Anita Verig Sandor (1934 - ) usherette, housewife

As Anita later told her tale to the News of the World:

Her parents in Hungary raised her as a girl, and sent her to school as such, even during the war. When she was 15 she found her birth certificate that said that she was a boy.  She was told to shut up and not ask questions.

After leaving school, she worked as a female in a factory. She found her first boyfriend and told him she was different from other girls. He said that he also had a proper girlfriend and now could have the best of both worlds.

When the Hungarian Uprising began in October 1956, Anita was afraid of being raped by the Russians, so she cut her hair, dressed in some of her father’s clothes and fled to the West. Sandor was shot in the knee, and was two months in hospital before getting to England. Sandor found work in a London hotel stillroom. He met and married a French women in 1959.  They had two sons, but separated after four years, and were divorced in 1967, with  the wife retaining custody of the children.

Anita returned to living as a woman. She was working as a cinema usherette when she met 17-year-old Peter, a building labourer.  They socialised and went on holidays with the other building workers. The major problem was his parents who objected to Anita being so much older.

She had applied for a sex-change operation as it was then known. Peter accepted this and they were able to get a council flat in Islington, north London.  In 1976 they decided to get married at an Anglican church in Hackney. She explained that she had lost her birth certificate in flight from Hungary. So they had to go to a solicitor and swear a declaration that she was Anita Verig Sandor born in 1940.

There were 50 guests at the wedding, and the vicar attended the reception.  All went well until somebody told the News of the World - three years later.

However even the article in that paper finished on a positive note with Peter declaring

“But whatever happens in the future our ambition is to continue to be as happy as we are now.  If anything ever happens to Anita, I know that I’d never marry again.”

• Ray Chapman. “Secret of the bride in white: she’s the father of two sons”. The News of the World, 25 March 1979. Online.

------------------------

As readers of the books by Peter Farrer will know, parents cross-raising a child was considered a cause of adult transgender in the 1920s and 1930s.  However it was a very unusual claim by the 1970s.

I was rather naughty of Anita to drop six years from her age.

It is not mentioned whether Anita was making child support payments.

I presume that she was going to the Charing Cross Gender Clinic.  There were very few alternatives in 1976.

Barbara Buick (1928 - ?) performer, factory worker

Buick was the child of Colonel and Madame Gaston Joly of Paris. At the end of the Second World War the child went with the parents to Bad Ems, Germany as part of the army of occupation, but then returned to Paris alone to pursue a theatrical career. A manager commented on her beauty and delicacy of features and suggested working as a female impersonator. She  was pleased with the observation and took the name Barbara Buick.

She was working at Le Carrousel in 1949 when the Prefecture of Police banned, temporarily as it turned out, wigs, fake breasts, high heels and dresses. The artists of course circumvented this by growing their own hair, taking hormones and wearing flat heels with feminine trousers. In all Buick stayed ten years at Le Carrousel, often working alongside lesbian singer Suzy Solidor. In the late 1950s she went for surgical confirmation from Dr Burou in Casablanca.

By this time her father, Colonel Joly had left his wife and disowned his daughter. While holidaying with her mother in Avignon, Barbara met Monsieur H, a French aristocrat. She told him of her past, and he was in shock, but he came round and still wanted to marry her. However she ran into problems trying to get her birth certificate re-issued.  In the early 1960s Barbara was sufficiently well known that she was featured in the English-language press as an epitome of a trans woman.

Later she  worked in the factory where her mother worked. This went well until a serious accident put her in hospital with first and second degree burns. After a month in hospital, Barbara returned to the factory and was summoned to see the boss – who had not visited her in hospital even once. He had become aware of the gender on her official papers. While the authorities had also become aware of her situation, they had decided on discretion and not interfered. The employer decided differently, and she was dismissed.

Barbara published her autobiography in 1971. Afterwards she disappeared from public view.

• “Sex-Change Girl Barbara Plans Gretna Wedding”. The News of the World, 13 August 1961. Online.
• Arnold Wells. “Exclusive! MD Reveals The Fourth Sex! Not Male, Not Female, And Not Homosexual”. The National Insider, 5, 3, July 19, 1964. Online.
•  Barbara Buick. L’Eiquette. La Jeune Parque, 1971.
• Annette Runte. Biographische Operationen: Diskurse der Transsexualität. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996: 22, 114f., 117, 128f., 218, 239, 242,275,294,314,444,450,479,490,492,495, 502,553,619.
• Maxime Foester. Histoire des transsexuels en France. H&O éditions, 2006: 86, 92, 93.

Mark Rees Part II: activist, councillor.

Continued from Part I.

The refusal from the Church of England spurred Mark to consider a challenge through the legal system. A friend told him of Daniel van Oosterwijck who had applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on the same issue. In 1979 he found a lawyer, David Sonia Burgess (1947 – 2010), also transgender, who would take the case.

In 1981 Mark chastised a local boy for breaking glass close to his house. In revenge the boy's mother put out the word about Mark's gender history and he was then continuously taunted by local kids. Another disappointment in this period was that Mark's younger sister, Jane, who had been initially supportive of his transition, turned against it in 1984, and even cut herself off from their mother.

That same year Mark wrote to the BBC's Claire Rayner's Casebook, and suggested that they do a program on transsexuality. The film crew came to Mark's home for the interview, but did not give his full name or whereabouts on the air.

Mark and David Burgess had been appealing through the courts and finally the ECHR decided that there was a case. Supposedly Mark's identity was to be confidential, but in April 1985 the ECHR issued a press release giving Mark's full name, and it was reprinted in The Guardian. This was quickly picked up by a local newspaper.

