See also .
The term is ’s and refers to the sequence of publicised transgender surgeries in the first half of the 1950s when Christine Jorgensen became the most publicised, and some of the other pioneers, especially in Mexico and Taiwan, were referred to as ‘Christines’.
The trans women in this period were usually regarded as the ‘first’. Claims in any field to be ‘first’ are often contentious, and act as a kind of rhetoric that brings out competing claims.
As readers of this encyclopedia know well, the surgical transitions in the early 1950s were not at all the first - although they were the first after hormonal therapy became available. Earlier, there had been: patients of Dr in Moscow in 1926; several of Magnus Hirschfeld’s patients in the late 1920s/early 1930s (, , etc); Kurt Warnekros’ patient, ; the patients of in Switzerland in the 1940s.
was genuinely intersex, unlike and some others who dubiously claimed to be intersex. Correction surgery on intersex adults, of course, dates back to the 19th century. In this article I will not distinguish between actual intersex, pretend intersex and straight-forward transsexuality.
This is a chronology, or, if you like, a time-entanglement, of the Global Christines. It is basically the Trans women who were featured in the press 1950-7 for having what was in those days called a ‘sex-change’. The stories of these women are continued as they publish autobiographies etc, and their deaths are mentioned when known. in Casablanca started doing ‘sex-change’ operations in 1956, and a new era developed. The first few of Burou’s patients are mentioned.
To simplify somewhat, I use the persons’ final names (or best known pseudonym where actual name is not publicly known). Note that , put her name as Roberta Cowell on her 1954 book, but to her acquaintances she was Betty. became Georgina Somerset by marriage.
Note on : The common law crime of mayhem was committed by inflicting a wound that reduced a man's ability to fight. The crime was committed against the king also in that he required the use of fighting men. While implicitly the crime of Mayhem as threatened against trans women and their surgeons in the 1950s meant that a lack of a penis would prevent a soldier from raping women, in practice in the doctors were persuaded by the Mayhem law from orchiectomies only. If a trans woman did her own auto-orchiectomy, or obtained one in another country, the surgeons were then quite willing to to perform a penectomy and a vaginoplasty - these by twisted logic were not considered ‘mayhem’.
1937
Dr Stanley, Chief Surgeon of the California State Prison, , while examining an apparently male prisoner, discovered that the prisoner had been surgically transformed into a woman.
1941
, Los Angeles, who had gained access to female hormones, was featured in the press as she petitioned the Superior Court of California to change her name and to become legally a woman. Her story was that two years earlier changes to feminine had occurred spontaneously, that she was a hermaphrodite. An endocrinologist, Marcus Graham, presented her case at a medical conference, attributing the change to an hormonal imbalance resulting from a childhood illness.
Betty Cowell, as a man, married, and they had daughters in 1942 and 1944.
1942
US citizen , Magnus Hirschfeld’s translator, who had had surgery in Berlin in 1929-30 from Erwin , was deported from the Third Reich via Lisbon to New York.
1943
A 13-year-old boy, an inmate in the Auschwitz concentration camp, was subjected involuntarily, by doctors under the command of Josef Mengele, to a series of operations that turned him into a woman.
1944
Cowell, by then an RAF pilot, was shot down over Germany, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner-of-war in .
1945
November - there were rumours that an unnamed serving Sergeant (a full-time soldier and not a conscript) assigned to Hamburg was allowed to travel to Denmark for male-to-female surgery, after extensive medical evaluation by the Medical Officer and a psychologist.
Another rumor was that , performer at Finnochio’s in San Francisco was taken up by Howard Hughes, and flown to Mexico City for castration/sex change. She was paid $50,000.
1948
, 22, Wisconsin, had been accepted for surgery, but the state attorney general’s office vetoed the decision as constituting .
Cowell separated from wife, and later secured a consultation with a sexologist who gave a reference to a woman endocrinologist, who prescribed oestrogens.
Christine Jorgensen met with endocrinologist Harold Grayson in New Haven, Connecticut, but he merely sent her to a psychiatrist.
, made a living coaching young actors in “English diction”, and she also acted in several Off-Broadway productions. She met and corresponded with Harry Benjamin.
