Estelle Asmodelle (1964 - 2026) dancer, activist, model, physicist, artist, musician.

Original version. January 2009.

Croot was raised in small towns in New South Wales, and at 16 was seriously ill with spinal meningitis, and spent a year in hospital.

Croot transitioned to Estelle Maria Croot while at Wollongong University studying science and maths. She also started creating abstract art on large canvases, and was in a music group that played experimental and avant-garde music. Because of discrimination Estelle left university, and studied dance at Sydney Dance Company and also belly dancing with an Egyptian Dance instructor.

As Estelle Asmodelle she worked as a belly dancer in variety shows in Australia and in East Asia. She was detained in Singapore and elsewhere because her passport had an ‘M’ for gender. She, and others, lobbied the Australian and the New South Wales governments that she be allowed to amend her birth certificate. In 1987, she was the first Australian transsexual to get her birth certificate, and then her passport changed. She also lobbied for changes to the anti-discrimination laws and for research into ectopic pregnancies for transwomen. This resulted in a media storm which she was able to ride appearing in hundreds of magazine articles and frequently on Australian and Japanese television.

She took up modelling to promote her dancing, but it became her more important career. She was the first Australian transsexual to appear nude in a mainstream magazine, Australian Playgirl.

She lived in Japan 1988-1992 working as a model. She had a walk-on part in the Japanese film Ai to heisei no iro – Otoko, 1989, a transgender sexual fantasy that mainly played in art galleries. She also did some technology consulting.

In Australia she was in Secret Fantasies, 1992, and the belly-dance instructional film, The Enchanted Dance, 1994 that was controversial purely because Estelle was trans. She also made an appearance as 'girl on beach' in one episode of the television soap opera Home and Away.

In 1998 she published an autobiographical novel, An Aesthetic Dream - an autobiography. Also that year she founded the internet company Ellenet Pty. Ltd.

In 2000, Estelle lived and modelled in Los Angeles, and took acting classes at the Lena Harris Workshop.

She had continued large canvas abstract art, and was exhibited in Tokyo, Melbourne and Sydney, and Los Angeles. Her first art book was Transience, 2010.

Since 2005 Estelle has been composing electronic music, and has released 11 albums.

In 2008 she took a course in Astronomy at the University of Central Lancashire. She was interested in special and general relativity and its relationship to cosmology and time, and published papers in the Journal of the Institute of Science and Technology and the Asian Journal of Physics. In Cosmos Magazine she published "Neptune's day measured to the second", and "The Milky Way is a galactic cannibal", both June 2012. In 2013 she published Cosmology - the Ultimate Introduction. In June 2012 she became a Member of the Australian Society of Gravitation and General Relativity, and in May 2013 also became a Member of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG).

In 2016 her internet company Ellenet Pty. Ltd was sold.

In 2018 Estelle started a PhD at the Centre for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Queensland, working in the field of quantum mechanics and relativity.

Estelle died, age 62, in 2026.

Music albums:

2009 – Electronic Mischief 2010 – Transelectric 2010 – Dark Universe 2012 – Asmelectrix 2013 – Grooveatropolis Vol I 2013 – Electronic Mischief II 2014 – Near Earth Landscape 2015 – Dark Universe II 2015 – Monotonic Meditations 2015 – Improvera - Quite Moments 2016 – Grooveatropolis Vol II

Some of her newspaper and magazine articles:

Cleo (May 1987), People (Nov 1985 & 1993), Post (Dec 1988 Sep 1992), Penthouse Forum (1986 & 1991), New Idea (March 1986), She (July 1996), New Woman (June 1992 & 1998), Naughty Sydney (Cover – November 1991), Tomadachi (June 1991), Wellbeing (May 1989 & 1993), Nature & Health (November 1997).

EN.Wikipedia.     www.asmodelle.com    IMDB    Alchetron  

Wilma Creith (1933-1980) electrican, bus driver

Creith, an electrician, was married and they had two children, and lived in Belfast. However Creith increasingly could not continue as a man. After Creith did some electrical work for Werner Heubeck, the German managing director of Ulsterbus, Heubeck considered her situation, and offered that she should train as a bus driver. She first drove as a man.

She was assigned to the school run for pupils of Sullivan Upper and Sacred Heart of Mary Grammar in Holywood/Ard Mhic Nasca and St Columbanus in Bangor, both in County Down. 

