Emi Wolters (Luz Fraumann) performer (186? - ?)

Wolters wore girls’ clothing until the start of school, and still then during vacations: she was called Hanne by the farm personnel and still later by grandfather. At the age of 13, her custody was transferred to an uncle, a professor. And the wearing of female clothing was stopped completely. Wolter’s voice did not change until the age of 20, and there was no beard growth until age 25. 

As a man Wolters took a wife, and developed a career on stage. By 1906 Wolters had written Weiberbeute, a forced-femininity novel about a mannish woman who hypnotises her stepson to think that he is a woman. She then induces a phantom pregnancy on him, and persuades him that her son is his. Her death-bed confession is dismissed by her victim as delusion. The novel was published in Budapest under the pseudonym Luz Fraumann. 

Magnus Hirschfeld included Wolters as Case #3 in his 1910 Die Transvestiten where she is referred to as Mr C. Hirschfeld also gives an extended quotation from Weiberbeute. 

During the Great War, Wolters (under her male name of Emil Mauder) was a senior lieutenant in the German army, and was taken captive by the Russians. 

In the 1920s Wolters became a well-known columnist in the trans magazines, Die Freundin and Das 3, Geschlecht. She wrote the following in Die Freundin in 1931.

“Dear Sister Ilse P.! I am one of the oldest and first cases of medical advisor Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and I know from forty years of experience that even this great researcher in sexuality had first had to learn from us and how he changed his original views and findings. [...] But above all, dear fellow sisters, you should read up on the transvestite literature (I mean especially the scientific literature!). Dr. Hirschfeld has worked hard and thoroughly for us. The fact that he previously described the cross-dressing drive as pathological, and coined the not entirely accurate word "transvestitism" etc. is nothing essential, but came from developments in this field.“ 

In 1932 she drew upon more than 100 letters sent into Die Freudin, as well as newspaper reports and Hirschfeld’s Sittengeschichte des Weltkrieges (Sexual History of the World War), 1930, to highlight patriotic deeds and courage under fire of both trans men and trans women. Also that year she wrote an account of how the English Queen Elizabeth Tudor had been biologically male.

++The next year, after the Nazi takeover, Wolters was mentioned several times as a correspondent and contributing author during the trial of fellow trans person Anton Maier, but was not herself arrested.

• Luz Frauman.Weiberbeute:Ein merkwürdiger Roman. Budapest: Verlag von M. W. Schneider, 1906.
• Magnus Hirschfeld. Die Transvestiten; ein Untersuchung uber den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb: mit umfangreichem casuistischen und historischen Materia.  Berlin: Pulvermacher, 1910: 18-25, 171-7. English translation by Michael A Lombardi-Nash. Tranvestites: The Erotic urge to Crossdress. Prometheus Books, 1991: 27-32, 132-9.
• Emi von Wolters. “Die Welt der Transvestism”. Die Freundin, 7, 26, 1931.
• Emi Wolters, “Transvestiten im Weltkriege [8-part series, 24 February to 13April 1932, in ‘Die Welt der Transvestiten’ supplement],” Die Freundin 8, nos. 8 to 15 (1932).
• Emi Wolters. “Ein Transvestit als Königin”. Das 3, Geschlect,5, May 1932: 16-25.
• Annette Runte. Biographische Operationen : Diskurse der Transsexualität.Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996: 131,412, 568, 582.
• Graham Robb. Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century. WW Norton & Company, 2003: 205.
• Rainer Herrn. Schnittmuster des Geschlechts: Transvestitismus und Transsexualität in der frühen Sexualwissenschaft. Psychosozial-Verlag, 2005: 35.
• Rainer Herrn. "Transvestitismus in der NS-Zeit – Ein Forschungsdesiderat".  Zeitschrift fur Sexualforschung, 26, 2013: 349.
• Katie Sutton. Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-speaking World, 1890s–1930s. University of Michigan Press, 2019: 115, 193, 196, 257n96, 284n109
• “Luz Fraumann (Hirschfeld 3)”. Lili Elbe library. Online.

Pre-Stonewall Trans peer-support groups

Outside of Europe and the Americas peer-supporting trans groups have thrived for millennia, the Hijra in India and the Kathaoy in Thailand being the best known. Many of the First Nations across the Americas had two-spirit roles with community support, but were repressed by European colonialism. The major trans community in the Roman Empire was the Cybele worshipping gallae, but they were repressed in the 4th century with the Christianisation of the Empire.

This account is of the recovery of trans communities in Europe and North America.

Peer-support groups as we know them do not appear until after WWII, but earlier trans persons sought out each other at clubs and balls and in select publications, and also found each other in unexpected places like POW camps. The major Female Impersonation nightclubs are also listed here, even where cross-dressed customers were discouraged, in that there was often back-stage peer support and information exchange for the performers re clothing and makeup, and later hormones and surgeries.

See also Three Centuries of Police raids.

