Betty Broadbent
From BMEzine Encyclopedia
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Betty Broadbent (1909 - 1983) was working as a nanny in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at the young age of fourteen. She spent her days on the beach and boardwalk where she met tattooist Jack Redcloud, and by 1927 she was well on her way to receiving a bodysuit from Joe Van Hart, Charlie Wagner, Red Gibbons (her husband), and Tony Rhineagear, some of the first tattoo artists to use an electric tattoo machine.
She is credited as having "more than 350 tattoos," including many of celebrities of the time (Queen Victoria, for example). She got jobs as a tattooed lady, working with both the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circuses, as well as other shows such as Cole Brothers, Sells-Floto, and Harry Carey's Wild West Show. Betty performed for over forty years traveling all over North America as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Betty eventually became a tattoo artist herself and worked in San Francisco. She retired to Florida in 1967 where Lyle Tuttle was instrumental in finding her in the early 1980s when she commented, "Boy, do I miss the people and the travel." Two years before her death, she became the first person to be inducted into the Tattoo Hall of Fame.