Alfred Kinsey, WB Pomeroy and C E Martin Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, W.B. Saunders, 1948, uses the word ‘transsexual’ for a kind of homosexual considered as an intermediate sex.
1949
met and was interviewed by in San Francisco as part of his research on sexual variance. Kinsey referred her to , who was staying in the same hotel, for help – this was Benjamin’s first transsexual patient - and he prescribed female hormones, x-ray castration and x-ray treatment to remove facial hair.
David O. Cauldwell. ‘Psychopathia transexualis’. Sexology, 1949. 16: 274-280. A case study of a girl who wanted to be a boy, but had not transitioned. This paper was not much noticed. Harry Benjamin later commented: "Whether I had ever read that article and the expression remained in my subconscious, frankly, I do not know". Note the one ‘S’ spelling.
1950
May - Christine Jorgensen went to Denmark.
July - Jorgensen’s first meeting with endocrinologist in Copenhagen.
, a hostess and cabaret singer in Tokyo, had surgery 1950-1 at the 日本医科大学.
was appointed Physician for Psychological Medicine at , and later worked with trans patients.
Trans man Michael Dillon, medical student, performed an orchidectomy on his beloved Betty Cowell.
1951
May 15 - Betty Cowell’s vaginoplasty by & Ralph Millard.
September 24 - Christine Jorgensen’s first operation, an orchiectomy.
and his nephew Willard Goodwin in Los Angeles had quietly started doing vaginoplasties for trans women, mainly referred by Harry Benjamin. They got around the Mayhem restrictions by preserving the testicles, pushing them into the abdomen. While Belt was associated with the UCLA School of Medicine, he did not perform his operations there. They were usually done at the . He predated the team led by Ehrling Dahl-Iversen in Copenhagen, and he was doing vaginoplasty using skin grafts from the thigh, buttocks or back while the Dahl-Iversen team was doing only orchiectomy and penectomy.
1952
November - suffering from chronic was treated at the Mexico City clinic of Rafael Sandoval Camacho and his team. They treated the colitis, but quickly realised that there was another issue to be addressed.
and a Los Angeles psychiatrist consulted Dr Frederick Hartsuiker in Haarlem in the Netherlands by mail. Rees was already on hormones and dressing as female.
November - Christine Jorgensen’s second operation, a penectomy, by surgeon , chief surgeon at Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet.
December 1 - New York Daily News carried a front-page headline, “EX- GI Becomes Blonde Beauty: Operations Transform Bronx Youth”.
1953
Irmis Johnson with Christine Jorgensen. “The Story of my Life”. The American Weekly, February 1953.
Christian Hamburger, Georg K Sturup & Ehrling Dahl-Iversen. “Transvestism: Hormonal, Psychiatric, and Surgical Treatment”. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 152, 5, 1953.
February, February 13 - Return of Christine Jorgensen to New York.
(dir & scr). Glen or Glenda, with Edward D Wood, Dolores Fuller, Bela Lugosi & Tommy Haynes as Alan/Anne. US 65 mins US April 1953. One segment re Alan who transitions as Anne. The first film about transsexualism, and the uses the word ‘transsexual’ before Harry Benjamin did. Jorgensen had been approached to appear in the film, but declined.
April - read about Christine Jorgensen and her operation in Copenhagen, and quickly took ship from New York to Denmark using a minor inheritance from a grand aunt. As a new Danish law restricted sex-changes to Danish nationals, Mcleod turned to a drugged-up renegade doctor, Dr Emil Petersen, for an orchiectomy. Then in great pain and hemorrhaging, and without her passport, she was admitted to . The first operation being already done, it was now legal to complete the transition. The Danish doctors led by Dr Jens Foged (1897 – 1956) agreed to do a penectomy and relocate the urethra. Christian Hamburger, who had attended to Christine Jorgensen, was the endocrinologist, and explained to Charlotte about the need for external hormones. She was unable to pay for the medical attention, and so the medical team worked free of charge.
Georgina Turtle was seeking professional help, and had mixed feelings when the Christine Jorgensen story broke:
"it immensely distressed me as I felt no one would believe that my own case had not been influenced by hers and that I might be different".
May - Marta Olmos’ first surgery, a penectomy.