The ECHR hearing was held in 1986. Eleven days before, Mark and his mother were featured on BBC 1 Nine O'Clock News, and on Woman's Hour. The Thatcher government sent expensive lawyers to argue against Mark's petition, and it was denied. However, on the day that the ECHR's decision was handed down, Mark received a letter from the Liberal MP and barrister Alex Carlile expressing support. He was also invited to the Tunbridge Wells Civic Banquet by the incoming mayor.

In Liz Hodgkinson's 1987 book, Bodyshock, Mark explained:

"Sometimes I think  that I should know all about cars, now that I'm supposed to be a man, but many of my male friends don't understand mechanical things. I don't feel that it is essential at all. I see myself as an ideal person in the middle. Having been a woman, and having grown up, albeit reluctantly, in a woman's world, I find that my sympathies are with women. I find many men boring and pompous. I prefer to listen to women, and feel I know all about them, having been one. Everybody knows about me and I don't try to hide my background as many female-to-male transsexuals do."

In 1988 Mark encountered his sister's two daughters in town and said 'Hello'. A solicitor's letter letter came three days later demanding that he not attempt to see the children. Following this their mother went to visit a friend in Somerset, and died. A cousin from South Africa turned up for the funeral, who was also a female-to-male transsexual. Jane came but refused to sit with or even look at her brother. The local yobos jeered as Mark followed his mother's coffin. Later in the year a memorial service was held, without Jane being invited.

Mark fell into depression and stopped attending church. In 1989 Wendy Cooper got Wales On Sunday to commission a life history from Mark, and in June he went to Brussels as the European Parliament had accepted a motion that transsexuals be legally recognised. The motion was passed in September, but, as expected, the Thatcher government totally ignored it. On the trip Mark met with Pastor Joseph Doucé, a year before he was assassinated.

Mark started on a career as a public speaker, mainly to the Samaritans charity. Financially he was still relying on the dole. Alex Carlile organized a meeting of transsexuals and supporters in 1992 that started in his office and finished in a nearby café. This resulted in the foundation of Press for Change(PFC). Mark was happy to let the younger, and computer literate, do most of the work, but continued to write letters , especially to Anglican dioceses, and spoke at many meetings across the UK.

In 1994 Mark was elected to the Tunbridge Wells Borough Council representing the Liberal Democrat Party, one of the first openly trans candidates to be elected. However it resulted in an ill-mannered article in The News of the World. Nonetheless the local paper published a photograph of Councillor Rees a few weeks later with no mention at all of his gender history.

In 1996 Cassell published Mark's biography with a foreword by the Dutch professor Louis J Gooren and a preface by Alex Carlile.

In 2002, Mark turned 60, and being legally a woman was able to start drawing a state pension.

The Gender Recognition Act which PFC had campaigned for, came into effect in 2004, despite fierce opposition from the Evangelical Alliance and the Christian Institute. In July Mark had a letter published in The Church Times.

"It has been my hope that it might be possible to organise a service to give thanks for the passing of the Act, and to include penitence and reconciliation; but this has met with considerable antagonism from some colleagues, solely because of the bishops’ opposition. I wonder if there is any serving bishop who would have courage enough to say, 'On behalf of the Church, I am sorry for the hurt we have caused you'."

This generated enough response that an event, “The Gender Recognition Act 2004, Reflection and

Thanksgiving,” was held in St Anne’s Church, Soho, London, on 21 May 2005. Mark's local vicar in Tunbridge Wells came and preached a sermon against Christians who would not show love. Ironically, within the preceding week the Act had been amended by a Statutory Instrument in order to accommodate the objections of the fundamentalists. As a result they have the right to check on anyone who they might suspect to be transgender. If the individual is so, these religious people are permitted by law to refuse him or her employment, accommodation or even entry to worship.

By now Mark considered himself to be agnostic, and no longer attended church. He did however take a diploma course in applied theology. After the priest tutor mentioned that her church organist was transgender, Mark outed himself to the tutor and then the class. This went well and several wanted to read his biography which was by then out of print. This led to Mark expanding the book and adding photographs. The new publication in 2009 was at his own expense.

He finally registered as male under the Gender Recognition Act as an act of closure in completing the revision of the book.

Mark died age 81 in 2023.

*not the footballer, nor the neuroscience professor

• European Commission of Human Rights. Mark Rees against the United Kingdom: Report. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1984.
• Terence Shaw.  "Sex Change Rights Plea to Court".  The Daily Telegraph, 17 Mar 1986. 
  
• Liz Hodgkinson,. Bodyshock: the truth about changing sex. London: Columbus, 1987:136, 140-3.
  
• Jane Jackson (dir). Sex Change - Shock! Horror! Probe. Scr: Kristiene Clarke, with Mark Rees and others. UK TV Channel 4 50 mins 1989.
  
• Mark Rees. "Becoming a man: The personal account of a Female-to-Male Transsexual". In Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing. London & New York: Routledge 1996: 27-38.
  
• Mark Rees. Dear Sir or Madam: the autobiography of a female-to-male transsexual. London & New York: Cassell, 1996. Revised as Dear Sir or Madam: A Journey from Female to Male. Tunbridge Wells: Mallard, 2009.
• Sophie Goodman.  "New hope for transsexuals as MPs move to change the law on birth certificates". The Independent, 23 June 2002.  www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/new-hope-for-transsexuals-as-mps-move-to-change-the-law-on-birth-certificates-646151.html
  
• Pat Califia. Sex changes : the politics of transgenderism. San Francisco: Cleis Press 1997. Second edition by Patrick Califia 2003: 178-186.
  
• Judith Halberstam. Female Masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.155-6
  
• Mark Rees. "Reproaching opponents of Gender Recognition Act". Church Times, 02 Nov 2006. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2004/30-july/comment/letters-to-the-editor/reproaching-opponents-of-gender-recognition-act.
  
• Christine Burns. "Dear Sir or Madam – The New Edition". Just Plain Sense, October 4, 2009. http://blog.plain-sense.co.uk/2009/10/dear-sir-or-madam-new-edition.html.
  