1709 onwards Molly Houses

A new development in the early 18th century was that of houses where queers, some of them transvesting, sought their own kind. Their dressing was distinctly different from the cis cross-dressing found in the masquerade balls, and their gender-role sexual activities were very different from the heteronormative sodomy that had been common until that time. 

1860s Fanny and Stella

Fanny and Stella were the best known of a circle of trans women who frequented fashionable places in and around London, until Fanny and Stella were charged with 'conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence'. Sodomy was not proved, and their acquittal established that transvesting was not a crime in England. GVWW

1897 - 1917 Storyville, New Orleans

The District, a 38-block area, was designated as the part of the city in which prostitution would be tolerated. This had been proposed by Alderman Sidney Story and the area became known as Storyville. Miss Big Nelly was the Madam of a gay brothel. The Frenchman’s was a small jazz club which was popular with trans women. The District played an important part in the evolution of early jazz, and was an area where queer persons were more comfortable.

1914 - 1918 Prisoner-of-war camps

All-male POW camps had theatricals and needed persons to play female roles - some of whom stayed in role off-stage. A major example was the German officer Emmerich Laschitz held in the Siberian camp of Achinsk until 1920.

1919 - 1933 Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, Berlin

In addition to Magnus Hirschfeld’s general support for trans persons, some also lived at the Institut, of whom the best known are Dörchen Richter, Toni Ebel and Charlotte Charlaque.

1920s Club D’Eon in Berlin

A transvestite social club. Hirschfeld’s associate Felix Abraham was on the committee.

1922 - 1923 Eldorado, Berlin

Three dance halls opened sequentially and run by Ludwig Konjetschni, where trans persons were welcome. GVWW.

1923 - 1941 London Life

The major British publication between the wars that paid attention to cross-dressing and similar topics and printed readers’ letters on such. Google Books.

1923 - 1938 the Faggots’ Ball or the Dance of the Fairies at the Hamilton Lodge, Manhattan.

This became the most popular gay event in town, attended by both black and white queers, and also artists and writers. About 800 attended in 1925 and fifteen hundred in 1926. Growing numbers of spectators attended not to dance but just to gawk, particularly at those in dresses. Three thousand spectators in 1929 watched two thousand dancers, and in the next few years a total of up to seven thousand spectators and dancers attended. GVWW.

1926 DamenKlub Violetta, Berlin

Run by female transvestite Lotte Hahm.

1929 Transvestitenvereinigung D`Eon, Berlin

Founded by Lotte Hahm for both male and female transvestites. This was so successful that a few weeks later they had to find a larger meeting place. Later the Association had its own dance events at Violetta. Its events were reported in Die Freundin.

1930s - The Lady Austin Balls, London

Mainly “Hotel Staff Dances” in private ballrooms attended by domestic servants and hotel staff, mainly men, but many cross-dressed. In 1932 it was raided and 33 men and 1 woman were arrested. GVWW,

1933 - 1940 La Paloma Club, outside Miami

A club of which it was said that the clientele included “homosexuals in evening gowns, trousered lesbians, and prostitutes”. It acquired nationwide fame in1937 when it was raided by the Ku Klux Klan. It was finally closed on charges of under-age heterosexuality. GVWW.

1933 - 1999 Finocchio’s, San Francisco

The most glamorous of the US Female Impersonation clubs, popular with celebrities and with tourists. It ran for 66 years, and most professional drag artists appeared there. GVWW.

1935 - 1950s. The Finnie Balls, Chicago

Following the raid on the Cabin Inn, Alfred Finnie organized a small extra ball on the South Side at 25¢ to get in, mainly attended by blacks. Each year it grew, and by the 1950s Finnie’s Balls attracted thousands both gay and straight, black and white, and was featured in Jet and Ebony magazines. Apart from the balls, Alfred worked as a club doorman and street hustler. He was killed in a gambling brawl in 1943, but the balls continued in his name. GVWW.

1939 - 1945 WWII Prisoner-of-war camps

As in WWI, all-male POW camps had theatricals and needed persons to play female roles - some of whom stayed in role off-stage. A major example was Bobbie Spong in Changai camp, Singapore.

1939-1972 The Jewel Box Revue, touring US

The Revue toured for 30 years, was racially integrated and was the best known drag show of its kind in the US. GVWW.

Mid 1940s - 1975 The Phil Black Funmaker Balls, Manhattan

The precursor of the later Voguing balls. GVWW.

1944 - mid 1950s Soldiers-in-Skirts Revues, England touring

About the only option in England at the time where assigned males could wear female clothes outside their homes. You had to have some inclination, if not actual talent, towards singing and dancing, although you did not have to have actually served in the forces. The first such show was actually a US import, Irving Berlins' This is the Army, which played the London Palladium for four nights in 1944. The initial idea had been to put men into dresses to make them look dreadful, but that soon started to change because the audience liked the prettiest ones best - which much suited the performers.  GVWW.

