American tattooist, pornographer and diarist Samuel Steward was BOTD in 1909. Born in Woodsfield, Ohio, he studied at Ohio State University, where he began a long correspondence with Gertrude Stein. After graduating, he taught English at Carroll College in Montana and the State College of Washington. His debut novel Angels on the Bough was published in 1936. Its sympathetic depiction of a gay character was highly controversial, leading to his dismissal from his teaching position. In 1937, he visited Paris, meeting Stein and forming a close friendship with her partner Alice B. Toklas. Through Stein, he was introduced to the luminaries of Paris’ literary scene, including Thornton Wilder, Lord Alfred Douglas, Thomas Mann and André Gide, and an extended affair with the painter Francis Cyril Rose. Returning to Chicago at the outbreak of World War Two, he taught at Loyola University, and began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to overcome his alcohol addiction. Openly gay since forever, he became a fixture of Chicago’s underground gay scene, hosting orgies at his apartment and carefully recording his sexual experiences in his diaries. After meeting sexologist Alfred Kinsey, he became an unofficial contributor to the Institute for Sex Research, giving Kinsey access to his diaries, introducing him to queer men to be interview subjects, and donating his erotic photos, home movies and artworks to the Institute. In 1950, at Kinsey’s invitation, Steward was filmed having sado-masochistic sex with artist Mike Miksche. Largely abandoning his academic career by the 1950s, he became a tattoo artist, socialising with a largely homosexual artistic circle including Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, Glenway Wescott and Monroe Wheeler. He also co-opened Chicago’s first leather bar, and began publishing sado-masochistic erotic fiction under the name Phil Andros. In 1968, he moved to San Francisco, where he became the official tattoo artist of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. After retiring in 1970, he continued publishing gay erotica, and authorised the publication of his correspondence with Stein and Toklas. In later life, he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, complicated by an addiction to barbiturates. His erotic novel Parisian Lives, a thinly-disguised portrait of Rose, was published in 1984. He died in 1993, aged 84. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos, his social history of tattooing during 1960s America, was published posthumously in 1990. Interest in his life and work was bolstered by biographies by Justin Spring and Jeremy Muderig.