Photo in the Sunday World

Cara-Friend had been set up in 1974 as a volunteer counselling service for GLBT persons in Ulster. In 1976, a separate transsexual support group was formed – Wilma was part of the team.

In 1977, when she socially transitioned Heubeck gave her support. He provided a specially made uniform and shoes for her, and the union and the other drivers followed his lead. In December that year the Belfast Sunday World, outed Wilma on its front page “ ‘Call me Wilma’ says bus man Bill”. Despite this only a few adults objected to her, although some of the children were rather rude.

In 1980 Heubeck gave Wilma five weeks sick pay to travel to England, to St James Hospital, Leeds for completion surgery, and to recover afterwards. The operation apparently went well – making her the first Northern Ireland trans woman to have the operation. Heubeck was the first to phone her after the operation.

But there was a minor complication, and a second operation was carried out. A few days later she died from what was determined to be a pulmonary embolism from high levels of estrogen.

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In November 2024 theatre director Paula McFetrige put on a play loosly based on Wilma Creith in an actual Ulster Bus from the 1970s parked in the grounds of Belfast Castle.

• Sean Boyne. “ ‘Call me Wilma‘ says bus man Bill”. Sunday World, December 1977.
• “Ulster sex change man dies“. Belfast Telegraph, 29 August 1980.p1.
• “Inquest on sex change victim“. Bradford Telgraph and Argus, 30 August 1980, p13.
• Andrew McNair. “The transgender bus driver in 1970s Belfast”. BBC, 18 November 2024. Online.
• Bronagh Lawson. “ARTS: All aboard for an inspirational slice of trans history”. com, November 22, 2024. Online.
• Paula McFetridge (dir). Suspected Device. Raphaël Amahl Khouri (scr) with Mariah Lauca as Wilam Creith. Performed at Belfact Castle 1 November-1 December 2024.

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Heubeck was renowned for many things, including redesigning all Belfast bus routes to go in and out of the city centre, and getting Ulsterbus to turn a profit despite the Troubles. But he's best remembered for actually carrying bombs from buses during the Troubles.

In total, 17 employees from both Ulsterbus and Citybus were killed during The Troubles, with 1,484 buses in total being maliciously destroyed from 1964 to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

St James Hospital, Leeds later became the location for the Leeds Gender Identity Service.

When I had surgery a few years later, I was told to stop taking estrogen before and during the operation. I thought that this was standard practice after the unfortunate death of Peggy Wijnen in 1967. I found no discussion of this aspect re Wilma.

Andréa Furet (2002 - ) actrice

Furet was rasied in Paris, father a communications manager, mother a journalist at the magazine Elle. Furet dreamed of acting, and at age 11 had a first film role, a small male part in La Vallée des mensonges/Meurtres à les Cevennes, which became part of the long running Meurtres à … series, each episode set in a different part of France.

At age 13 Furet was accepted at the Cours Florent drama school. Furet was in a few more films playing teenage males.

A year later Furet discovered the word ‘transidentité’ and immediately connected to it. However it was not until June 2019 when she turned 17 that she came out to her parents and other relatives – and was accepted. She chose the name ‘Andréa’ in homage to the protagonist in The Devil Wears Prada. She was able to start taking female hormones, although then still under 18. Then she did another course at Le Cours Florent, followed by threatre studies at Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle.

In 2020 Andréa was cast at the trans protagonist of Il est elle (He is she) IMDB, adapted from the graphic novel Barricades de Jaypee by Charlotte Bousquet (2018). It was first broadcast in November 2020 on Belgian television in two parts. Iin March 2021, Andréa won the best actress prize and the film script the best script prize at Luchon Television Creations Festival before the French broadcast in November 2021 as one part. The story tells of Juju in a small town whose mother moves her to another town where she is accepted – until social networking outs her.

In May 2022, Andréa Furet competed to be Miss Paris, was one of the twelve finalists, and came second (première dauphine) – the first trans woman to do so.

In 2026 Furet was again in Meurtres à …, in  Meurtres en Périgord vert , this time playing the lead police investigator, who is outed as trans 30 minutes in, but continues, and solves the case.

• Marie Quenet. “ ‘Il est Elle’ sur TF1 : l'artiste transgenre Andréa Furet interprète une histoire qui fait écho à la sienne”. fr, 2/11/2021. Online.