1947 - 1985 Le Carousel and Madame Arthur, Paris

Two clubs owned by Marcel Ouizman. While originally the performers had been the type who changed to male clothing before leaving, increasingly they were replaced by trans women who lived as women full time, took hormones and went to Casablanca for surgery. They were a community that shared advice and support, and exchanged addresses of doctors and electrolysists. Hormones were available in pharmacies without a prescription at that time. They also toured five continents, bringing an inconceivable example to countries where transgender surgery was not at all available.

1946 - 1956 The Garden of Allah, Seattle. 1946-1956

Seattle's most popular gay cabaret and one of the first gay-owned gay bars in the US. Local talent was encouraged. Unlike Finocchio’s in San Francisco, local queers were encouraged to attend, and amateur night contestants were often encouraged to become performers. GVWW.

1945 - 1981 Marie Schwidenhammer, Paris

After release from a German concentration camp and a forced resignation from the French Army, Schwidenhammer started living as female. She obtained diplomas in para-medical specialities and practiced as a masseuse therapist nurse, mainly in Paris. She was in contact with most French transsexuals and transvestites. It was she who happened to meet La Carousel star Coccinelle by chance on a train, and informed her of hormones, and of the possibility of transition. GVWW.

1944 - 1978 Louise Lawrence, San Francisco

The mother of trans organizing in the US. She networked with the performers at Finocchio’s, the homophile Mattachine Society, and educated professionals Karl Bowman, Alfred Kinsey and Harry Benjamin, and put trans women in touch with each other. GVWW.

1949 -1972 Club My-O-My, New Orleans

A performance venue in the West End of the city on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain. This was far enough out to avoid city rules and police harassment. For several decades it was a popular tourist stop. In 1972 the building was destroyed in a fire.  White performers and audience only. 

1945 -1969 the Dew Drop Inn, New Orleans

Renowned for music, drag and cross-dressing by performers, bar staff and customers. Patsy Vidalia hosted the Gay Halloween Ball each year. Unlike Club My-O-My not racially segregated.

1946 - 1973 Justice Weekly

A Toronto Tabloid that was published weekly with accounts of international criminal trials, but also accounts of and letters from readers re homosexuality, cross-dressing and fetishism.

195? - 1963 Chevalier D’Eon Resort, NY State

A country home in the Catskills, owned by Susanna Valenti and her wife Marie. It was an isolated 150 acres with a main house, a barn and several snug but unheated bungalows. For $25 ($200 in 2022 money) a weekend visitor from the city got food and board and lessons in passing as female. Of particular note is the gathering there of 71 transvestites at Halloween 1962 dominated by Virginia Prince. GVWW.

1958 - 2008 Chez Nous, Berlin

A nightclub at Marburger Straße 14 in Charlottenburg, the oldest surviving Travestietheater in West Germany. It was featured in the Michael Caine/Harry Palmer espionage film Funeral in Berlin, 1966. GVWW.

1959 - 1967 National Pageants, 1959, US touring

Jack Doroshow/Flawless Sabrina, drag performer and organizer of pageants. Through his company, The Nationals Academy, Jack organized 46 pageants a year from 1959-1967. As local laws almost always prohibited cross-dressing, he would meet with officials and propose a charitable donation, and in return the town would pass a variance to permit the pageant. Usually the town officials did not understand that local people would be performing. The 1967 finals held in New York was a much bigger affair. The Muscular Dystrophy Association was announced as the charity, and Lady Bird Johnson, the President’s wife, and Robert Kennedy as co-sponsors, but they quickly dropped out as the nature of the event became clearer. The event was filmed as The Queen, 1968, which was a sensation at the Cannes International Film Festival. GVWW.

1959 - 1986 Transvestia Newsletter

Published by Virginia Prince and sold by subscription and later in adult book stores. It would become influential in introducing heterosexual transvestites to each other.

1960 Hose and Heels Club, Los Angeles

The first group organized by Virginia Prince.

1962 Full Personality Expression (FPR), Los Angeles and then nation wide.

Virginia Prince attempted to organize Transvestia's readership into a nationwide group. FP (from FemmePersonator) also stood for Full Personality. What was needed was Full Personality Expression (FPE). That was Hellenized into Phi Pi Epsilon in the fashion of university sororities. The Hose and Heel Club became the Alpha Chapter. Homosexuals, transsexuals and fetishists were not admitted. Soon afterward there were three other FPE chapters: Beta in Chicago, Delta in Cleveland, and Theta in Madison, Wisconsin. GVWW.

1960s Stella Minge was running the last Molly House in Silvertown, London.

A queen herself, she often encouraged younger queens. GVWW.

1964 - 1969 Casa Susanna, NY State

In 1963, Susanna and Marie sold their resort property as it was unprofitable. In early 1964 they bought another 150 acre property with a large house, close to Hunter, New York. This became Casa Susanna, and like the Chevalier D’Eon Resort was frequented by the transvestite crowd. GVWW.

