four years old at the time, the youngest child and second daughter of a very successful iron and steel manufacturing family. 103 Her father died in 1910, leaving Norah and her sister Kathleen a sizable inheritance in the hands of Trustees. Her mother, Ada Jane Summers, neé Broome, became a Liberal Councillor in 1912, the first female Mayor of Stalybridge in Cheshire in 1919, and the first female Justice of the Peace in England. 104 We can find no evidence to indicate that Norah already knew Jack and Louisa and, from the information we have on Norah's background, it seems unlikely that she was considering taking on a ready-made farm herself. However, the popularity of the media reports detailing their adventures in the Canadian prairies meant that many people were interested in the famous 'Miss Jack May' and her female companion and had the means and the time to visit. 105 Jack had previously advertised for pupils at her Norfolk farm; perhaps this was a strategy used in Sedgewick also, although no evidence has yet been found so far to support that theory. 106 Potentially some individuals might have been attracted to visit the 'queer space' they had read about in newspaper articles to meet these well-known people for themselves. 107 Regardless of the reasons for her visit, Norah stayed in Sedgewick for three months and therefore would have been expected to help out on the farm, especially during harvest time. 108 She left for England in July 1912. 109 Five months later, Jack sailed to England ostensibly to visit family over the winter, but there is no evidence to indicate that she intended to remain at that point. In May 1913, however, it was reported that 'Miss Jack May, who went on a visit to the old country last fall, is not returning, she having taken a farm in the county of Shropshire, England'. 110 According to the local history of Sedgewick, however: 'Miss May left the farm for Australia in 1913 and Miss Whittrick [sic] took over the farm'. 111 In the spring of 1912, journalist Currie Love interviewed Jack about her first year in Canada, although it is important to note that the article was not published until late in 1914. Jack and Louisa had successfully brought in their first harvest in the August of 1911 and had survived the harsh Canadian winter, finding it 'delightful', ' … the long days of bright sunshine and clear, bracing cold so different from the damp fog of England'. Jack was sure that Canada was the place for her. She liked 'the freedom of things … the bigness of things'. England was in the past, a place 'to see my people at home, but not to stay'. 112 'Here I can do as I choose. I would not go back to stay under any consideration'. 113 Yet less than a year later, Jack was gone. Hard as it was to believe, the woman who had dreamt for years of farming in Canada, who had worked hard to save sufficient capital, who had pooled her labour and her skills with that of her closest friend and companion, Louisa Wittrick, to make a success of their ready-made farms in Sedgewick, had given it all up and walked away. The mainstream press, despite their intense interest in her life to that point, made no acknowledgement of her departure from Canada and, indeed, continued to publish articles for several years afterwards, implying that she and Louisa were still farming together in Sedgewick. 114 It seemed as though Jack had vanished and her reasons for abandoning her dream would remain a mystery. What could possibly have caused this change of heart? It was only when the 1939 Register for England was searched in detail that the mystery of Jack's decision and whereabouts was solved: Isabel May and Ada Norah Summers were living together in Rodney Stoke in Somerset and described themselves as 'Farmers'. 115 The pivotal factor in her 1913 decision to remain in England, therefore, appears to have been her relationship with Norah which developed and solidified very quickly over the summer of 1912. The media interviews mentioned previously, where Jack could not imagine ever returning to England other than for short visits to visit her family, took place before she met Norah and we argue that it was this relationship that influenced her decision to abandon her Canadian dream. Further research revealed that, by the time the 1913 edition of Shropshire's Trade Directory was published, Isabel and Norah were already listed as the farmers of Lower Brands Farm, near Stirchley. 116 As more digitised resources became available, it became possible to fill in the remaining gaps in Jack's life. The Misses May and Summers lived together from 1913 until their deaths in 1970-over fifty-five years. By June 1921, they had taken over Church Moor Farm in Church Stretton, Shropshire 117 , before moving to Somerset in the early 1930s. 118 When Isabel was 70 in 1945, they retired and moved to Devon, where they lived out the remainder of their days, dying in the same nursing home within nine months of each other. 119 Their relationship appears to have been accepted and acknowledged by those around them, including Jack's family. Her sister, Frances, named them both in her Will as her chosen Executrixes. 120

'Miss Jack May' or 'Lady Jack'-a lived identity
Although it is tempting to see the media interest expressed about Jack's arrival in Canada in April 1911 as nothing more than an isolated provincial case of an official interacting with a woman dressed as a man, Miss Jack May was already well-known by the British and Colonial Presses. 121 Indeed the headline in the Alberta newspaper Gleichen Call is 'Noted Lady Farmer Settles in Alberta'. 122 Most of the reports from 1911 focused on the confusion caused by Jack being 'attired in male costume' 123 , with one stating that immigration agents ' … had heard of no such thing in this part of the world, where there are no suffragettes or anything of that kind'. 124 Disingenuous though this statement may be, given the level of women's activism in Eastern Canada and across the world at that time, 125 the New Brunswick immigration officials were certainly faced with an anomaly. Was Jack 'masquerading as a man' in order to gain some type of advantage, an act that was illegal in Canada, 126 or might there be another explanation?