The pioneering Mexican pharmaceutical company, , provided oestrogen and progesterone, and in effect Marta was a test subject for their untested product. Syntex later marketed the product as - which was used for birth control and menopausal therapy.
August - using a local anesthetic, succeeded in an auto-orchiectomy – an operation that no doctor would consent to do. However she was unable to staunch the bleeding, and took a taxi to the hospital, where she was treated for shock and loss of blood. Dr , at San Francisco’s , took over the case and recommended further surgery to remove the penis.
August - was suffering recurrent abdominal pains, and went to hospital in , Taiwan. Dr. Lin Chengyi, a graduate of the Tokyo Zhaohe Hospital and the external medicine department of the Jingjing Medical School, diagnosed the case carefully and found that Xie had a mixture of male and female organs. The details were discussed in the Taiwanese newspapers. The first operation, observed by out-of-town doctors and reporters, was an exploratory laparotomy (the opening of the abdominal cavity) to detect the presence of female organs. As reported in the press, Dr Lin assumed that Xie was a biological woman trapped inside a male body, whose feminine-like features gradually revealed themselves. The press compared Xie Jianshun to Christine Jorgensen, and noted that Jorgensen strongly wanted to be a woman, while Xie wanted to remain a heterosexual man. While the doctors were quite aware that actually Xie was intersex (yinyang ren 陰陽人), they talked of the coming operations as sex-change operations.
October - moved to Toronto, and was admitted to the General Hospital for a minor operation, and was diagnosed using dated jargon as a ‘pseudo-hermaphrodite’. Vaginoplasty was at the Hotel Dieu, Windsor, Ontario, by Dr Walter Percival.
November - Tamara Rees sailed on a Holland American steamship to Rotterdam. She took a train to Haarlem, and quickly had an appointment for the following Monday with Dr Hartsuiker. A second opinion was obtained from Dr Carp of the Psychiatrische Cliniek in Leiden, and one other, and then, as required by law, the opinion was submitted to a court of magistrates which reviewed the decision, decided it was correct and approval was granted.
, as no British doctor would do an orchiectomy because of the laws, had to go to the Netherlands instead, where she had successful surgery at the end of 1953.
December 18 - Harry Benjamin contributed a paper to a organised by Emil Gutheil at the New York Academy of Medicine. He proposed three types of trans women: The principally psychogenic transvestite; The intermediate type; The somatopsychic transsexualist. Benjamin has now introduced the word ‘transsexual’ for doctors and sexologists.
December 30 - Claire Elgin had a penectomy at the University of California in San Francisco by Dr , chief of urology services at San Francisco General Hospital – apparently this was the only such operation that Hinman ever did. One doctor was quoted as saying “A much truer case than Christine’s”. Benjamin’s second use of the word ‘transsexual’.
consulted with who suggested that she go abroad for castration, after which a US surgeon would be willing to complete the operation.
1953-8 Sally Barry with encouragement from Harry Benjamin had surgeries in Sweden.
1954
January 5 - Tamara Rees’ first operation was by Dr Nauta in the in Haarlem. Rees then rented an apartment. As required by law Tamara registered with the Aliens Police (Vreemdelingendienst) and afterwards was followed and observed. She was to wait six months for the second stage operation (penectomy). Tamara learned some Dutch, and adjusted to their then lifestyle. With the changes from the female hormones, and given that Tamara was small framed and only 5’4” (1.613m) she was able to pass. She had frequent appointments with Hartsuiker, Nauta and a study group at the University of Leiden.
Mid January - Xie transferred to hospital in Teipei. Xie had initially objected and this caused a delay re the second operation. The new surgeon Jiang Xizheng was in charge, and female hormones were prescribed.
“Ny amerikansk Chris Jørgensen skjult her I byen efter operation”. Aftenbaldet. 24 feb 1954. . .
Bent Rosenwein. Da Karl blev Karla: En dansk læges bedrift. Self published, 1954. Re Charlotte McLeod.
March 6 - Press disclosure re Betty Cowell carried by most British papers.
March 13 - Picture Post exclusive re Betty Cowell after payment of £20,000. Continued for 7 weeks.
March - Marta Olmos’ final surgery, a vaginoplasty.
March 19 - Francis Marie Jefferson had some minor operations with Dr Stuart Wilson in Welland. He semi-outed her to the Toronto Telegraph as Josephine Jefferson and claimed that she had surgery in the US. However Ron Kenyon of that newspaper searched for the real person, found Frances Marie Jefferson and interviewed her and some members of her family.
March 20,22,23 - a 3-part series in the Toronto Telegraph by Ron Kenyon on Francis Marie Jefferson based on interviews.
April 16 - Charlotte McLeod arrived at New York’s airport.
April - Xie Jianshun’s second operation. Male gonads removed.
May - the Marta Olmos story was in the press, at first the Mexican, and then internationally. Excélsior interviewed Marta and published restrained reports, an editorial cartoon and a letter to the editor, but the articles in its tabloid Últimas Noticias, supplement Magazine de Policía, were splashy, front-page and with lots of photos.
May 19 - Christine Jorgensen’s vaginoplasty performed in New York by Dr Joseph Angelo, with Harry Benjamin as medical advisor.
June - Tamara Rees was seriously ill, which was attributed to the hormonal regime. After recovery and several weeks of testing, the second operation was arranged. A more experienced surgeon was required, and the services of a professor of medicine who had come to Holland as a refugee from the concentration camps of the previous decade. The surgery was done in a small secluded hospital in early June, and Tamara was 15 days in the hospital afterwards.
August - Xie’s third operation: a penectomy.
November - Tamara Rees had annoyed the Dutch Aliens Police who did not know where she was. After receiving a “very disturbing letter” from her parents in November, Tamara took an overdose of sleeping pills and was unconscious for three days. The Aliens Police then arrested her as an attempted suicide, and put her on a ship for New York. Her gender history was supposed to be private, but she discovered that the ship's officers had been told, and they had passed it on to the crew.
November - Nagai Akiko, in accordance with Article 113 of the Family Register Law, had her civil status changed.
did an auto-orchiectomy, and then had surgery with Elmer Belt.
and Willard Goodwin were persuaded to cease doing trans vaginoplasties after a committee of doctors at UCLA, including Frederick Worden, had decided against the practice. Annette Dolan was one of the last patients.
, both at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical Center, interviewed three trans women of whom had already had transgender surgery, , and Janet Story; and two hoping for it, and .
Roberta Cowell. “Roberta Cowell’s Own Story”. Picture Post, 13 March 1954.
Roberta Cowell. Roberta Cowell's Story. British Book Centre, 1954.
Dorothy Medway. “He-She: A moving personal story to help you to understand the front page dilemma”. Sunday Pictorial, 14 March 1954: 13.
1955
had completion surgery in Mexico.
Frederick G Woden & James T Marsh. “Psychological Factors in Men Seeking Sex Transformation: A Preliminary Report”. Journal of the American Medical Association, 157, 15, April 9 1955: 1292-4, 1297-8.
Woden & Marsh wrote that the five women had “an extremely shallow, immature, and grossly distorted concept of what a woman is like socially, sexually, anatomically, and emotionally”. They depicted them as attention-seeking, and even held their co-operation with the study against them as a “need for recognition”. Harry Benjamin immediately wrote to the journal to object. Worden and Marsh had “badly misunderstood or misinterpreted” his work. Four of the five interviewees wrote to Benjamin expressing outrage.
August - Charlotte McLeod had breast implants with New York plastic surgeon, Else La Roe.
August - Xie had a third surgeon, Zhang Xianlin. A vaginoplasty was done; the Ministry of National Defense awarded Xie one thousand New Taiwan dollars to help buy feminine clothing.
Georgina Turtle was introduced to the urologist A psychiatrist proposed that Turtle enter a mental hospital and be treated with electro-convulsive therapy. Turtle’s father strenuously objected, and an appointment was arranged with the Greek-born Professor , the prominent sexologist who is credited with coining the word 'intersex' (Hermaphoditus the Human Intersex, Heinemann Medical Books, 1943) who conducted a proper examination and declared Turtle to be a hermaphrodite, prescribed oestrogen and advised a change of sexual role.