1964 - 1977 Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF)

Reed Erickson, trans man, scion of wealth, philanthropist, founded the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), financed entirely by himself. He employed Zelda Suplee to run the EEF. She met with transsexuals and others who asked for help, and Erickson made the final decision whom to donate to. The EEF financed gay and trans organizations, and research into New Age activities such as acupuncture, homeopathy, dolphin communication and altered states of consciousness. The EEF published booklets on various aspects of transsexuality, sponsored addresses to various professionals, and sponsored two of John Money’s books, and three of Vern Bullough’s. It donated money to the Harry Benjamin Foundation, until Erickson fell out with Benjamin in 1968. It subsidized the transsexuality program at the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic. It sponsored three symposia that grew into the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA).         GVWW.

1965 l'Aide aux Malades Hormonaux (Amaho), Paris

Marie Schwidenhammer managed to register under the French law re voluntary associations.

1965 Dewey’s Coffee Shop, Philadelphia

Dewey's was a Philadelphia chain restaurant. The Dewey's at 208 S 13th St was the 'fag' branch where drags queens, hustlers, lesbian and cops ate and drank side by side. The other branches, especially the 17th St branch wanted it that only the 13th St branch be so. They started refusing service to known homosexuals and "persons wearing non-conformist clothing". 150 protesters staged a sit-in and the police were called. 3 protesters were arrested. At a second sit-in a week later the police declined to take any action, and the management agreed to end discrimination.

1965 onwards. Beaumont Society, England

Alice Purnell, Alga Campbell from Dublin, Giselle, a US expatriate, and Sylvia Carter, met in 1965 and agreed to found the Beaumont Society which was initially much the same as Prince’s FPE.

1966 Compton’s Cafeteria, San Francisco

This branch of Compton's was one of few places in the city where trans persons could go. However the staff started calling the police to arrest trans persons. By August a picket was launched. One night friction exploded into riot, dishes were smashed and the windows were smashed. The next night was a repeat.

1967 Change: Our Goal

A peer-support group in San Francisco. However it lasted only a year or so.

1968-1973 National Transsexual Counseling Unit

A peer-run counseling service established in San Francisco. Funded by EEF.

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

Of course, after Stonewall, many peer support groups were founded. 

Bobbie Spong (191? - 1944) performer, WWII Prisoner of War

Spong was the son of the licencee of the Six Bells, Kings Road, Chelsea. On 7-8^th December 1941 he was a private in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps stationed in Singapore. On that day Japanese forces attacked Thailand, Dutch East Indies, the UK colonies of Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaya. and the US colonies of the Philippines and Hawai’i.

The 60,000 British empire forces in Singapore and Malaya finally surrendered 15 February 1942, what Churchill called "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history". Most UK and Australian troops, and later Dutch civilians, were imprisoned in the Selarang Barracks, near to Changi, an existing prison at the east end of Singapore. The Barracks also became referred to as Changi. 850 died in captivity, others were transported to work as forced labour in Japan or on the Thai-Burma railway (which included a bridge over the river Kwai).

Morale was inevitably bad, and the officers encouraged sports and theatricals. One of the first were The Mumming Bees concert parties, and it was at these that Bobbie Spong, who had already made somewhat of a name as a performer, first became well-known. Bobbie impersonated comedienne Beatrice Lillie, film star Marlene Dietrich and female impersonator Douglas Byng. From there Spong branched out into comedy sketches and revues, almost always in female parts. Even the Japanese and Korean guards came to watch. One night her appearance was greeted by a roar of applause that was heard across the island. 

Somehow Spong had managed to bring into the prison camp a full set of female clothing including corsets. He was allowed to grow his hair to a feminine length. Bobbie often stayed in role offstage. In particular she would tour the hospital wards and sing for those too sick to attend the performances. She was so convincing that when she sat on a patient’s bed they would blush and attempt to cover their nakedness. Late in 1943 when Private Spong returned to the Chungkai camp in Thailand from a work-camp up the line, and converted to Bobbie for a show, she was so convincing that the Japanese officers stopped the show and demanded proof of her manhood. Both Japanese and Korean guards often asked Bobbie to give a private performance in their quarters. This she did, graciously accepting fruit and cigarettes, and then would quickly flee back to her own quarters.

On Christmas Day 1943, Bobbie - in a light green and orange frock and hat - was in the hospital to give out cigarettes. Later that day she was at the mock horse races where everybody dressed up the best that they could. She kissed the winners of the races. The day ended with Bobbie under a large tree singing from the Douglas Byng repertoire.

The theatre at Chungkai.  Bobbie sitting front right.

On 29 April 1944 the shows were cancelled because the Japanese had taken all the theatrical paraphernalia for the celebration of the Emperor’s birthday. Bobbie was part of a burlesque football match that was hastily arranged instead.

West London Press, 32/10/1952 p1

Bobbie’s final appearance was in mid-May 1944 at Chungkai camp. Spong then shocked everyone by volunteering for a work detail in Japan because her best friend had been drafted for it. Departure was 8 June. By then Spong had had his hair cut, but managed to pack twenty frocks in his rucksack. 1300 POWs were crammed into an unmarked transport ship. The ship was spotted, torpedoed and sunk by a US submarine - very few survived.