FR.Wikipedia      IMDB

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Meurtres à …, now in its 15^th season, is available in North America on the streaming service mhzchoice.com.

Jenny Moore (1887 - ?) keeper of a disorderly house

 Moore was born in the then slum area of Oakwellgate, Gateshead (just across the River Tyne from Newcastle), and raised as a boy called Robert. Moore and her siblings were raised by their mother. From an early age she had declared herself to be Jennie, a female, and attempted to live as girl. By 1901 13-year-old Robert was incarcerated at the Abbot Memorial Ragged and School, where children under 14 were sent after arrest for vagrancy, truancy and/or begging, or if vulnerable to abuse and neglect. This was an ‘industrial school’ where children were offered skill training and ‘moral education’. 

By 1911, when she was 24, Jennie, listed as Robert, was living at a seaman’s boarding house in South Shields and working there as a servant, and was so recorded in the Census of that year.

Daily Mirror 1913

By 1913 Moore was living as Jennie, and was convicted of keeping a disorderly house in Hartlepool, County Durham. She was taken to Durham for trial, and a street photograph of her was published in the Daily Mirror. Many so charged would have appeared in court in male clothing to mitigate the sentence, and claimed the transvesting as a lark or fancy dress. Jennie however was now confirmed in her gender, and appeared as her true self.

Jennie and her brother Fred Coulthard were in Gateshead in 1915. They were observed by the police, and charged with “being a reputed thief he did loiter in Gateshead for the purpose of committing a felony”. Jennie was, as usual, initially taken to be a cis woman, until she was examined at the police station. She explained that she had lived as female when she could since childhood. When asked why, made no reply. A search of Jennir’s home found no male clothes at all, but did find a well-kept neat flat with a piano and a gramophone, good curtains and carpet. The police also found correspondence with a soldier serving in the already ongoing war. Jenny was committed to a men’s prison for three months, and Fred was fined £1/7/-. 

In 1916 she was arrested in Liverpool charged with living an immoral life and ‘permitting a house to be used for immoral traffic’. She had been living as Mrs Jennie Gray, wife of James Gray – who was also charged with the same offence. Initially the arresting officers again accepted that she was a cis woman.

• “Man who dresses like a woman”. Daily Mirror, 16 December 1913 p9.
• "Man as a Woman: A Remarkable Masquerade: Gateshead Man Sent to Prison". Greenock Telegraph. 2 August 1915 p6.
• "Man dressed as a Woman: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Strange Disclosures". Newcastle upon Tyne Journal, 2 August 1915 p8.
• "Man-Woman at Gateshead: Extraordinary Case of Masquerading". The Darlington North Star, 2 August 1915 p5.
• “Man in woman’s clothes: Charge of Loitering at Gateshead: Remarkable evidence at the Police Court”. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 2 August 1915 p9.
• “Man dressed as woman: Extraordinary Liverpool disclosures”. Liverpool Evening Express, 29 June 1916 p3.
• “Man and ‘Wife’: Male Prisoners sent to Assizes”. Liverpool Daily Post, 30 June 1916 p3.
• Nic Aaron & Jeanie Sinclair. "Remembering Jennie Moore" in Kit Heyam & Jon Ward (eds). New and Decolonial Approaches to Gender Nonconformity: Forging A Home For Ourselves. Bloombury Academic, 2025: 87-113.

Unfortunately all we have as primary sources are newspaper articles that give her male name, and treat her as a curiosity. We can however see past these and see a lone trans woman unable to get a regular job, and without information about other trans persons.

1913 was almost the last time that fashionable women wore ankle-length skirts/dresses.  The changes brought about by the 1914-8 war led to more practical shorter skirts, and in the 1920s the demands of fashion took this further.

The government had passed the National Insurance Act 1911. All workers who earned under £160 a year had to pay 4 pence a week into the scheme; the employer paid 3 pence, and general taxation paid 2 pence. This provided some sick care and a small income whilst ill. This was the beginning of the welfare state, and was copied from the system that had been introduced in Germany in 1883. This was obviously a good step forward, but the associated NI cards, which were required when starting a job, would have outed Jennie and other trans persons, and thus made it very difficult to get a legal job.

The 1915 conviction re loitering would have been under the 1824 Vagrancy Act, while the 1913 and 1916 convictions of keeping a disorderly house would have been under the 1751 Disorderly Houses Act.

