As published in The Nashville Tennessean, Aug. 1, 1921
“Watch your step, mashers and flirts,” the Aug. 1, 1921, issue of The Nashville Tennessean bleated with a mixture of tut-tuttish warning and barely restrained glee about the subject matter to follow.
The story lists all who should be on guard: “girls who spoon in the parks,” “fellows who hold hands with their girls in the movies,” “young women who hop in strange automobiles for drives, day or night” and “dance hall proprietors and devotees.” It’s a veritable cavalcade of ne’er-do-wells (and frankly, people who were having the most fun), but just to make sure this litany left no one out, the anonymous writer added to the catalog of the forewarned: “Girls in general, and, of course, the men, too.” Having covered everybody, we get to the news: Nashville’s first two policewomen were on the job.
With funding from the Women’s Protective Bureau, the city hired Gertrude Whitney and Elizabeth Goodwin to come down from Buffalo, N.Y., and keep an eye on the welfare of women and children. It being 1921, the definition of women’s welfare was, of course, a little different, as was what women ostensibly needed “protection” from — public spooning, cinematic hand-holding, riding in cars with boys. But hey, it was a different time. The 19th Amendment was still a few weeks from its first birthday.
The fact that Nashville was launching an arm of the police force specially dedicated to women wasn’t particularly notable. Lots of growing cities were starting similar programs. Women had moved to America’s cities in droves during World War I to pick up the work left vacant when the guys went Over There. Many were unmarried, making their own money and suddenly flush with the liberating power of the ballot. But cities were (and are, for that matter) often run by grumpy-Gus types who don’t like young women expressing their liberty so enthusiastically. Under the guise of “protection,” they wanted to keep an eye on all this freedom.
That’s where people like Gertrude and Elizabeth came in. By 1921, they’d been at it for a while. The article gives the pair’s impressive credentials: They worked with Travelers Aid and in children’s welfare in Buffalo, “for the protection of girls” with War Camp Community Services in West Virginia during the war, and with the Chicago Refuge for Girls.
These were seasoned pros. Gertrude told the paper they’d be carrying revolvers. While she and Elizabeth had never had occasion to use their pistols in the past, it’s not to say “we wouldn’t draw our revolvers and use them if the occasion demands.” But mostly they’d be working to “clean up the places in the city which encourage the misconduct of girls.”
If all this sounds sort of antiquated and puritanical, well, it was. But here’s the thing.
Gertrude and Elizabeth weren’t just partners. They were, almost certainly, Partners.
And while gay and lesbian relationships date back to the dawn of man, and some level of community acceptance has always been present, at that time in America, there was always some obfuscation to maintain the “public dignity” (whatever that means). In this case, the reaction seems to have been … shrugs.
There’s no record of the relationship being solemnized by church or state (finding a clergyman or county clerk who would have done such a thing would be a monumental task), but census records show them living together in 1920, 1930 and 1940, the latter two listing Gertrude — who was 10 years older — as head of household and Elizabeth as “partner.” Eventually, they’d be joined by their two adopted sons, Paul and Daniel, both bearing Gertrude’s surname of Whitney as their middle name and taking Elizabeth’s last name, Goodwin, as their own. The family was woven into Nashville society. The boys attended public schools, the women were members of various social and writing clubs. Civic organizations praised their work.
Despite the rather salacious and low-minded take of the initial Tennessean article, the women could be considered pioneers in combating what we’d now call sex trafficking. Later reporting lauded them for saving teenage girls from the perils of the city and lives of vice forced on them by unscrupulous men. The language was, as befitting the time, quite roundabout, but it’s clear Gertrude and Elizabeth were removing young women from forced sex work. Rather progressively for that time (and for this one, for that matter), their first instinct was to treat the women as victims rather than criminals, providing social services instead of simply locking them up.
The Whitney Goodwins, if we may be so bold as to call them that, were rather peripatetic, but not because they had to flee cities once their family situation became well-known. Gertrude was plagued by respiratory problems. In one letter to a brother written in 1917, Elizabeth wrote of Gertrude, “I love her so much, I can’t bear to think of her being so miserable all the time.”
The promise of a warmer climate is part of why they left upstate New York for Middle Tennessee. A drier climate is what pushed them to Dallas in 1937. They continued to work in children’s welfare. But Gertrude, by then in her 60s, remained in poor health, suffering a stroke and then a fall in 1943, leading to an injury from which she never recovered. She was buried in Cookeville, Tenn., where the local paper listed Elizabeth among her survivors, as a “close friend.” Paul and Dan were included as the couple’s adopted sons in the death notice, the paper opting to hyphenate Whitney-Goodwin in the boys’ names.
Elizabeth lived until 1986, dying just shy of her 100th birthday.
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