National Police Gazette - From the Morgue

In our issue of December 21 we published, under the head of "A Staggering Statement," in which some astonishing details were given, a relation of the suicide of Sergeant Noonan of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry, who shot himself through the heart, in the garrison stables at Bismarck, D.T., a short time previous. It appears that a few weeks before Noonan's suicide, a person, supposed to be a woman, to whom Noonan had been regularly married, and who had lived with him, apparently as his wife, for some years, died suddenly. A post mortem revealed the astounding fact that the ostensible Mrs. Noonan was in reality a man. This discovery created so much comment, not agreeable to Noonan, as may be supposed, that his life finally became a burden to him and he made away with himself as stated. Some time before his suicide, in an interview with a reporter of the Bismarck Tribune, Noonan solemnly declared, on his oath, that he believed the person to be a woman at the time of their marriage, and that he never knew to the contrary until the post mortem, in spite of the evidence of which he adhered to the assertion, or pretended to believe, that his wife was a woman. He related some circumstances of their married life which he also solemnly swore to, which went to show either that he was the most credulous or the most brazen of mortals, or that the case was the greatest physical mystery of the age. Noonan's comrades declare, at all events, that the "man-woman," as this singular individual was called, shaved nearly every day and always went about with a handkerchief over his or her mouth to conceal a rapidly growing mustache. From any point of view, the case is one of the most singular ever brought to our notice. An authentic portrait of this "man-woman" appears [below].