From her earliest interactions with the press in 1905, Jack's cross-dressing behaviour and adoption of a male nickname was of great interest and import. 'Miss May, or as she prefers to be called by her friends, "Jack", is one of the most interesting and one of the happiest ladies in England' stated The Daily Mirror in an article focussing on farming as a career option for women. 127 In Jack's case, there appears to be little intent, despite her masculine clothing, to hide her identity as a woman; in the press she was severally referred to as 'Miss Jack May', the 'Lady Farmer', or 'Lady Jack'. 128 As interest increased, she was photographed several times in 1905 and 1906, often in her 'working kit' of ' … breeches and gaiters, stout brown boots, and business-like flannel shirt' and many times sitting astride in the saddle, or on the back of working horses (see Figures  1 and 2). 129 She therefore had a profile and identity as a cross-dressing woman unhidden from the public gaze. In response to questions about her choice of clothing, Jack often mentioned their practicality and safety for the type of work she was doing but acknowledged the propensity for being thought of as male, stating that 'Strangers always imagine I'm a boy, and at several places where I go with Mr. Smith they think I am his eldest son. My hair being close cropped deceives them'. 130 In March 1906, another article and several pictures appeared in multiple newspapers across England, drawing attention to her appearance when she attended court as a witness in Bromley, Kent, ' … dressed in boy's clothes'. 131 According to that report, there was much 'curiosity' or 'surprise' as she was wearing leggings with a smock which 'almost reached her knees', her hair was 'cropped short' and she was wearing a cap. 132 Having embraced farming life since the early 1900s, therefore, and having worked in that environment during the intervening years, it is not surprising that, by April 1911, Isabel's identity was fully subsumed by that of 'Jack May'. She had lived as 'Jack' for a decade or more. Indeed, when Louisa's father John Wittrick died, even her floral tribute at the funeral was signed 'Jack May'. 133 What is particularly interesting, however, is that 'Jack' was such an intrinsic part of her identity that she used that name in an official capacity-that of booking passage on the Empress of Britain bound for Canada. That single action meant that her name was noted as such on the passenger manifest and her details were entered into the 'male' gender column by the official. 134 We argue that this discrepancy or false declaration, not purely her proclivity for cross-dressing, would be a more realistic reason for her temporary detention on her arrival in New Brunswick, as this would imply an intention to masquerade as, or impersonate a man. However, the newspaper report went on to clarify that she 'readily admitted that she was one of the opposite sex' and had many letters of reference from various past employers attesting to her skills as a 'lady farmer'. 135 She also had the CPR's confirmation that a farm had been allocated to her. There being no other reason to detain her, Jack was released to continue her journey. 136 We argue that Jack's actions were not intended to deceive the authorities, but her name and dress were, by that time, so much part of her identity that the officials mistook her for a man.
