had started at Wilson's as a dance instructor in 1917 at age 15. Background Generally, what is known today about the life and lives of the taxi dancer of the 1920s and 1930s comes from a major sociological study published by The University of Chicago Press in 1932 (see Classic sociological study below). According to the study, the typical taxi dancer of the period was an attractive young woman between the age 15 and 28 who was usually single. Although some dancers were undoubtedly older, the taxi-dancer profession tended to skew strongly toward the young and single. A majority of the young women came from homes in which there was little or no financial support from a father or father figure. The dancers were occasionally runaways from their families, and it was not unusual for a young woman to be from a home where the parents had separated. Despite their relatively young age range, a sizable percentage of taxi dancers had been previously married. Often the dancers were immigrants from European countries, such as Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Due to cultural differences, conflicts often arose between parents and their dancing offspring, especially if the parents were originally from rural areas. Sometimes a young woman of an immigrant family who worked as a taxi dancer was the primary financial support of the family. When this occurred and the young woman supplanted the parent or parents as breadwinner, sometimes she assumed an aggressive role in the family by "subordinating the parental standards to her own requirements and demands." These conflicts in values between young women taxi dancers and their parents frequently caused the young women to lead so-called "double lives", denying that they worked at a taxi-dance hall. To further this divide, the young women sometimes adopted aliases so news of their activities might not reach their families' ears. When parents found out, there were three typical outcomes: the young woman either gave up her dancing career, left home estranged from the family or was encouraged to continue. Despite the frequent hardships, many taxi dancers seemed to enjoy the lifestyle and its enticements of "money, excitement, and affection". Most young women interviewed for the study spoke favorably about their experiences in the taxi-dance hall. One dancer [case #15] from the 1920s describes her start at a taxi-dance hall: A dancer from Chicago [case #11] spoke positively of her experiences: