Jenny (192? - ?) electrician, Burou’s first transsexual patient.

A nightclub electrician who worked in Nice had approached Coccinelle and Bambi when La Carrousel performed there in the mid-1950s. Bambi noted how feminine he was even then.

As Jenny, the electrician approached several gynecologists seeking a correction of her birth sex, but with no success until she approached and pestered Dr Burou in Casablanca in 1956. 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.

In 1958, Jenny again approached Coccinelle on her return to Nice:

“Shortly before, I was still in Nice. In the lobby of the Negresco, a young woman approached me: "Do you remember me? " she asked me point blank. I saw so many faces that it was almost impossible to remember them all, but I do not like to offend people, so faithful to my habit, I replied: "Yes ... at least I think ... It seems ... “. In general, the person undertakes to revive my memory, and everyone is happy. But instead of the expected scenario, my stranger bursts out laughing: "That would surprise me very much! She says. That would be a miracle!” And then, just to explain, spoke to me of a young electrician who visited me in my dressing room during a previous tour in Nice with intent to sell me some disks: she was that boy ...I nearly fell over backwards! Now I could see very well the young man in question: so thin, so frail ...
How could he have become this beautiful woman? "I had an operation" she told me simply. Then Jenny - it was her name - showed me obligingly her anatomy transformed: her beautiful female sex, her breasts harmoniously developed ... I was dazzled, I hardly dared believe it! So everything about what I have always dreamed, everything could become reality.”

Coccinelle and her colleague Pamela applied to Dr Burou, and also became women. And were followed by Bambi, April Ashley, Amanda Lear and Capucine.

• Maxime Foerster. Histoire des transsexuels en France. Paris: Harmatten 2003. Beziers: H&O 2006: 21, 76, 78, 97-100, 170-1.
• “Mémoire: En souvenir des transsexuels”. www.dianeetlesexedesanges.ch/3colset008/_souvenirs-d-un-passe-insolite.htm
• Bambi. “Un jour que j’étais en tournée à Nice”. www.dianeetlesexedesanges.ch/3colset008/_page-anecdote1operations.htm