Surgeon Poul Fogh-Andersen, Copenhagen, reported on a foreigner who attempted to castrate himself, forcing the surgeons to complete the orchiectomy. He further did a vaginoplasty using a full-thickness skin graft harvested from the penile skin to line the neovagina.
Tamara Rees. "Reborn": a factual life story of a transition from male to female. Irene Lipman, 1955.
. I Changed My Sex! Allied Books, 1955. A slight exaggeration as she did not have surgery until 1962.
Poul Fogh-Andersen. “Transvestism and trans-sexualism; surgical treatment in a case of auto-castration”. Acta medicinae legalis et socialis, 9, 3, 1955.
Charlotte Charlaque writings as Carlotta Baronin von Curtius: “Reflections on the Christine Jorgenson Case”. One. The Homosexual Magazine. Band 3, Nr. 3, 1955, S. 27–28.
1956
had vaginoplasty from Elmer Belt.
, a nightclub electrician in Nice approached several gynecologists seeking a correction of her birth sex, but with no success until she approached and pestered Dr in Casablanca. Burou developed a technique to create a vagina using a live graft taken from the penile skin, and was able to give Jenny what she needed. As it was the first time that he had done such an operation, it was pro bono.
Kenneth Walker arranged an appointment for Georgina Turtle with , but it went badly as Turtle came directly from dental work clad in a black morning coat and pinstripe trousers. Gillies, who was already on the carpet with the for having operated on Michael Dillon and , was dismissive: “I do not really think you look or could be made to look like a woman".
April Ashley socially transitioned.
Charlotte Mcleod. “I Changed My Sex”. Mr Annual. Winter 1956. Claimed that her condition was physically caused, and that 95% of transsexuals should have psychiatric treatment.
1957
January - Georgina Turtle had a 'corrective procedure' which was performed by Mr a Harley-Street consultant plastic surgeon and colleague of Harold Gillies. She had bought her first female clothes in which to leave the clinic.
X, unnamed Scots woman, having undergone surgery, petitioned in 1957 to have her sex corrected on birth certificate etc. as Ewan Forbes had done two years earlier, but was refused.
Jeannette Jiousselot, a carpenter, had surgery with Dr Burou.
had surgery in Mexico.
58-year-old had surgery.
Harold Gillies & D Ralph Millard, Jr. The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery. Butterworth, 1957. Discusses the 1951 surgery on Roberta Betty Cowell.
1958
and had surgery with Dr Burou.
The trans woman we refer to as Agnes started Saturday morning interview sessions with psychiatrist Robert Stoller and sociologist Harold Garfinkle. She was accepted as having “testicular femininization”, a supposed Intersex condition.
William J O’Connell. “The Unfree”. Sex and Censorship Magazine, 1,2, 1958. An account by a trans woman who was admitted to a US hospital for sex-change surgery, which was then cancelled because of protests from ‘religious elements’. No refund. The person’s real name (female) is not given. Harry Benjamin added a note in his 1966 book that the person did successfully have surgery a few years later, but abroad.
1959
Syntex re-located to California.
Chiang Kai-shek’s wife , and a number of celebrities visited Xie, who was working at a relief institute for women and children.
Agnes’ vaginoplasty was done in 1959 by a team of doctors including .
John B. Randell. "Transvestitism And Trans-Sexualism: A Study Of 50 Cases". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5164, 1959: 1448-1452.
1960
, and had surgery with Dr Burou.
The press discovered Georgina Turtle, her home was besieged and the phone never stopped ringing. She agreed to an 'exclusive' with The News of the World, and was paid £100. A local paper gave the name of her road and stated that she intended to start a dental practice. This led to difficulties with the , which in those days was very strict against advertising. Turtle threatened to sue the newspapers, apologised to the Council, and was given a reprimand.
Surgeon Harold Gillies died, age 78, of a cerebral thrombosis whilst operating.
John B. Randell. Cross Dressing and the Desire to change Sex, MD Thesis, Prifysgol Cymru/University of Wales, 1960.
Georgina Turtle. “At last I’m a woman”. The News of the World, 17, 20,27 July 1960.
1961
had surgery with Elmer Belt.
1962
Barbara Wilcox died of a coronary, age 50.
Wedding of Georgina Turtle and Christopher Somerset.