• “Pledge Renewed”, West London Press,October 31, 1952: 1.
• Sears Eldredge. “Wonder Bar: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival in a Second World War POW Hospital Camp” in Gilly Carr & Harold Mytum (eds). Cultural Heritage and Prisoners of War: Creativity Behind Barbed Wire.Routledge, 2012.
• Sears Eldredge. “ ‘We Girls’: Female Impersonators in Prisoner-of-War Entertainments on the Thailand-Burma Railway”. Popular Entertainment Studies, 5, 1, 2014: 74-99.
• Sears A Eldredge. “The Uncomparable Bobbie” in Captive Audiences / Captive Performers: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival on the Thailand-Burma Railway 1942-1945. Macelester College, 2014: 533-8.

Betty Cowell (1918 - 2011) motor racer, pilot.

++Updated October 2013 in incorporate the IOS article on her death.

Robert Marshall Cowell was born in Croydon, the middle child of three. His father was Ernest Cowell, the prominent surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corps and at Croydon General Infirmary (now closed), and who would be Director of Medical Services for the Allied Forces in North Africa and Italy during the Second World War.

Robert had an aptitude for mechanical things. From the age of twelve he spent his holidays in engineering workshops in Croydon. His public school had a motor club where under-aged members drove motorcycles and cars on the school grounds. John Cunningham, the future RAF night fighter ace was a member of the same club. Robert also joined the Officers’ Training Corps while at school, and became a non-commissioned officer. In the early 1930s, Robert and a friend spent a summer holiday in Belgium, Austria and Germany, and picked up some German.

He left school at sixteen and entered a series of tennis tournaments, which led to his first homosexual proposal, which he quickly ran from.

He worked in both aircraft and racing car service shops. At seventeen he drove in the London-Land’s-End trial run. Later in 1935 he joined the RAF as a pupil pilot. He gained a commission but found that flying made him feel extremely ill. He was invalided out of the RAF, and declared as permanently unfit for flying duties.

He studied engineering at University College, London, where he met his future wife, Diana, who was also a racing driver. He drove in motor races and speed trials, including the 1939 Grand Prix in Antwerp. Later that year, he almost ran down Neville Chamberlain who was crossing Parliament Square.

With the outbreak of war, Cowell thought that the best job to have was that of a fighter pilot. He pestered the Air Ministry, but they wouldn’t take him back. He was offered a position in the Royal Army Service Corps with a promise of a fast-track commissioning. In January 1941 he was commissioned as a captain.

In May he married his girlfriend, who by then had a degree in engineering. They spent the war apart but did manage to have two daughters, born in 1942 and 1944.

After a few months in Iceland (which had decriminalized homosexuality while under British occupation) Robert managed to get transferred to the RAF. By this time he knew how to fake a military medical exam.

He was trained to fly various fighter planes and bombers. He mainly saw action supporting the Invasion of France in the summer of 1944, until his plane was hit by flak, and he became a prisoner of the Germans.

He spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft 1, between Lübeck and Rostock. He vehemently refused to play a female role in the camp theatricals, as he felt that ‘would have been a public declaration of homosexuality’. The gay cliques in the camp constantly annoyed him by assuming that he was one of them. On 30 April 1945 the prisoners refused German orders to evacuate in the face of the advancing Soviet Army.  After negotiations, the Germans left leaving the POWs behind.  Two weeks later Captain Cowell and the other British prisoners were flown home.

Back in England, with a business partner, Cowell set up a specialist auto engineering company. They built cars for motor racing, and he competed as a driver. He also renovated houses and sold them at a profit.

His marriage fell apart as Diana was not happy about his wearing her clothes, and suspected him of seeing other women. They separated in 1948.  Cowell never saw his daughters again.  His wife re-married and had three more children.  The two girls were brought up by their grandparents, Sir Ernest and his wife.

Robert continued to be depressed, and saw a couple of Freudian analysts. The outcome was:

“The feminine side of my nature, which all my life I had known of and severely repressed, was very much more fundamental and deep-rooted than I had supposed (p96)”.

He secured a consultation with a Harley Street sexologist who referred him to a woman endocrinologist, who put him on oestrogens. Feeling that he should counterbalance the heavily masculine nature of his business interests, he invested in a small company which designed and manufactured women’s clothes, both theatrical and haute couture, and proceeded to learn that business. He also struck up a friendship with a woman, Lisa, whom he met in a London hotel, who later lived with him and helped him transition.

Cowell came across the 1946 book Self: a study in ethics and endocrinology, by Michael Dillon, which contains a section discussing sex changes as possible. Cowell wrote to him via the publisher, and after several lengthy letters, they met in London. Dillon admitted that he had been a woman until a few years previously. More meetings followed. Michael convinced himself that fate had put them together, and they should be a couple. Cowell needed an orchiectomy if she were to proceed to being a woman, but no doctor in the UK would do the operation because of the mayhem laws. Michael, who was nearing the completion of his medical degree at Trinity College, Dublin, used his new skills to do so. He also introduced Roberta to Arthur Millbourn, Canon at Bristol Cathedral, and to his surgeon Harold Gillies.   However he finally had to concede that Roberta was not returning his passion.

