Ben Reitman
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Ben Lewis Reitman M.D. (1879–1943) was an American anarchist and physician to the poor ("the hobo doctor"). He is best remembered today as one of radical Emma Goldman's lovers. Martin Scorsese's 1972 feature film Boxcar Bertha is based on Sister of the Road, one of Reitman's books.
BiographyEdit
Reitman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to poor Russian Jewish immigrants in 1879, and grew up in Chicago. At the age of twelve, he became a hobo,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> but returned to Chicago and worked in the Polyclinic Laboratory as a "laboratory boy".<ref name="UIC-Reitman">Reitman profile, UIC.</ref> In 1900, he entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago, completing his medical studies in 1904. During this time he was briefly married; he and his wife had a daughter together.<ref name="UIC-Reitman" /> His wife was Mae Schwartz, and their daughter was Jan Gay (born Helen Reitman), the author, nudism advocate, and founder of the nudist Out-of-Door Club at Highland, New York.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
He worked as a physician in Chicago, choosing to offer services to hobos, prostitutes, the poor, and other outcasts. Notably, he performed abortions, which were illegal at the time.<ref name="UIC-Reitman" /> In 1907, Reitman became known as "King of the Hobos" when he opened a Chicago branch of the Hobo College, which became the largest of the International Brotherhood Welfare Association centers for migrant education, political organizing, and social services.<ref>JWA "Women of Valor — Emma Goldman - Love & Sexuality - Ben Reitman", Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved September 2, 2018.</ref>
Reitman met Emma Goldman in 1908, when he offered her use of the college's Hobo Hall for a speech, and the two began a love affair, which Goldman described as the "Great Grand Passion" of her life.<ref name="Goldman-Living-v1">Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Volume 1.</ref> The two traveled together for almost eight years, working for the causes of birth control, free speech, worker's rights, and anarchism.
During this time, the couple became involved in the San Diego free speech fight in 1912–13. Reitman was kidnapped by a mob, severely beaten, tarred and feathered,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> branded with "I.W.W.,"<ref name="Goldman-Living-v1" /><ref>John A. Farrell, Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, (Doubleday 2011), p. 243. Template:ISBN</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and his rectum and testicles were abused.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Several years later, the couple were arrested in 1916 under the Comstock laws for advocating birth control, and Reitman served six months in prison.<ref>Wexler, Intimate, pp. 211–215.</ref>
Both believed in free love, but Reitman's practice incited feelings of jealousy in Goldman.<ref>Wexler, Intimate, pp. 140–147.</ref> He remarried when one of his lovers became pregnant; their son was born while he was in prison.<ref name="UIC-Reitman" /> Goldman and Reitman ended their relationship in 1917, after Reitman was released from prison.<ref name="UIC-Reitman" />
Reitman returned to Chicago, ultimately working with the City of Chicago, establishing the Chicago Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease in the 1930s.<ref name="UIC-Reitman" /> His second wife died in 1930, and Reitman married a third time, to Rose Siegal.<ref name="UIC-Reitman" /> Reitman later became seriously involved with Medina Oliver, and the couple had four daughters – Mecca, Medina, Victoria, and Olive.<ref name="UIC-Reitman" />
Reitman died in Chicago of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three. He was buried at the Waldheim Cemetery<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> (now Forest Home Cemetery), in Forest Park, Illinois.
Works by ReitmanEdit
- The Second Oldest Profession - A Study of the Prostitute's "Business Manager" (1931) (A sociological study of pimps)<ref>
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- Book Review Digest 1931
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- Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha (1937) (fiction)<ref>Boxcar Bertha: Tales spun from the hobo world The Portland Alliance, Ruth Kovacs, November 2002 issue</ref><ref>"Despite decades of scholarship claiming otherwise, Boxcar Bertha is not a real woman but an imagined representation of unconventional female life in the early twentieth century. In her unpublished dissertation, Martha Reis carefully documents the lives of the women who inspired Bertha’s character, including a female pickpocket, anarchist, and ex-patriot poet." Venturing More Than Others Have Dared: Representations of Class Mobility, Gender, and Alternative Communities in American Literature, 1840-1940; dissertation, Heather Joy Thompson-Gillis, MA, The Ohio State University 2012
</ref><ref>Hidden histories, Ben Reitman and the "outcast" women behind Sister of the Road : the autobiography of Box-Car Bertha Martha Lynn Reis, dissertation, Ph. D. University of Minnesota 2000</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
See alsoEdit
NotesEdit
Works citedEdit
- Frank O. Beck, Hobohemia: Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman & Other Agitators & Outsiders In 1920s/30s Chicago (Charles H. Kerr Press, 2000, Template:ISBN (description)
- Roger Bruns, The Damndest Radical: The Life and World of Ben Reitman, Chicago's Celebrated Social Reformer, Hobo King, and Whorehouse Physician (University of Illinois, 2001)
- Mecca Reitman Carpenter, No Regrets: Dr. Ben Reitman and the Women Who Loved Him (SouthSide Press, 1996) (biographical memoir by Reitman's daughter)
- Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)
- University of Illinois at Chicago, University Library, "Ben Reitman Biographical Sketch", Reitman papers.
- Alice Wexler, Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Template:ISBN. Republished as Emma Goldman in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Template:ISBN.
- Tim Cresswell, The Tramp in America. London: Reaktion Books, 2001. Template:ISBN.
Further readingEdit
External linksEdit
- The More Things Stay the Same (Ben Reitman Documentary)
- Emma Goldman PBS American Experience
- Emma Goldman Ephéméride Anarchiste
- Ben Reitman Anarchist Encyclopedia
- Template:Find a Grave
- Ben Lewis Reitman (letters and papers from 1907 to 1989), University of Illinois at Chicago
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