The Speed Boat Racing, Island Owning, Tattooed Heiress Named Joe
She would have been an amazing Real Housewife
Hello friends! Happy, happy Wednesday and 2022! I hope you all were able to see friends and family (as safely as possible), read some great books, and eat some great food. I spent some of my break devouring the new season of Selling Sunset. The perfect combination of gorgeous real estate, great outfits, and mindless drama. But, I have always felt something was missing from their group, or should I say, someone. I think Selling Sunset would be elevated to an even better level if they had an amazingly dressed, extremely rich, butch lesbian on the show. This week, I think I found just the person who would have been a great cast member 120 years ago. Meet Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs, but we will just call her Joe.
Joe Carstairs
This week’s woman has one of the most fascinating life stories I’ve ever read. She was known for wearing men’s clothes, rocking several tattoos, speedboat racing, buying an island, and having hundreds of gorgeous, young female lovers. We will get to all of that, but let’s start at the beginning.
Joe had all the makings of a misunderstood rich childhood. Daughter of an heiress? Check. Shipped off to boarding school in America because of “rebellious behavior” aka being a tomboy? Check. Mother married 4 times and died before Joe was 21? Check. As if this wasn’t enough, one of her mother’s husbands was a surgeon who was famous for transplanting monkey testicles into human men for “rejuvenation purposes.” The Goop of 20th century London! While Joe and her mother had a fraught relationship, she idolized her grandmother, Nellie. When she was 16, she convinced her grandmother to let her join the American Red Cross to help drive ambulances during World War I. One of her mother’s husbands, a French count, had taught Joe how to drive race cars and even gifted her a modified race car.
After the war, she entered her bohemian phase in Paris. She began having a sexual relationship with Dolly Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s niece. Her mother caught wind of this and told Joe she had to get married or she’d be cut off. So, what did Joe do? She married a French aristocrat whom she believed was dating HER MOTHER! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Emily in Paris. If that weren’t scandal enough, they made an agreement to get married, split the dowry, and annul the marriage. This allowed Joe to access her trust fund without her mother stopping her. She used some of the money to start a chauffeur service with some of her war buddies featuring all-female drivers. Are we now seeing why Joe would be a perfect, dramatic fit for reality TV? But wait, there is so much more.
After Joe’s mother and grandmother died, she inherited a fortune from Standard Oil. She closed down the garage and used some of her inheritance to buy a speedboat. Because that wasn’t eccentric enough, she named the boat after one of her former lovers. This started the powerboating phase of Joe’s life. She was known as the “fastest woman on water” and won several speedboat competitions while spending an exorbitant amount of money on new boats. After some unsuccessful tries to win Harmsworth British International Trophy (this is a huge deal in the speedboating world), she decided to pivot in an entirely new direction by buying an island in the Bahamas.
Yes, you read that right, Joe shelled out $40,000 to buy Whale Cay in the Bahamas. Much like any millionaire, she did it to avoid some tax issues she was having. I found this chapter of her life problematic because she was basically an authoritarian ruler of all the Bahamians who lived and worked on the island simply because she bought the land. She built a ginormous mansion for herself as well as a lighthouse, a school, and complexes for the workers on the island. She hosted huge, lavish parties where she invited some guests you may have heard of like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Marlene Dietrich. I forgot to mention, she also had an affair with Dietrich. It’s hard to keep up with all of Joe’s affairs. Luckily for historians, she kept a 120-picture album of all her past lovers. The DRA-MA! She eventually bought several other islands and created a compound for herself. Although I find it gross that someone could literally buy islands, she did a lot to give back to the Bahamian people and many stated she was benevolent and giving. So, a Category 3 problematic white person.
She eventually sold her islands and moved to Miami in the mid-’70s. She spent her later years recording tapes recounting her life hoping someone would write her memoir. Although that never happened, there is an amazing book about Joe called The Queen of Whale Cay: The Eccentric Story of “Joe” Carstairs, Fastest Woman on Water by Kate Summerscale. I couldn’t fit all of Joe’s incredible life above, so I hope you’ll read more about her. No doubt she would give Christine on Selling Sunset a run for her money on the eccentricity scale.
I hope you all enjoyed this week’s newsletter. Share with a friend if you think they’d like it too. See ya next Wednesday!
Citations
“Boss of the Bahamas: Joe Carstairs” The Rake
“No Ordinary Joe” Stanford Magazine
“A Woman to Know: Marion Barbara ‘Joe’ Carstairs” Julia Carpenter’s Substack