Roberta had a consultation with Dr George Dusseau on Wimpole Street. Given her orchiectomy, he agreed to write a letter that was “in the nature of a working certificate to enable the plastic surgeons to carry out their operations”. That done, Roberta was able to change her name by deed poll to Roberta Elizabeth Cowell and to get her birth certificate amended. From then on she would be Betty to her friends.

Sir Harold Gillies was now willing to proceed with surgery. He had never done a vaginoplasty before. He practiced the previous evening on the torso of a male cadaver. The operation was successful and medical affidavits were sworn. Cowell then persuaded Gillies to feminize her face.

The Cowells’ divorce decree was made absolute later in 1952. Betty was now deeply in debt after medical bills, the closure of her engineering firm and the failure of her dress-making firm.

In 1953 the news story broke about another pioneering transsexual, Christine Jorgensen. By early 1954, Betty knew that she herself was about to be a front-page story. She negotiated with the Picture Post that she would write an exclusive for them. It was said by the Sunday Pictorial that they paid £20,000 (according to this calculator, equivalent to £440,000 today), an enormous sum that allowed her to clear all her debts.

A ‘disclosure’ in the form of a Press Association statement was issued on 6 March 1954. With the notable exception of The Times, most British papers carried it on the front page with different headlines, but with almost the same text:

“This amazing change of sex is believed to be the first case in Britain where an adult male has so fully taken on the physical and mental characteristics of a woman. It may well be the most complete change of sex in the medical history of the entire world”.

The Daily Herald’s doctor commented that

“cases of women becoming men are increasing but the change from male to female is rare”.

Cowell wisely left for the continent, pursued as she was by a pack of journalists. The Sunday Pictorial, which would become the Sunday Mirror in 1963 and which had published an homophobic three-part series, “Evil Men” in 1952, and had serialized the Jorgensen story in 1953, gave scant attention to Cowell on the first weekend, but a week later was saying that she was a transvestist and expressed concern for the

“startling legal and medical tangle which arises” and said that: doctors who deal with these change of sex cases.......”.are anxious for their position in the eyes of the law and the community to be clarified. This is a matter for the law makers.”

The Sunday People, the same week, ran the headline 'ROBERTA IS NO REAL WOMAN'. However it accepted Cowell’s claim that the operation was largely to speed up changes taking place naturally. The next day Roberta’s father, Ernest Cowell was quoted saying:

“I am told that it is quite on the cards for her to bear children”.

However by the next weekend, he had retracted:

“this is not a case of hermaphroditism” and he agreed that Roberta was a transvestist.

Betty in 1958

The Picture Post series ran for seven weeks from 13th March. It was then revised and published as Roberta Cowell's Story with a Preface by Canon Milbourn. The publisher was Heinemann, which had published Dillon’s Self, eight years earlier. The publication had two benefits other than money. By ‘disclosing’ herself, she was able to return to motor racing once the fuss died down. It also allowed her to claim that she was not a transvestist like Christine Jorgensen. Despite the two daughters that she had fathered, and the fact that Robert had passed an RAF medical, she claimed to have XX chromosomes and ovaries, and that the stress of being in Stalag Luft 1 had brought out her underlying female biology, and that Dr Dusseau’s letter had certified her as a woman.

Betty in the 1970s

After the media fuss died down, Betty did  continue both motor racing and flying. She won a hill climb in 1957. In 1972 she was interviewed by Michael Bateman for the Sunday Times. He noted that her house was

“cluttered with pilots’ helmets, high-frequency radios, models of planes and racing cars. She’s logged 1,600 hours as a pilot (recently she flew at Mach 2 twice the speed of sound )... She doesn’t approve of the Permissive Society and she doesn’t welcome Women’s Lib. She certainly hopes the trend towards Unisex has stopped. It’s unhealthy, unnatural. ‘My experience shows that men and women are so completely different as to be almost different species.’”

She also disapproved of other transsexuals:

“I was a freak. I had an operation and I’m not a freak any more. I had female chromosome make-up, XX. The people who have followed me have often been those with male chromosomes, XY. So they’ve been normal people who’ve turned themselves into freaks by means of the operation.”

In the 1970s Betty worked with Liz Hodgkinson on a second book which however was never completed.

Betty and Lisa continued to live together on and off until the latter died at the end of the 1980s.  Betty then moved into a flat in Hampton.  She was reclusive and private, but always had an expensive car.  However she used it less as she aged.   Her spine became bent and  swollen legs made walking impossible.