• Mark Dalby. "Book Review: Mark Rees, Dear Sir or Madam: A Journey from Female to Male". Modern Church, Jan 2010. www.modernchurch.org.uk/publications/st/jan2010/3.htm.
• Christine Burns.  Pressing Matters, Volume 1.   Kindle, 2013. 
  

LGBThistorymonth     LGBTran

_________________________________________________________________________________

The second self-published autobiography came out in 2009 as the original was by then out of print.   The irony is that now it is fairly easy to buy a copy of the 1996 book on Amazon Marketplace or AbeBooks, but it is very difficult to find a copy of the 2009 version.

Mark Rees (1942–2023) Part I: sailor, dental student

Rees' parents met on a P&O cruise, where father, born in South Africa, was part of the crew. He continued in the merchant navy. Mother was a secretary. Brenda Rees was born near Tunbridge Wells, Kent in the third year of the war, the sole survivor of premature twins. She had another sister four years younger.

Rees was a defiant tomboy who refused to wear frocks or a bra.

"I took it for granted that all girls wanted to be boys and would share my masculine interests".

She rejected her parents guidance to female occupations and went to the local art college, but she was taunted for her androgynous appearance, which led to a voluntary admittance to a psychiatric hospital. The doctors had little to offer her, but a fellow patient gave her a copy of The News of the World containing an article about Georgina Turtle. Her use of ladies' toilets also led to confrontations.

After working at a clerical post, Brenda was able, after several rejections because of the psychiatric admission, to join the Women's Royal Naval Service. However she was perceived as too mannish, and after two years discharged on medical grounds.

She started studying for the qualifications necessary to apply for medical school. In 1969 the Albany Trust and the Erickson Foundation organized the first International Conference on Gender Identity in London. Brenda read about this in The Times. After a delay because of father's death, she contacted Doreen Cordell at the Albany Trust, which had mainly worked for the decriminalization of homosexuality. With Brenda's agreement she was passed to Dr John Randall, whom she met, first at his Harley Street rooms, for a fee, and then at Charing Cross Hospital on the NHS. At their first meeting Randall said that he could help Brenda live as a man if that was what she really wanted.

She failed to get into medical school, but was accepted for the Dentistry course at the University of Birmingham. The plan was to qualify as a dentist before before becoming a man. However the stress of remaining the wrong sex for five years proved to be too much and in 1971 she asked to start on male hormones. The university supported Rees in his role change. His vicar suggested a week at the Anglican Franciscan Friary in Dorset, an all-male community, before returning home and to the third year of his dentistry studies.

All went well: with staff, with fellow students, and with neighbours in Tunbridge Wells. In December The Daily Telegraph ran an article by medical journalist Wendy Cooper, "Gender is a Mutable Point". Mark wrote to her, and she interviewed him for a subsequent article. Mrs Cordell asked if he would meet with journalist Sally Vincent whose subsequent article showed several misunderstandings. Mrs Cordell also put him in touch with other female-to-male transsexuals. Nonetheless Mark withdrew from the dental course after the third year - he knew that he wasn’t really dextrous enough to make a good dental surgeon.

He had a bilateral mastectomy in 1974, followed by an appearance on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour. He had a total hysterectomy in 1975. He then studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, at first in teacher training, but then for a University of London BA in Literature and Religious Studies. He was out with the college authorities in that it was not then possible to change the gender on any legal documents.

Doreen died, leaving Mark feeling that he had lost a true friend. He submitted an article to The Nursing Mirror, but they wanted an accompanying medical article which Dr Randell was happy to supply. As per his usual practice he referred to female-to male transsexuals as 'ladies'.

Mark felt that he was being called to ordination within the Church of England. He was both a guide and a server at Canterbury Cathedral which was in effect his local church at that time. However it said 'Brenda' on his baptismal certificate. He wrote to the Archbishop, Dr Donald Coggan, who replied courteously that because he was still legally a woman and at that time the Church of England did not ordain women, Mark could not be considered for the priesthood.

Mark knew of Dr Charles Armstrong at Victoria Hospital in Newcastle from Wendy Cooper. In late 1978 he wrote to ask for advice in finding a surgeon who would do a phalloplasty, and was referred to Armstrong's colleague Mr Edwards. This led to a full evaluation in Newcastle by the Gender Dysphoria Panel, including Mark's first examination by an endocrinologist. However the surgeon, Mr Edwards, retired shortly afterwards and was not replaced.

Continued in Part II.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Jacqueline Dufresnoy (Coccinelle) was rebaptised after transition.  Such would have given Mark a baptismal certificate in his real name, but he probably realised that if they got beyond the baptismal certificate, the same refusal would have come based on his birth certificate.

Harry Weston ( (1917- 1943) domestic servant.

Hilda was the younger sibling of Olympics shot-putter and javelin thrower Mark Weston.

The question of Weston having an operation similar to that undergone by Mark came up when Weston was to be registered for National Service at the beginning of the Second World War. The operation was deemed advisable, and carried out at Charing Cross Hospital.

As Harry, he then worked at the house of a butcher in Oreston, near Plymouth.

However he became very depressed, and hanged himself from a tree. The coroner returned a verdict of suicide while the balance of mind was disturbed,

• “Were Once Sisters: Death Brings Strange Fact to Light”. News of the World, 2 Aug 1943. Reprinted in George Ives (ed Paul Sieveking). Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an Edwardian Eccentric. Penguin Books, 1981: 40.

Georges Marasco (1890–?) lion tamer, stigmatic.

Berthe Mrazek was born in Brussels of a Bohemian father and a Belgian mother. As a child Berthe exhibited psychic powers and dominated her parents.