Transgressive appearance, such as Jack's masculine clothing, short hair, tanned skin and adoption of a male nickname, challenged societal expectations and caused discomfort and uncertainty for others. 137 Carter noted that cross-dressers are disruptive figures 'invested with potent and subversive powers', as they throw into question the binary categories of 'male' and 'female'. 138 As historian Ann McClintock writes, clothing became 'central to the policing of social boundaries'. 139 Jack's behaviour did not cohere with expectations either; she was strong, muscular and capable of doing work traditionally seen as the exclusive province of men. She reportedly relished the practical side of farm work and, at the point of her immigration to Canada, was able to demonstrate almost a decade of experience in working on, and managing, farms in England. She was financially independent and a landowner. However, it could be argued that Louisa Wittrick's life was very similar, with the exception that she did not dress in male clothing and exhibit masculine characteristics. What made Jack different? We assert that her transgressive behaviour was not a flash in the pan, created to provide some kind of legitimacy for her new life in Canada, or indeed that her desire to emigrate was influenced by the potential of being able to create a new more gender-fluid identity in Western Canada away from the gaze of society. 140 This was a longstanding and conscious decision to transgress gender norms dating back almost a decade and Jack made little, if any, attempt to conform to traditional feminine dress, even when not working. The local press noted, 'When she desires to really "dress up" for special occasions, she wears a soft collar and tie, and a peasant smock of navy blue denim which comes to her knees and is loosely belted around her waist'. 141 Photographs from 1905 and 1906 show Jack wearing clothing very similar to what she was reported as wearing in 1911. In addition, there is no evidence to show that she changed her style of dress after her return to England. In photographs discovered recently of Jack dating from the 1930s and 1940s, her working dress remains a shirt and tie, breeches and gaiters, an overcoat and often a hat. 142 Another image, [see Figure 3] apparently taken about 1945 at a social setting with the vicar of Budleigh Salterton, his wife and other ladies of the village, shows Isabel dressed in a smart shirt and tie, with a handkerchief in the breast pocket of her formal jacket. In contrast to all the women present, she is not wearing a dress. Her hair is white, cut in a short and wavy style and she is hatless. 143 Although fashions changed during and after the First World War and more women chose to dress similarly to Jack, at least in workplace settings if not in social ones, it is striking that she persisted in her chosen style of dress, regardless of how transgressive, and that it appears to have been accepted. 144 However, we can say that her public use of the nickname 'Jack' appears to have ceased in 1913. Might this be because she had rejected that identity? Did she not need to use it any more as a 'sign' of her sexuality, as she had found the woman she wanted to spend the rest of her life with? We may never know for certain, but from 1913 to 1970, the Misses May and Summers were rarely mentioned separately from each other. When they were, it was always as Miss Isabel May or Miss A. N. Summers; there was never any mention of 'Jack May' again. It was as though 'Jack' stayed in Canada and Isabel came home. 145

Myths, wrong turns and misinformation
Having digital access to national and international newspapers provided a very welcome source of information which would have been both costly and time-consuming to access in person. However, using newspapers can be a double-edged sword for historians; it is wonderful to find an initial tantalising nugget of information offering an intriguing story, but unrealistic to expect it to be totally accurate. Such was the case with Jack May. Press reports in Canada dating from 1911 stated that Isabel 'Jack' May was from Norfolk in England and was the daughter of an Admiral in the Royal Navy. 146 Both of these statements were subsequently found to be inaccurate; the former mistake easily explained by the fact that Jack and Louisa emigrated to Canada as part of a contingent of people from Norfolk, but the error in her father's rank merits further analysis. There is no evidence of rank inflation until after Jack's arrival in Canada in 1911. From then on, she becomes 'the daughter of Admiral May'. 147 Apart from contributing to the delay in establishing Jack's personal history, it must be asked why the Canadian and other international media outlets felt the need to promote her father to the highest rank in the British Navy? From scrutiny of the reports published in both Canada and the USA, there is much interest in Jack's social status and concern that she will be missing the 'theatre, balls and card parties'. 148 The implication was that she had sacrificed her femininity for something very new, challenging and transgressive. The unspoken message was that she should be conforming to the traditional binary gender model, otherwise she risks her future womanhood (as a wife and mother). The elevation of her father's rank makes her rejection of this life appear even more profound. It also implies her father was financially better off than he was and that there was no need for Isabel/ Jack to have a job, especially one as low status as that of farm labourer. Again, this illustrates the presumptions made by both the British and international press about her circumstances. In her first interview Jack states clearly 'You see I must earn money, and I am doing very well indeed … No, I don't go out to afternoon parties and that sort of thing … I am here working for my living'. 149 In reality, along with the rest of her siblings, Jack needed to work to earn a wage. Although she came from a comfortable background there were nine daughters in the family, all of whom had to be supported by her father and brothers unless able to provide for themselves or marry. All her sisters had some sort of vocation or occupation; only one married, but only after her child-bearing years were long past. This is the sole occasion that the press reported on Jack's need to earn a wage; it was never mentioned again, potentially because it did not fit with their narrative, one of gender transgression, the rejection of privilege and the emancipation of women's roles.