Diana died in 2006.  Betty's last years were spent alone in sheltered accomodation.  She died aged 93.  Only a few friends attended the cremation, and no news of her death was published in any newspaper until an article in The Independent on Sunday in October 2013.  Her daughters were not informed until contacted by the newspaper prior to publication

• Roberta Cowell. Roberta Cowell's Story. British Book Centre, 1954. With a preface by Canon Millbourn. Online  and also. 
• “Former British Fighter Pilot Changes Sex”. Reprinted in Lewiston Evening Journal, Mar 6, 1954. Online 
• “Wife’s Story of Man Who Changed Sex”. AAP, March 7, 1954, reprinted in The Sydney Morning Herald. Online 
• “Ex-War Flier Now ‘Completely Female’. Doctor-Father Confirms ‘Son Robert is now Daughter Roberta’ “ The Vancouver Sun, March 15, 1954. Online
• “The Real Story of Sex Change: Here’s Medical Proof of Father of Two Who Turned Into a Woman”. PIC: The Magazine for Young Men, 26,1, March 1955. Online 
• “Roberta Wins Hill Climb”. British Pathé, 1957.  Online  
• Harold D. Gillies & D. Ralph Millard. The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery.  Butterworth, 1957: II,384-7.
• Auriol Stevens. “The sexual misfits”. The Guardian, 7 Jan 1970, reprinted 7 Jan 2012. Online. 
• Michael Bateman interviews Roberta Cowell. Atticus, The Sunday Times, 12 March 1972. Online.
• Liz Hodgkinson. Bodyshock: The Truth About Changing Sex. Columbus Books 1987: 21-2.
• Liz Hodgkinson. Michael née Laura. Columbus Books. 1989: chp 6.
• Dave King. The Transvestite and the Transsexual: Public Categories and Private Identities.  Avebury, 1993: 51-55, 86, 103, 110-115, 118, 119, 125, 128, 130, 132, 141, 162, 169.
• Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Blending genders: social aspects of cross-dressing and sex-changing.  Routledge. 2002: 87-91. 135-7, 141, 146.
• Pagan Kennedy. The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution. Bloomsbury. 2007: 3-4, 10-14, 55-7, 76-8, 85-99, 103-5, 109-113, 119-120, 136.
• Jean-François Bouzanquet. Fast Ladies: Female Racing Drivers, 1888-1970. Veloce, 2009: 99-103. 
•  Matthew Bell.  "'It's easier to change a body than to change a mind': The extraordinary life and lonely death of Roberta Cowell ".  The Independent on Sunday, 27 October 2013. Online   

  TRANSGENDERZONE      EN.Wikipedia     

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Page references are to the 1954 edition.   The PDF edition has been repaginated.

Some online articles say that Cowell was born in 1921.  However this is not compatible with dates in her autobiography.  For example Cowell is 17 in 1935 (p17), 20 in 1939 (p23).  The newspaper story, “Wife’s Story of Man Who Changed Sex’, 1954, says that Roberta was then 36.  Therefore Cowell must have been born in 1918.

Wikipedia actually has a Cowell (surname) disambiguation page that at this date includes neither Roberta Cowell nor Ernest Cowell nor Robert Cowell, the US swimmer.

For those of you who are into titles, Ernest’s full moniker is Major General Sir Ernest Cowell K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O., T.D. (1886-1971).  He was doctor to Winston Churchill, General Eisenhower, and Director of Medical Services for the Allied Forces in North Africa and Italy during 1942-1944.  Being of such low significance, there is no Wikipedia or other web page about him.

Why did Canon Arthur Millbourn write the Preface to Betty’s autobiography?  There is no mention of him in her autobiography, nor in Kennedy’s book.  Cowell was not a church goer, and is proud to have resisted early religious indoctrination, and not to have succumbed to prayer as his plane crashed in Germany.   Millbourn does appear in Hodgkinson’s biography of Dillon.

Cowell says quite clearly that it was the Russians who liberated Stalag Luft 1, as we would expect as it was clearly in the future East Germany.  Why does Kennedy go from precise to vague and say "freedom came in the form of Allied bombers, a phalanx of B19s that peeled out of the sky and landed near the German camp (p76)"?

While Drs Dusseau, Dillon & Gillies appear in Cowell’s autobiography, none of them are named. The two Freudian analysts, the Harley Street sexologist and the female endocrinologist have not been identified.

The statement that Michael Dillon performed Betty’s orchiectomy appears only in Kennedy (p91-2).  It is based on a release that she signed: “I desire that he be absolved from all responsibility in this this operation, due to possible hemorrhage or sepsis, which I am desirous to undergo being fully aware that either might, per fortunam, be fatal”.  This paper is in Hodgkinson’s collection.  She did not use it in her biography of Michael, but did pass it on to Kennedy.

There is no suggestion or admission by Cowell, Hodgkinson or Kennedy, that Roberta was able to use her father’s contacts to get appointments with top doctors.

Hodgkinson explains why Michael fell for Roberta: “although he did not want to be considered a snob [he] was far more comfortable with people of his own kind of background.  Roberta fitted the bill here.  Her father was one of the leading surgeons of his day, her background was upper-middle-class, and she spoke with the correct vowel sounds, which was always vitally important to Dillon. (p87)”.  However their interests were radically different.  Michael’s idea of taking out a woman was to go to a play in ancient Greek, and he enjoyed cycling/camping in Ireland.  Roberta, of course, liked to race cars and fly planes.  This did not bode well as a traditional relationship.   There was one more thing.  As Betty admitted to Hodgkinson years later, “But as far as I was concerned, it would have been two females getting married (p87)”.