At 13 she joined the circus of Van Been Frères as a lion tamer, and as a contortionist. She never had any problems with the lion, Brutus, which later killed a male tamer. She also sang at cafés-chantants, the Chat Noir and the Minerva in the rue Haut. In 1913 she gave birth to a daughter, Irène.

In the Great War she was a nurse for political prisoners held by the Germans at St Gilles Prison in Brussels. She escaped from the Germans and arrived at the Belgian headquarters in male attire. As Georges Masasco he performed several useful mission for the allies in the closing months of the war. Afterwards Georges became well-known and popular at dancing resorts and night cafés, where he was immaculately attired, usually in a dinner jacket. He had many lady friends.

In 1920 he fell sick, wasted away, became paralysed and blind. He became religious and expressed a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. He could not afford this and was advised to pray at the statue of the black virgin at the nearby shrine of Notre Dame de Hal.  Georges was driven there and carried in, and on arrival, almost immediately, he arose and declared himself cured. He was able to walk and could see. And on his hands, feet and chest were the stigmata of the wounds of Christ. A French Abbé became for a time his director.

The Catholic Church investigated and accepted the miracle as fact, but forbade the administration of Sacraments to Georges until he stopped pretending to be a man, and the French Abbé was instructed to withdraw. Georges refused to stop. He declared that he was a man, and also an apostle sent by Christ to to heal the sick. He exhibited his stigmata, withdrew to a chapel of his own, soon had a large following, including many rich society women.

In 1924 he was arrested on a charge of obtaining money by a trick. He was examined by doctors and pronounced to be mad: "a marked case of schizofrenia complicated by acute mythomania". He was removed to an asylum near Mons.

• "Priestess in Prison: Girl Lion-Tamer Who Became a Spy: Amazing Masquerade and Miracle Cure". The News of the World, 16 Nov 1924, reprinted in George Ives (ed Paul Sieveking). Man Bites Man: The Scrapbook of an Edwardian Eccentric. Penguin Books, 1981: 42.
• Montague Summers. Physical Phenomena of Mysticism. London: Rider, 1950. Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2003: 198, 200-4, 208. Online at: www06.us.archive.org/details/physicalphenomen007373mbp.

____________________________________________________________

I can find no mention of what happened to Georges Marasco after the age of 34.

Montague Summers declares, having read the Belgian newspaper accounts, that the Stigmata are genuine, but that Georges, lacking humility, has been ensnared by ‘the fiend’ into spiritual pride.  Given that he had been a circus performer, it may have been a good idea to get a professional magician to investigate, as has now become standard procedure for all psychic phenomenon.

Hal (15 km SW of Brussels) is the major Marian shrine in Belgium.  Why is the statue black?  There are of course many black Madonnas across Europe.  In this case the following tale is told:

“In 1580 the deciding battle took place. An overwhelming Protestant army laid siege to the town, bombarding it with canon balls. But, legend says, the Queen of Heaven appeared on the city walls and intercepted the fiery balls in her lap. The gunpowder turned her black. The grateful population brought hundreds of canon balls that had landed inside the city walls to Our Lady, piling them under her bell tower. 32 of those are still kept in the church.”

Ernest Wood (1900 – 1924) cellarman, waiter.

Ernest Wood was taken on by Pinoli's Italian restaurant in Wardour Street, Soho, London, when he was 14. He worked first as a cellarman, as which he had to roll heavy barrels and catch rats. and then as a waiter.

He shared a bedroom with a half-dozen workmates. Wood was described as a dandy, and was said to have three girlfriends whom he would take to the cinema or to the variety theatre. He also bred dogs. His workmates made fun of his light voice, and Ernest joked back that he didn't shave either.

In 1923 he moved to the Astoria hotel as a waiter, a job at which he was very successful.

Wood died of consumption at age 24, which led to the discovery that he was female bodied. No family came forward, and officials at the infirmary were at a loss how to bury the body as his female name was unknown. "Miss Ernest Wood" was suggested.

• The News of the World. 18 May 1924: 9; 22 May 1924:4.
• Wigan Observer and District Advertiser. 20 May 1924: 2,16
• Illustrated Police News. 22 May 1924: 4.
• Alison Oram. Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture. Routledge, 2007: 19, 23-6, 46.

Harry Lloyd (1836 – 1910) translator, newsagent.

Mary Le Roy, the daughter of a French army officer, lived with her widowed mother in Brussels, and then moved to England in the 1860s.

In the 1870s she was in the freethinking circle associated with Charles Bradlaugh, Austin Holyoake and John Stuart Mill. For three years she was a governess to Mrs Holyoake's children. She wore her hair short and was regarded as a 'new woman'. She lectured at the Freethinkers' Hall and earned her living by teaching French, German and Flemish, and by translating. She then started a passionate affair with another woman freethinker, and they lived together in Hackney.

Later as Harry Lloyd Le Roy became the husband of Eliza Condoit who gave birth out of wedlock in 1884.  They lived in Enfield. Lloyd worked giving language lessons, and also as an auctioneer in Edmonton, and then as the manager of a boarding house. When Eliza died in 1890, Harry was a newsagent. He raised their daughter, Elizabeth, alone.

In later years he delivered bills for local merchants, and sold refreshments in the local small-arms factory. They called him Joe Chamberlain as he wore a monocle in the style of the prominent politician of that name. Elizabeth became an elementary school teacher.

In 1910 Harry fell ill, and Elizabeth called the local doctor to the house. The doctor claimed that he had never seen a more feminine expression on a man's face. The subsequent physical examination and Harry's death established that Harry was female-bodied, to Elizabeth's total astonishment. There was an inquest, which returned a verdict of death from pleurisy, and the newspapers picked up the story.

*Not the Hollywood comedian

• The News of the World. 26 June 1910:6.
• People. 26 June 1910: 12.
• "Woman Assumes Role of Husband and Father". The Washington Times, July 8, 1910.  Online.
• Alison Oram. Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture. Routledge, 2007: 27-8, 41-2.

