Digital Transgender Archive

Mrs. Shufflewick (Rex Jameson), in drag character, holding a cup of tea. Photograph, ca. 1955.

Mrs. Shufflewick

Part of James Gardiner Collection: photograph album labelled ‘Drag’.

She wears a dark jacket, fluffy scarf and has dark styled hair; glancing to one side. Rex (Coster) Jameson (1926-1983) in character as Mrs. Shufflewick, at the height of her national fame in the mid-1950s. 'Shuff' as she was popularly known started her career on radio in the early 1950s, and graduated to many appearances on television, always in character. She starred in several seasons at the Windmill Theatre in London, but national fame and success ground to a halt when her drinking got out of hand, and by the 1960s her public appearances were limited to pub drag shows. However, in the post- gay liberation period of the 1970s and 1980s her career enjoyed a revival, and she topped the bill at London gay pubs such as The Vauxhall Tavern and The Black Cap. However, drink remained forever the demon, and she died of heart seizure (allegedly at a bus stop on Kentish Town Road on the way to the off-license) at the early age of fifty seven, but looking considerably older (James Gardiner)