Hedy Jo Star had surgery in Memphis.
Aleshia Brevard had surgery with Elmer Belt.
Noyes Thomas and April Ashley. “The April Ashley Story”. The News of the World. May-June 1962
A.D Schwabe, David H. Solomon, Robert J. Stoller & John P. Burnham. “Pubertal Feminization in a Genetic Male with Testicular Atrophy and Normal Urinary Gonadotropin”. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. 22, 8 Aug 1962: 839-845. Re Agnes.
1963
October 3 - Claire Elgin was admitted to Stanford Hospital with an incarcerated hernia. Her doctor there was (1935-2024), then an intern but who later became known for transgender surgery. They became friends.
Georgina Turtle. Over the Sex Border. Victor Gollancz. 1963. Not an autobiography but a study based on those transsexuals who had contacted her.
1965
Hedy Jo Star. My Unique Change Chicago: Novel Books, 1965.
1966
Agnes tells Dr. Stoller that her secondary sex characteristics had been the result of her taking Stilbestrol – an estrogen replacement drug that had been prescribed to her mother.
The Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic started taking transsexual patients. Dancer was the first to have surgery.
Harry Benjamin. The Transsexual Phenomenon. Julian Press, 1966. Popularised the term ‘transsexual’. In effect the ur-text on the subject.
1967
Christine Jorgensen with Lois Kibbee. A Personal Autobiography. Bantam Books, 1967.
Harold Garfinkel and Robert Stoller. “Passing and the managed achievement of sex status in an ‘intersexed’ person”. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Prentice Hall, Inc 1967: 117-185. Re Agnes.
1969
January - a medical article in the doctors' weekly newspaper, Pulse International, compared Georgina Turtle Somerset to Christine Jorgensen as being transsexual,
"implying that I was homosexual, would have had breast implants, electrolysis and was probably not legally married, I had no choice but to instigate libel proceedings for, indeed, all these premises were totally false" (p44).
The proceedings continued for two years, during which Justice ruled in against the femaleness of April Ashley. However Georgina was not deterred, and even sent a copy of her book to Justice Ormrod, and he wrote back:
"you and I have arrived independently at the same conclusions as to the legal position".
1970
Irving Rapper (dir). The Christine Jorgensen Story, with John Hanson as Christine Jorgensen. US 98 mins 1970.
1972
December 29 - Marta Olmos died, age 41.
1973
Some doctors were dissatisfied with the word 'transsexualism' because it had lost its medical connotations, and so Norman Fisk in 1973 proposed to remedicalize the concept.
Claire Elgin, age 71, took her life after her lung cancer metastasized to the rib.
1978
Ehrling Dahl-Iversen died, age 85.
1986
Patricia Morgan died, age 46.
1987
December - Surgeon , the keen water-skier, drowned under his boat at age 77.
1989
May 3 - Christine Jorgensen died, age 62.
1992
October - Christian Hamburger died, age 88.
Georgina Somerset, with a Forward by Grant Williams. A Girl Called Georgina: An Illustrated Autobiography, with Study Update. Lewes: The Book Guild, 1992. Includes a reprint of Over the Sex Border.
1995/6
Connie Christine Wheeler & Leah Cahan Schaefer “Harry Benjamin's first ten cases (1938-1953): a clinical historical note”. Archives of Sexual Behavior 24:1 Feb 1995. . . Revised as the Afterword to Randi Ettner. Confessions of a Gender Defender: A Psychologist's Reflections on Life Among the Transgendered. Chicago Spectrum Press, 1996. Includes Janet=Claire Elgin, Sally Barry, Carol=Barbara Anne Richards, Christine Jorgensen, Janet=Claire Elgin.
2000
Tamara Rees dies, age 76.
2007
Charlotte McLeod died, age 82.
2011
Surgeon Ralph Millard died, age 92.
Donald Laub. “The Claire Elgin Story”. Many People, Many Passports, April 11, 2011. .
2013
Georgina Turtle Somerset died, age 90.
Aleshia Brevard died, age 79.
2019
Donald R Laub, MD. “The Cast of Characters (and Characters in Casts)” in Second Lives, Second Chances. ECW Press, 2019: Chp 12. re Claire Elgin.