Michael Johnson (191?–?) baker, soldier.

Michael Johnson worked as a baker in London and Leeds during the Second World War. He got on well with his co-workers who called him 'Ginger'. In 1942 he needed to change the address on his wartime Identity Card. The registration clerk in Leeds noticed that the name had been altered from Muriel to Michael, and alerted the authorities.

Johnson explained to the magistrate that as a woman the expected earnings were £2/10/- a week, but as a man they were £5/10/-. Asked how she had managed to 'conceal' her sex, Muriel smiled and replied: "I really don't know". She had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (the forerunner of the Women's Royal Army Corps), and this helped her to get off with a warning.

However Michael Johnson was arrested again in 1951 after applying to join the Territorial Army where he had attended drill parades and rifle practice. In addition two young women had complained to to police that he had been engaged to them. He was denounced in The News of the World as a 'menace'.

After that it seems that he kept out of the newspapers.

• The News of the World. 31 May 1942:7
• The News of the World. 4 March 1952:2.
• Alison Oram. Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture. Routledge, 2007: 134, 138-9.

Dawn Langley Simmons (1922- 2000) part 1: celebrity biographer, antiques dealer.

Gordon Kenneth Ticehurst was born to an unmarried teenager in the village of Heathfield, Sussex. He was raised by his grandmother. His mother subsequently married, and she and her husband were servants at Sissinghurst in Kent, the home of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson. Gordon visited his mother at Sissinghurst where he was known as Dinky. In later life he would compare his own life to Orlando, the magic-sex-change novel written by Vita’s lover Virginia Woolf, and based on Vita.

At 17 he re-registered his birth with his mother’s husband listed as his father. He started using the name Gordon Langley Hall, Hall being his grandmother’s maiden name.

In 1946 Gordon did a year as a teacher on an Ojibwe reservation at Lake Nipigon in north-western Ontario. He returned to England and taught for two years in Croydon, and did some society journalism.

In 1950 he emigrated to the US and became society editor for The Nevada Daily Mail in Missouri. In 1952 he became a society columnist for the New York suburban Port Chester Daily Item. One evening he attended an art showing and took up with the artist Isabel Whitney (1878 – 1962), a descendant of Eli Whitney (1765 – 1825), the inventor of the cotton gin. Gordon moved into her 40-room mansion on West 10^th Street and became her companion.

In 1955 he published Me Papoose Sitter based on his experiences with the Ojibwe. In 1957 his play about interracial same-sex love between soldiers, Saraband for a Saint, was performed in Harlem, and attracted celebrity attention. He also started a career as a celebrity biographer with books on US first ladies and British royalty, and through colleagues on the Villager newspaper was able to meet the actress Bette Davis (1908 – 1989).

In 1959 he wrote a never-published 150-page novella about a 40-year-old writer who picks up a 19-year-old man and makes him his secretary and lover. The young man eventually leaves, and later the older man strangles him and goes to death row.

In 1960 Gordon met the noted actress Margaret Rutherford (1892 – 1972), then 68. Rutherford and her husband Stringer Davis(1899 –1973) adopted Hall two years later, as they had done with three other adults.

As Isabel aged, she and Gordon decided to buy a pink stucco house in the gay area of Charleston, North South Carolina, but she died before they could move. Hall flew her body to Heathfield for burial, although she had never been there in life. Whitney left him an estate reportedly worth over $1 million.

Gordon renovated the house in Charleston, filled it with antiques, and became part of Charleston society. In 1963 the aging Carson McCullers visited Charleston and met Gordon at a party. She is reputed to have taken him aside and said to him: “You are really a little girl”.

Dawn and John-Paul

Not being married, Gordon did not really fit in with the Charleston gay scene, but he cruised the nearby bus station. At a time when Charleston white gay men rarely went with black men, Gordon was smitten when he met the 18-year-old John-Paul Simmons (1948 – 2012).

Hall first courted John-Paul as a man, but without success, and then as a woman. She persuaded John-Paul to start living in her house. By 1967 Hall had been accepted in the new Gender Clinic at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.  John-Paul went with her to the Clinic. Dr Milton Edgerton told her that the operation would be a mistake, but they would do it if she insisted.

John-Paul left her, but came back when she said that she would not have the operation, but then she had it anyway in 1968. She was one of the first to have surgery with Dr Howard Jones under the Johns Hopkins program. She changed her name to Dawn Pepita Langley Hall (Pepita was the grandmother of Vita Sackville-West).

John-Paul left her again, and again she pestered him to return. Dawn had to hire a lawyer to persuade the judge to issue a marriage license. On the license she claimed to be 31. South Carolina still had a law forbidding interracial marriage, but a similar law in Virginia had been struck down by the US Supreme Court (Loving v. Virginia 1967). The engagement photograph was printed in the UK on the front page of the News of the World. The marriage was held in their home on 22 January 1969 presided over by a pastor from the Shiloh African Methodist Episcopal Church of which Dawn had recently become the sole white member.

Dawn with Margaret Rutherford

It was international news featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, the black weekly, Jet, and the tabloid, National Insider; the Japanese tabloid Shukan Shincho, and in the UK, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Express and the Sussex Express. The People paid her ₤3750 for a series on her life, and supported her claim to have been examined by a Harley Street surgeon (Dawn later said that this was Dr Elliot Phillip) who said that she had been wrongly sexed at birth and was capable of becoming pregnant. She was also on radio and television in the UK and Canada, but not in the US where her story was too hot.

Dawn’s mother died, and Mr and Mrs Simmons planned a visit to her grave. Margaret Rutherford enabled a blessing of their marriage in an Anglican church in Hastings, Kent.

Continued in Part 2.

Caroline Cossey (1954 - ) model.

