Painless Nell & Hughie Bowen, Tattoo Team
By Carmen Nyssen
In my previous Granddaddy of all Good Tattooing: Sailor Charlie Barrs article from a couple weeks ago, I forgot to mention that Bert Grimm introduced my grandma (his niece) to Sailor Charlie, and also to a woman tattooer Charlie worked for in the 1940s and 1950s named Painless Nell. As it turns out, both tattoo artists factor into Bert’s history in interesting ways.
Painless Nell Myths
When considering the history of a competitive profession like tattooing, which has only been scantily documented until the past few decades, we can be sure that self-aggrandizing tales and jealous mutterings of rivals have skewed the facts. What has been passed on in the tattoo world about lady tattooer Painless Nell certainly differs from reality.
#1) She did not operate a shop full of women who all went by the moniker “Painless Nell,” as once quipped by fellow San Diego tattooer Doc Webb. She actually employed both men and women tattooers, though her shop signs always read “Painless Nell’s.”
#2) Her sister’s leg was not amputated because of her unhygienic tattooing, as Sailor Jerry (Norman Keith Collins) of Honolulu liked to reiterate. Nell’s sister lost the leg as a young girl, when she was hit by a car and gangrene set in before she reached the hospital.
#3) Most importantly, Nell didn’t run her husband Hugh “Hughie” Bowen out of the tattoo business, as the very opinionated Sailor Jerry also criticized. Nell and Hughie Bowen were a united tattoo team, immensely successful in their undertakings.
Hughie Bowen’s Tattoo History
Hughie Bowen picked up tattooing upon his discharge from the Navy after World War I, and by 1920, had set up shop in Detroit, Michigan. J.F. Barber and Edwin Earl Brown taught him the art and tattooed him, and also Percy Waters, Detroit’s mainstay tattooer.
By the 1920s, Waters was operating an immensely successful tattoo supply company. Perhaps Waters’ entrepreneurial spirit rubbed off on Hughie. In 1929, at the time of the Stock Market crash, Hughie was on the West Coast tattooing with Fred McKee at 352 W. Seaside Boulevard, near the Long Beach Pike amusement zone. As noted in a 1972 letter from Owen Jensen to Paul Rogers, business was fairly slow on the Pike then and tattoo artists were struggling. But Hughie was not easily deterred.
At the onset of the ensuing Depression, he began additionally working as a concessionaire for the Stockton, California based Joyland Shows, and soon after, he took ownership.
It was while wintering in Stockton with the newly dubbed Bowen’s Joyland Shows that he met a young woman stenographer named Nellie Bohnak. Hughie married Nellie. His brother Clarence married her sister Josephine aka “Jo.” Throughout the 1930s, the four of them worked and managed the show, while traveling the Northwest carnival circuit.
Painless Nell & Painful Jo
After World War II hit, around 1943, the Bowens moved the show to Whittier, California and took up residence to the south in San Diego. Hughie taught both Nell and Jo to tattoo and a flourishing tattoo franchise was born. From then on, the two sisters were forever known in the tattoo world as “Painless Nell” and “Painful Jo.”
During World War II’s “Golden Age of Tattooing,” the enlistment of thousands of military men pushed the tattoo business to an all-time high. San Diego, being home to the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, quartered its fair share of servicemen, who spent leave time fun-seeking and getting tattooed.
Golden Age of Tattooing
The Bowen family competently capitalized on this business boom. Their very first shop was located in the heart of Downtown at 752 5th Avenue. Just a year later, according to a February 5, 1944 Billboard Magazine “help wanted” ad, they were seeking five tattoo artists to fill spots in several shops “fully equipped and ready to work.”
Owed not only to precise timing, but also business acumen no doubt acquired from managing their carnival, Hughie, Nell, and Jo Bowen (Clarence had left) quickly built up a sizeable operation, employing a large crew of tattoo artists in multiple shops scattered throughout Downtown San Diego.
Bowen Enterprises, Inc.
The Bowens’ enterprise outlasted the war time boom. Over the years, their San Diego tattoo shops (collectively filed with the city as Bowen’s Enterprises, Inc.) were variously located at:
835 4th Avenue (also a shooting gallery)
750 and 752 Fifth Avenue
308, 342, 348, 405, and 423 West Broadway
1033 State Street
317 F Street
1050 Union Street
During the Korean War, in the 1950s, they also opened a shop at 725 Market Street in San Francisco.
Aside from the Bowen’s themselves, among the many tattooers who took a seat in their shops were: the great Sailor Charlie Barrs, George Rogers, Buzz Claydon, Hughie’s brother Troy Bowen, a cousin Miss Minnie, a cousin Unis, Georgie Torgeson, Vonnie Lee, husband and wife team, Cliff and Yvonne Mace, and of course, Bert Grimm.
Bowen Enterprises’ Legacy
In much later years, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, just Cliff Mace, Nell, and Jo were left tattooing in the last-standing shop at 348 West Broadway—a booth in the back of the Funland Arcade.
When Nell died in 1971, Zeke Owen bought the shop and named it the Ace Tattooing Company. It has since passed through the hands of several owners.
Although the actual, physical shop is now long gone, its tradition carries on at a new locale, near the beachfront in Ocean Beach, California: Ace Tattooing Company.
Featured Image: Hughie Bowen c. 1919. Collection of Carmen Nyssen
Published Nov 17, 2015.
Questions or Comments? Email:
carmennyssen@buzzworthytattoo.com
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