Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Spring/Section24/John Walters

Overview

John L. Walters was a veteran of the Spanish-American war who during his time in the Navy learned the art of tattooing and later went on professionally tattoo in Durham, NC.

Biography

John L. Walters was born in Danville, Virginia. His father worked as the foreman of a tobacco factory until he was injured in an accident and was crippled after that. Following his death three years later, Walters' mother turned their home into a boarding house for people visiting Danville. During that time around the age of 12 he got a job tagging tobacco making 40 cents a day. When Walters was twelve his family moved down to Durham, North Carolina. Durham's economy was dominated by its Tobacco industry and thus Walters continued working with tobacco, packing leaf tobacco. At the age of 17 he joined the United States Navy and had a brief stilt fighting in the Spanish-American war. During his time in the Navy, Walters learned how to Tattoo, a skill that following his return to the states was his only source of income. While traveling Walter experienced his best day of tattooing in his career when he made twenty-two dollars in a day at the haw river. He also spent some time in Chapel Hill, expecting a massive market of students wanting tattoos, though he was met with little response from the students of the university. After traveling through the South for two years tattooing, Walters returned to Durham. Living in Durham there was a comparative lack of demand for tattoos, in a town more inland than many of the seaside towns he did much of his tattooing in. In lieu of an income that he could support himself off of in Durham so he got a job as a mechanic while maintaining his business as a tattoo artist. In his years as a tattoo artist in Durham he had many staple tattoos such as artificial moles, the names of lovers and for a time social security numbers. In addition to the staples, Walters had many notable and novel experiences as a tattoo artist. One of which being the tattooing a pupil on to the eye of a orphaned girl born with an entirely white eye in hopes of making her more appealing to adopting families. In addition to his passion for tattooing, Walters had a side passion of collecting and escaping from the handcuffs at the time. Deriving great enjoyment from pulling off feats such as escaping from being handcuffed by the Durham police. A self proclaimed handcuff king, Walters in his lifetime amassed a great number of handcuffs and books on the subject, greatly admiring figures such as Houdini.

Historic Context

History of Tattoos in Seafaring Culture and America

Tattoos were originally introduced to Western culture through the first voyage of James Cook to islands in the pacific in 1768. Cook and his accompanying Sailors encountered the natives of the islands they explored who had dyed their skin through a painful process of coating sharpened bone and repeatedly stabbing the skin. Cook's crewmen, inspired by the pacific island cultures, experimented with the process marking their skin. The sailors then took those markings back to England, spreading them through the seafaring communities of England and soon America. Tattoos soon became a mark of experience between sailors. Certain symbols came to be understood of certain accomplishments in sailing, for example a Sea Turtle meant a sailor had sailed over the equator traveling from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern. Additionally, tattoos came to exist hand in hand with sailing superstitions with symbols like a pig tattooed on the foot ensuring that the boat a sailor sailed on would not sink. Tattoos became not only a sign of accomplishment but a commitment to the mark of being a sailor. American and English societies in the 18th and 19th centuries had a low view of sailors and thus a sailor forever marking themselves Tattoos were brought from the culture of sailors to the upper classes of England when Britain's Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, on a trip to Jerusalem had a large cross tattooed onto his back. From there tattoos quickly became a highly fashionable adornment for the upper classes of England, and the elites of America, especially in cities such as New York, quickly followed suit. The fashionable women of New York often got tattoos of flowers, butterflies and dragons. The spectacle of tattoos soon jumped from America's elite. Rural America was slower to be introduced to and then embrace tattoos, being first introduced through the decorated bodies of circus performers. The market for tattooing in these rural areas was thus much smaller than large cities serving the fashionable elite, and sea towns serving committed sailors.

The Tobacco Industry in the South

In the early days of the American South, as immigrants largely from England first began to settle the areas that are now Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia many relied on the farming and selling of crops to support themselves and their family. Though the allure of cash crops such as cotton and sugar brought many to farming in the first place, cultivating these crops required a great deal of capital to get all of the necessary supplies and to create an environment suitable to their growth. To fund these endeavors many farmers began by farming tobacco. Though cheap, tobacco was easy to farm and a robust plant. With the introduction and wide spread use of slave labor in the South it soon became completely profitable for many farmers to only farm Tobacco and many never made the jump to other cash crops. This crop led to the creation and growth of many towns whose entire economies were built around the farming and packaging of Tobacco.