Barry Kenneth Cossey was born in Norfolk, with XXXY chromosomes, Klinefelter’s Syndrome. She started living as Caroline in 1971 at age 17, and began work as a showgirl and topless dancer.

She had breast augmentation and Adam’s Apple reduction surgery, and then genital surgery in 1974, under Dr John Randell at Charing Cross Hospital.

She developed a career as a model, using the professional name Tula. She was featured in fashion advertisements particularly. She was noted in Smirnoff Vodka’s “Well They Said Anything Could Happen” advertisement in 1981 that shows her water-skiing behind the Loch Ness Monster. She was a Page Three Girl for The Sun. This led to a small part in the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, 1981, and an associated article in Playboy.

This exposure led to her being outed in The News of the World, a rerun of what had happened to April Ashley in 1962, which ruined her modelling and acting career. She responded with her first autobiography, I am a Woman.

In the mid-1980s she was featured in music videos by Duran Duran and Power Station.

In 1983 she and Count Glauco, an Italian, intended to marry, but UK law at that time did not recognize her as female. She applied to the Registrar General and to her Member of Parliament. She started appeals to the English courts for the right to have her birth certificate re-issued and to marry.

In 1989 her appeal reached the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and the Court ruled in her favour. On this basis she married businessman Elias Fattal, whom she had known for four years, but press attention outed her to his family, and he left her.
 

The Thatcher government appealed the European Court of Human Rights ruling, and it reversed its decision. This enabled Fattal to have their marriage annulled.

In 1991 she became the first transsexual as such to be featured in Playboy, and also released her second autobiography which featured her legal battle.

In 1992 she married a Canadian man, David Finch under Canadian law, and lives with him in US Georgia. She ranked #24 (1995) in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women.

• Lynn-Holly Johnson and Robin Young photographed by Richard Fegley. “For Your Eyes Only (Bond Girls)” including Tula. Playboy. June 1981.
• Bill Rankine. “James Bond Girl was a Boy” The News of the World 1981
• Tula. I am a Woman. London: Sphere Books: Rainbird, 167 pp 1982. First autobiography.
• European Court of Human Rights. Affaire Cossey: arret du 27 septembre 1990. Publications de la Cour européenne des droits de l'homme. Série A, Arrets et décisions, vol. 184. Strasbourg: Greffe de la cour, Conseil de l'Europe, French and English on opposite pages, numbered in duplicate. 54, 54 pp 1990.
• Michael Binyon. "Sex Change Woman Loses Legal Case". The Times. 28 September 1990 Home News.
• Jane Dunn. "How Barry Became Carrie". Sunday Times. 5 May 1991. Features.
• Gretchen Edgren, photographed by Byron Newman. “The Transformations of Tula”. Playboy. September 1991.
• Caroline Cossey. My Story. London & Boston: Faber and Faber. xiii, 225pp.1992. Second autobiography.
• Jo Alexander. “I'm getting married ... and my sister's having the baby”. Woman 25 May 1992.
• Sophie Goodchild. "New Hope for Transsexuals as MPs Move to Change Law on Birth Certificates". The Independent. 23 June 2002 (p. 13).
• “Caroline Cossey”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Cossey.

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The parallels with April Ashley:

• Both were natural beauties.
• Both became models.
• Both had tiny parts in one the weakest entries in an ongoing film series, April in Road to Hong Kong,1962.
• Both were outed in the News of the World.
• Both lost their screen credit.
• Both suffered in their modelling careers.
• Both wrote two autobiographies.

Are Caroline Cossey and other persons with Klinefelter's Syndrome intersex?   The question whether April Ashley had Klinefelter's Syndrome was raised during Corbett v. Corbett, but despite her blood being examined by Professor FTG Hayhoe, a chromosome expert at Cambridge, no clear answer was given.  Either way, the result of Corbett v. Corbett was to establish a legal criterion for intersex that was not the same as the medical criteria.   Because Klinefelter's Syndrome persons have a Y chromosome (no matter how many Xs) they are 'chromosomally male' and therefore concordant in their chromosomal, gonadal and genital sex.   

Let us go to Stephen Whittle's Blog, posting of 14 July 2008, where he says that: "In English law, there has been *NO* change of the position of intersex people with the coming into force of the Gender Recognition Act. Since time immemorial, intersex people in the UK have been able to apply to have their birth certificates amended to better reflect the sex they are. This system is still in existence for those who wish to use it." Unfortunately this statement does not distinguish between the medical and the legal concepts of intersex.

Therefore, Caroline Cossey, intersex by common sense and medical opinion, spent six years of her life going through the hassle of court after court because she was not intersex by Justice Ormrod's definition.

It is to Caroline's credit that she is not hung up on these distinctions and in her autobiographies  uses the word 'transsexual' of herself.

It is a nasty irony that although Caroline's appeal to the European Court paved the way for Press For Change and the Gender Recognition Act, person's such as herself with Klinefelter’s Syndrome are being given a hard time by the Gender Recognition Board.

Whatever happened to ... Pamela Bird (1927 - ).

Denis Bird was raised in south London. He was first convicted at the age of 16.

At this time he decided to become Pamela. She worked as a bus conductress, a barmaid and as a cook. She had a good voice and sang as a crooner with more than one band where she attracted male admirers. She dressed in the height of fashion, in furs and in the New Look of the late 1940s.

She also did domestic work through an agency. While doing such work in 1949, she stole clothes from Mr Roberts, and three nights later broke into the house dressed in Robert’s clothes while it was unoccupied. She discarded the male clothing, and changed into Mrs Robert’s clothes, including her best underwear, and also took other property worth £800.

One evening she was read by a police sergeant on the street and escorted to the police station. She was charged under her male name and when tried was sentenced to 18 months in Wandsworth Gaol.