Techniques of the press in policing women's 'proper' or improper behaviour
There is no guarantee that the subject of a story will reveal personal information to the press, so it must be acknowledged that many elements of Jack's story might have been 'embellished' by the journalist to attract the interest of readers, or indeed by Jack herself to promote a particular version of events. Published information was checked and triangulated wherever possible to achieve the most robust timeline possible. We also found that, in stories which were repeated and regurgitated in multiple outlets and in different time frames, the significance of a key element of the story for one country might be ignored in preference for another, thereby changing the story's emphasis and factual base completely. An example of this was the 1906 reports of Jack's crossdressing behaviour. In the British press, this was mainly reported as a curiosity. Her cross-dressing behaviour, although challenging, was reported in the context of new career opportunities for single women and as a practical approach to avoid accidents while training to be a farmer. It was therefore, perhaps erroneously, seen as a temporary state and the implication was that she would, of course, revert to feminine dress when not at work. In the New Zealand press, however, the story of Jack's exploits was also used within cautionary pieces about the dangers of women being mistaken for men, of masquerading or passing as men. 150 In many of the press reports, a type of binary dynamic was used. On the one hand the reports were often complimentary of Jack's abilities, her willingness to work hard. 'Jack is the admiration of the countryside, and no one there doubts her ability as a mower, reaper, or plougher'. 151 There was often a type of grudging admiration for Jack's ability, her strength, and her ability to succeed in what is considered to be a very hard occupation for a man, let alone a woman. 152 Alongside this, however, the same reports often make clear how Jack was transgressing against her expected gender role. The methods used included repeatedly mentioning her age, her size and her similarity to a boy or a youth. 153 Specific masculine traits were disapproved of, such as being muscular, strong and sunburnt and were couched in terms meant to pressure the individual (or the reader) to conform to the dominant narrative of binary gender roles and behaviour in British civilised society. Jack was positioned as an aberration against traditional femininity, an exception rather than an example of progression. Where writers were concerned about her apparent lack of desire to conform, some feminine quality was mentioned to remind the reader that she was not a man and should never be mistaken for one. For example, Currie Love, who was trying to promote the CPR system to other women reminded the readers that, despite Jack's unconventional dress and unusual physical strength, ' … when you hear her soft, cultivated voice, you realise that you are talking to a woman of birth and education'. 154 At the time of the first press report in May 1905, Jack was almost thirty years old. When they emigrated to Canada, Jack and Louisa were both in their mid-thirties, yet the paternalistic press consistently refers to Jack as a 'young lady', 'a youth' or 'a boy' and to them both as 'girls'. 155 While Jack was obviously interesting to the press and indulged, in some ways even admired, this strategy of infantilisation implies that this phase is temporary; she was young but will fall in line with society eventually. Alternatively, it may be a method of detracting attention from her achievement of successfully running her own farm in her own way; of succeeding where others (men) have failed.
Drawing attention to Jack's masculine attire and appearance was a consistent reminder to the reader of how 'real British women' should not behave. 156 Although a woman wearing male clothing and aspiring to be a farmer was not commonplace, practically every report mentioned how she was dressed and how she looked in fine detail. Wearing a cap over very short hair did little to shade her skin from the sun. Caps were worn by boys/ men, not women and certainly not by well-born middle-class women. Louisa complied with expectations by wearing bonnets but Jack, having adopted male clothing from the early part of century, made minimal effort to conform with society's expectations. While on the one hand working outside was acknowledged as healthy, the implication was that sunburnt or weathered skin was not appropriate on women of Jack's social class, rather associated with lower-class and/ or indigenous women who had to work in the fields. Her choice of hairstyle also set her apart from women of all classes during this period when long hair was the norm and an important visual indicator of gender.