In January 1916, military conscription was introduced for the first time in British history, despite the previous raising of one of the largest all-volunteer armies in history for the Great War. Presumably Jennie’s male persona was called. Did her female persona result in rejection? Did she serve, voluntarily or otherwise, and die on the Western Front (as did the trans protagonist of the novel The Scarlet Pansy)? We have no record of her after 1916.

Whatever happened to her after 1916, Jennie Moore is what we might call a primary transsexual, although she would not know the term. When she was asked in court why she lived as a woman, she did not answer, probably because she had not encountered any suitable jargon even though ‘travesty’ and ‘transvest’ as a verb had been in use in England since the beginning of the 18^th century, and 'Travestiment' was being used by 1832, and 'Travestier' by 1883. It is likely that Jennie did not associate herself with those terms in that they were mainly used for cross-dressing, and she did not voluntarily cross-dress as a man.

False positives

This is a partial list of persons who are sometimes are listed as trans, but closer inspection shows that they are not.

Francois-Timoléon de Choisy (cross dreamer, yes, but not the out transvestite depicted in the posthumous faux-autobiography)

Edward Hyde/Lord Cornbury Governor of New York and New Jersey (1702-1708) was defamed as cross-dressing by second-hand accounts. Patricia U. Bonomi. The Lord Cornbury Scandal The Politics of Reputation in British America, 1998, demonstrates the lack of substance in the claims.

Anne Bonny & Mary Read Pirates who switched between men’s and women’s clothes as appropriate. Wearing trousers allowed women pirates the freedom to climb, work with ropes, go up and down ladders. All the same reasons that a 21st century cis female sailor also wears trousers etc. At their trial 16 November 1720 in Jamaica, they “plead the belly”. Sentence was suspended so that their pregnancies could be verified.

Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, was on the run after the failure of the Jacobite uprising and the defeat at the Battle of Culloden, 1746, the last battle fought in Britain. The rumour was put out that he passed himself as Betty Burke, an Irish maid, and a painting of a young woman was said to be of him.

John Radclyffe-Hall, nepo-baby super-rich lesbian writer and author of The Well of Loneliness, a trans fiction partially based on the life of her associate Toupie Lowther. (Laura Doan: “[Radclyffe-Hall's] haircut was thought to be the most feminine of all the short cuts popular at the time, and she had her hair done at Harrods — not a barbershop. Even Hall’s famous sartorial choices were on the feminine side of what was known as the ‘severely masculine mode’… Nor did Hall and her partner Una Troubridge dress in a bizarre manner, wearing, as some biographers have claimed, clothing from a costume shop. The couple studied fashion magazines and built their wardrobes not from men’s tailors in Savile Row, but from the most chic of London’s department stores for women. [- unlike trans man Gluck who bought suits from the expensive men’s tailors]. Hall always wore a skirt and conducted herself in a completely womanly way - in short, Hall definitely didn’t model her protagonist, Stephen Gordon, after herself.”)

Herman Göring, commander of the Nazi Luftwaffe (fond of makeup, perfumes, fancy clothes - but fancy male clothes --> a homovestite)

Ernest Hemingway(Given the mild androgyny in The Sun Also Rises, 1926, and the cross gender play with his fourth wife, Mary Welsh which he used in his posthumously published The Garden of Eden. However he grew bored of the game and desisted.)

Bobbie Kimber (did a stage act as a woman, lived as female off-stage, but the claim to have had completion surgery from Dr Burou was disproved when her body was examined at her death).

Theodore Kaczynski (Unabomber) (In 1966 when sex changes were in the news as something new, Kaczynski - and many other cis men - played with the idea of being trans for a short period. When he spoke to a psychiatrist, he spoke of depression, and never about being trans.

Hope Stansbury (based on appearance and associates taken to be trans)

Andrea Feldman (Warhol superstar taken to be trans)

Kimberley Harrison (a cis psychedelist, associate of Timothy Leary, was confused with Kimberley Elliot of Miami's TAO in Susana Pena. "Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists". Gender & History, 22,3,2010: 763.)

Lanah Pelley (a gender-bender punk who played some female roles in alternative films. Pelley played the male lead in Eat the Rich, 1987, and the advertising claimed, untruthfully, that Pelley had recently transitioned)

Michelle Obama & Brigette Macron. Transvestigation defamations