• “Barmaid Crooner was a Man: Wearing the New Look and Nylons on Night of Arrest”. News of the World. 3 July 1949. Reprinted in Richard Ekins. Male femaling: a grounded theory approach to cross-dressing and sex-changing. London & New York: Routledge. 1997: 13-4.

Lennox Ross Broster (1888 - 1965) pioneering surgeon.

Lennox Broster was the fifth child of eight of a farmer in Molteno, South Africa.  He won a Rhodes Scholarship, and studied medicine at Oxford University.  He met his wife-to-be, Edith, at Oxford.  They later had three daughters. 

Lennox became Head Surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital, London, and later a well-known Harley Street surgeon. He did pioneer research and provided hormonal therapy and surgery for intersex patients, especially those with adreno-genital syndrome (now known as Congenital adrenal hyperplasia), at Charing Cross Hospital in the 1930s and 1940s.  Patients included: Mark Weston.

In 1932 he devised an operation which provided heretofore-impossible access to the adrenal gland for removal of tumours.

++An 1938 article in the Daily Mirror about his work was headlined “Doctor Changes Sex of 24: Patients Have Married”.   The article specifically mentioned Donald Purcell who did marry four years later.

Broster's work was reported in The News of the World, in 1943, which attracted male-born patients who would now be regarded as transsexual. However there is no evidence that he operated on any such person, and Clifford Allen, the psychiatrist who worked with him, specifically rejected surgical treatment for ‘transvestites’ (the term then in use).

Unlike the other surgeons who operated on intersex and 'transvestite' patients in the 1930s and 1940s, e.g. Harold Gillies, Kurt Warnekros, Ludwig Levy-Lenz, Erwin Gohrbandt, Milosh Kilcka, he did not do just one or two as an experiment, but did several hundred operations over the years.

He later worked with John Randell.

He died in Wimbledon, London, aged 77.

• Lennox Ross Broster,  Surgical Problems of the War. Lippincott, 1933.
• L. R. Broster, Clifford Allen, H. W. C. Vines, Jocelyn Patterson, Alan W. Greenwood, G. F. Marrian, and G. C. Butler. The Adrenal Cortex and Intersexuality. London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1938.
• Lennox Ross Broster. The Clinical and Surgical Aspect of the Adreno-Genital Syndrome. 1938.
• L. R. Broster.  Endocrine Man: A Study in the Surgery of Sex. William Heinemann, Medical Books, 1944.
• Lennox Ross Broster & Howard William Copland Vines. The Adrenal Cortex: a surgical and pathological study. H.K. Lewis & Co. Ltd, 1933.
• “Were Once Sisters”. The News of the World. 2 Aug 1943.
• Dave King. “Pioneers of Transgendering: John Randell, 1918-1982”. University of Ulster: Gendys Conference, 2002. www.gender.org.uk/conf/2002/king22.htm. 
• "The Broster Family Connection".  Family Trees, History and Stories.   http://genealogy.amay.co.uk/main.php?p=FF2-broster.

John Randell (1918 – 1982) Psychiatrist.

See also Richard Green, John Randell and ... 

John Randell was born in Penarth, Glamorgan, Wales, and qualified as a doctor at the Welsh National School of Medicine in 1941. From 1942-6 he was a Surgeon Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), and then worked at Guy's, St George's and St Thomas's, all in London.

In 1950 he was appointed Physician for Psychological Medicine at Charing Cross Hospital. There he worked with Lennox Broster who had been treating intersexuals, since the 1930s, but not transsexuals as such. At the end of the 1950s he wrote a paper on 50 transvestites and transsexuals that he had worked with. In his 1960 MD thesis (Prifysgol Cymru/University of Wales) he discussed 61 mtf and 16 ftm cases. This was one of the first higher degree theses on transsexuality.

B'ham Post 21 Nov 1964 p9

During the 1960s he was seeing 50 cases a year, which rose to nearly 200 in the 1970s. By his own figures, he saw 2438 patients (1768 mtf, 670 ftm). He also spent half his time with general psychiatric patients. In 1969, his name was mentioned several times in press reports about the First International Symposium on Gender Identity, and he testified at the Corbett vs Corbett trial that he ‘considered that the respondent (ie April Ashley) is properly classified as a male homosexual transsexualist', (which contributed to the legal problems of transsexuals and intersex persons in the UK for the next 35 years).

From this time on he was the ‘expert’ sought out by the media and appearing on the occasional radio programs. In 1980 the News of the World claimed that he and his surgeon, Peter Phillip, had made London the ‘sex-change capital of the world’. However Randell had not been in favour of surgery until his patients who had had surgery abroad returned with positive evaluations. Even in the 1960s less than 10% of his patients managed to achieve surgery and only a third of the mtfs of those had vaginoplasty. Even in the 1970s when numbers increased, still only 15% of patients achieved surgery.

However by then he was arguing that surgery could be appropriate and that psychotherapy did not work. Even then he restricted surgery to sane, intelligent, single and passable individuals. Passable implied conforming to Randell’s old-fashioned ideas of being ‘ladylike’, that many women had abandoned by the 1970s. Until the end he continued to refer to patients, including post-operatives, by the pronouns of their birth gender, and would tell an mtf accepted for surgery that ‘you’ll always be a man’.

Most patients describe him as brusque, rude and cold. However Tula found him to be ‘absolutely charming’ (perhaps because she passed so well).  He is the unnamed doctor in the Julia Grant television documentaries who shocked most reviewers by his attitude.

Randall is the doctor who told Christopher Wilson, the author of Dancing With The Devil: The Windsors and Jimmy Donahue, that Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) = a woman with XY chromosomes.

Other patients include Mark Rees the town councillor, Rachael Padman the physicist, Alice Purnell the activist.

He died of a heart attack.

*Not the physicist nor the Conservative MP.