Jack's size and physical strength were also frequently mentioned by the press, although such reports were often contradictory. Lloyds Weekly News, which, in 1906, was drawing attention to the curiously dressed 'Lady Jack' reported she was 'tall and muscular', while the piece by Rankin published in 1911 in the Canadian Courier described her as 'probably five feet three or four inches tall'. 157 The Wairarapa News claimed that Jack herself considered her success 'largely due to unusual physical strength'. 158 Jack rode astride like a man, not side-saddle as a properly dressed middle-class woman would have done and was able to handle and use a rifle. While heavy work on farms was seen as unseemly for women, the reality was that many women were involved in the hard labour of farm work, such as harvesting crops, tending animals and working in the fields. Jack was able to demonstrate that physical strength was not purely the province of men. However, few of the other middle and upper class British female farmers who purchased land in Canada participated in hard labour; they were lauded for their management skills but often employed men to do the actual farm work. 159 Such women made the decisions, studied and were the 'boss' but rarely had to 'labour' in the way that Jack chose to do. Therefore, they were able to retain their outward image of womanhood and femininity. Nevertheless, as Carter pointed out, female farmers were less likely to be seen as 'real farmers' if they hired in labour, whereas the capabilities of male farmers doing similarly was not questioned. 160

Conclusion
Jack and Louisa's 'ready-made farm' house still stands near Sedgewick after 110 years, where it is remembered in the community as their house. It is known that Jack left and did not return, but not where she went. Likewise, it is recalled that she was the subject of considerable media attention because of her masculine clothing and occupation as a farmer. We argue that the media created a version of Jack which was used to promote their own agendas of sensational story, occupational opportunities for surplus women, colonial expansion and gender conformity. This paper demonstrates how that version of 'Miss Jack May, Lady Farmer' was created and used to promote and reinforce those agendas, long after the real Jack had moved on. This paper demonstrates the potential of utilising small history techniques to recover and reconstruct the life histories of individual women. Isabel 'Jack' May's story is a fascinating narrative of individuality, agency and bravery during a period of female emancipation and colonial expansion in early twentieth century England and Canada. Jack's identity as 'farmer', together with her decision to wear masculine clothing and to spend her adult life with same-sex companions, enabled her to queer transnational gender and sexuality boundaries. We argue that she was not transgender but lived openly as a cross-dressing woman. However, Jack's story contributes to the wider body of work on trans histories as well as queer histories, providing as it does an alternative narrative to those women who 'passed' as men. Our methodological approach to recovering Jack's life-the tracking back and forth across geographical borders-contributes to the understanding of women's history and queer history, in that Jack's small history helps us to understand how other non-conforming women might have carved out their own 'spaces of possibility' at a time of unstable and evolving gender relations. The intertwined lives of Jack, Louisa and Ada Norah, who left little archival trace but a compelling narrative, have all been rendered more visible, retrieved and connected across space and time through the ever-growing digital archive.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).  land meant to take advantage of the offer of 160 acres for a small filing fee of about ten dollars. It was known as the 'free' homestead system. The land then had to be 'proved up' over three years. The homesteader had to build a habitable dwelling, have lived on the land for a number of months each year and have land under cultivation. If these criteria had been met, then the homesteader could apply for patent or ownership to the land at the end of the 'proving up' period. Almost all women (aside from widows with children) were denied this right in Canada. Married women were excluded from the right to homestead because their identity (including citizenship) became subsumed by that of their husband on marriage. 27. If unmarried women had sufficient funds, then they could purchase land outright, but this was not a route that the majority of immigrants could follow. Through the 'ready-made' farm scheme of the CPR, land was purchased by prospective farmers and re-paid in instalments. A house, barn, a well and land ready for cultivation were provided by the CPR to the 'ready-made' farmers. Initially, only male applicants were considered, but in the early twentieth century this was extended to women. See also Notes 31, 78 and 79. The 'surplus women' problem emerged as a topic of concern in Britain after the 1851 census, when it became apparent that there were c. 500,000 more women than men in the population. Particular focus was given to the high number of unmarried women who were viewed as 'disproportionate' and 'abnormal'. One proposed remedy was to send these unmarried British women to the British colonies of Canada and Australia, where there was an excess of single British men, thereby guaranteeing the 'Britishness' of future settler communities. By the early part of the twentieth century these concerns were still predominant in public debate, with additional focus on excess single women being employed in certain types of farming or agricultural work. This situation was seen to be exacerbated by deaths of unmarried men during World War 1, thereby impacting on the marriage chances of another generation. Emigration and settler colonialism became a dominant narrative of the time.