• John B. Randell. "The Early Recognition of Psychiatric Disorders in Adults". Medicine Illustrated, vol IV, 215-220, 1950.
• John B. Randell. "Euphoriant Effects Of "Preludin". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5043, 1957: 508-509.
• John B. Randell. "Transvestitism And Trans-Sexualism: A Study Of 50 Cases". The British Medical Journal. 2, 5164, 1959: 1448-1452.
• John B. Randell. Cross Dressing and the Desire to change Sex, MD Thesis, University of Wales, 1960.
• John B. Randell. "Preoperative and Postoperative Status of Male and Female Transsexuals" in Richard Green & John Money (eds), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.
• John B. Randell. "Indications for Sex Reassignment Surgery".  Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1:2, 153-161, 1971.
• John B. Randell. Sexual Variations. London: Priory Press. 1973.
• John B. Randell. Transsexualism and its management, Nursing Mirror, 45-47, 1977.
• David Pearson (dir). A Change of Sex. With Julia Grant. BBC TV. 1980.
• Alice Purnell. "Dr John Randell", Beaumont Bulletin, 14:2, 1982.
• "Dr J.B. Randell",  S.H.A.F.T. Newsletter, 15, 1982.
• Dave King. “Pioneers of Transgendering: John Randell, 1918-1982”. University of Ulster: Gendys Conference, 2002. www.gender.org.uk/conf/2002/king22.htm.

The Honourable Arthur Cameron Corbett

Arthur Cameron Corbett (1919 – 1993) was educated at Eton and Balliol. He acquitted himself fairly well in the war, rising to the rank of Captain, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre; his father was Chief Scout of the British Empire 1945-59 and governor of Tasmania, 1959-63; his uncle was Jo Grimmond, leader of the Liberal Party 1956-67. The family money came from Brown & Polson's Corn flour.

From childhood he had been a closet transvestite. As an adult he went to male brothels and paid the boys to dress him, and also dressed for some family events. He networked in the underground transy scene, and had seen Toni April, a star performer at the renowned Le Carrousel in Paris. He used his contact with Louise Lawrence to get in in touch with April Ashley, as Toni was known since becoming a woman, courtesy of Dr Burou in Casablanca.

April had become a fashionable model whose gender secret was open, but not widely known. In 1962 she obtained a small part in the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby film, The Road to Hong Kong, the last of the franchise, and this attracted more media attention. She was outed in the press, and her biography was published in The News of the World - an event that had enormous impact on the next generation of transgender Britons. April's modelling career came to a sudden halt, and she received an enormous mailbag of enquiries. The next year Arthur Corbett married April in Gibraltar, which makes her Lady Corbett.

However the marriage was a failure, and they spent very little time together. In 1969 he applied for an annullment. Divorce by mutual consent had not been previously possible, but was allowed for in the new Divorce Reform Act of 1969 which would come into effect in 1971. However he did not wish to pay alimony. He applied for an annulment on the grounds that Ashley was not a woman. The case was tried by Justice Ormrod, the only UK judge to also be qualified as a doctor. Ormrod granted Arthur Corbett’s prayer for an annullment, however he also ruled that a person born male is legally male in perpetuity. Corbett v Corbett became case law in the UK and in Australia. The correcting of birth certificates for intersex and transgender persons ceased, and such persons lost the legal right to be treated as their new gender – in particular to marry a person of the now opposite gender.

This situation continued in the UK until the Gender Recognition Act of 2004.

April rallied and opened a restaurant just round the corner from Harrods, that was an immediate sensation, and continued to run it for five years until she had a heart attack. Then she retreated to the book-shop town of Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border,

In 1977 Corbett became the 3rd Baron Rowallan when his father died.

April's first autobiography, written by Duncan Fallowell, was published in 1982.

In 1993, when Ashley heard that Arthur was dying, she went to his bedside at his home in Spain. He said that she was the only one that he had ever loved, and admitted that he had cheated her.

April's second autobiography, written by Douglas Thompson, was published in 2006, but was pulped when Duncan Fallowell pointed out that it was largely a copy of the earlier book. However somes copies are available on the second-hand market.

• Noyes Thomas. “The April Ashley Story”. The News of the World. May-June 1962
• Justice Ormrod. Corbett v Corbett (otherwise Ashley). Probate, Divorce And Admiralty Division 1970. Online at www.pfc.org.uk/node/319
• Duncan Fallowell & April Ashley. April Ashley's Odyssey. London: Jonathan Cape viii, 287 pp 16 plates1982. London: Arrow 1983. Also online at www.antijen.org/Aprilv1.
• Jane Kelly. “I love Britain, but it is so backward about sex”. The Daily Mail. Feb 19, 1996. Online at www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/4601/april-uk.htm.
• Jessica Berens. “Altered Ego”. The Guardian. 25 Mar 2001. www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4158588,00.htmlAlso online at: http://www.q.co.za/2001/2001/10/11-transsexual.html.
• April Ashleywith Douglas Thompson. The First Lady. London: Blake. 383pp. 2006.
• April Ashley. April Ashley.com www.aprilashley.com.
• “April Ashley” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Ashley.
• “Corbett v Corbett” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbett_vs._Corbett.

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Corbett was, of course, a spoilt rich kid, a self-indulgent upper-class twit, who cared not what trauma he imposed on his wives, April included, and cared not that he had messed up the lives of tens of thousands of others.

However the real villain was Lord Justice Ormrod, MD, who apparently was much respected in the legal field. However this was a classic case of the law being an ass. It was quite possible to grant Arthur Corbett's petition without impacting not only on every other trans person in Britain, but also every intersex person. The ruling by Ormrod details personal medical facts that are irrelevant. The central issue was that Corbett knew perfectly well what April had been. There was no deceit on her part. This is not even discussed by him. Instead he concentrates on her medical history. He even wrote to Dr Burou for medical details. This is prurient.