Which brings us to Betty’s most aggravating trait: that no transsexual but she is the real thing.  Michael Dillon is a female;  Christine Jorgensen is a transvestist.  And see her comment for the Sunday Times in 1972 quoted above.

This is possibly related to something neither Hodgkinson nor Kennedy mention: Cowell’s homophobia:  

“I was not a homosexual; my inclinations, as they developed, were entirely heterosexual.  I was horrified and repelled by homosexual overtures, and this loathing included any boy who showed the slightest sign of being a ‘sissy.’ I  could be friendly with other men, but I could not bear any form of physical contact with them.  It was impossible for me to stand having someone link his arm in mine, and even shaking hands was unpleasant. (p1)”

“One thing was certain.  I had not the slightest desire to swell the ranks of the gentlemen of no particular gender.  It is true that I had become a little more tolerant in this direction than I had been in the past; this meant, however, that had I met one I would have refrained from actually kicking his spine up through the top of his head. (p101).”

“There is strong anthropological evidence that the basis of transvestism is, in the main, a homosexual one.  It can hardly be considered a manifestation of heterosexuality.  But the homosexual element is nearly always entirely unconscious, and often very deeply buried.  When a transvestite strenuously denies that he has the slightest tendency in this direction, it is entirely likely that he is telling what he believes to be the truth. (p175)“  --- Cowell fails to connect this statement to his own strenuous denials.

The claim of being intersex, the non-acceptance of other transsexuals, the homophobia.  Betty had much in common with the HBS movement of the early 21st century.

Lisa, who according to the autobiography was a major factor in helping Roberta to emerge, is not even mentioned in Kennedy’s retelling.  She is not named as such in Hodgkinson’s biography but is presumably the flatmate whom Michael ended up taking to see Greek plays when Betty made a point of avoiding him.

How did the press get onto Roberta in 1954?  Cowell tells (p159) of a journalist friend phoning up excitedly as the Jorgenson story broke to get her opinion because of her medical knowledge.  Medical knowledge?!  Kennedy suggests (p103) “It’s not clear who had tattled on her.  Cowell herself may have been the one who leaked it.”  There is another possibility.  While Roberta wrote her book asserting that she passed 100% and no one would ever guess her past, she certainly would not be the last transsexual to overestimate her passing.  It is quite likely that her transition was a ‘secret all over the block’, and by common consent it was not mentioned to her.   The journalist phoned her on that topic precisely because he knew that she had been through the same experience.

I found Roberta’s autobiography a much better read than Kennedy’s paraphrase.  She has a wry style that is quite funny at times, and has lots of good anecdotes about people she meets.  That is all removed in Kennedy’s book.  What Kennedy adds is that she deflates the illusion that Roberta was an XX and did not do the usual transsexual change things.

Michel-Marie Poulain (1906 – 1991) performer, painter, stained-glass artist.

Michel-Marie was born in Nogent-sur-Marne, Paris. After having been dressed as a girl and sent to girls’ schools, he went to highschool as a boy, but with long hair. He was met with  taunts, but being big and strong he easily punched the jokers to the ground. He was allowed to be a girl every Sunday, and kept a room at home with perfumes and dresses.


At 15, la demoiselle Poulain was taken to a jewellers to have her ears pierced, and attended her first ball in a maidenly dress.

At 20, he cut off his hair for the first time and did his national service in the Dragoons.

Afterwards, he quickly spent his legacy, and then became a travesti performer in the music hall under the name of Micky. He became involved with and married Solange, a fellow performer, and they had a daughter, Michele.

He was also a painter and exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants in Paris.

In the early 1930s, Micky visited Berlin and saw Dr Magnus Hirschfeld, but emphasized that his way of life aimed at pleasure and that he wanted to be male. And then when Hirschfeld was in Paris, after the destruction of his Institute in 1933, Micky accosted him again. Hirschfeld listened to his history of wanting to be a woman, of wanting dresses and frivolity, and offered to make him into a woman. However Michel-Marie was not yet ready.

He was a senior-sergeant in the Second World War. He was captured by the Germans and interned until 1945. He self-castrated himself in 1946, and then lived increasingly as a woman.


She was a high-fashion model. She painted portraits and did stained-glass windows for churches, particularly in Abbaye de La Colle-sur-Loup and the Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs in Èze. Later she opened a gallery in Cannes.

In 1954 she published an autobiography J'ai choisi mon sexe.

When not painting in Èze, she performed in shows in Paris, and even had her own night club, Le Vol de Nuit.

She would be seen in the latest fashions at the major horse-racing events.

She stayed with her wife, and their daughter called her ‘Papa’ even in public.

• Claude  Marais. J'ai choisi mon sexe. Confidences du peintre Michel-Marie Poulain. Monaco: Les éditions de Fontvieille, 1954.
• Maxime Foerster. Histoire des transsexuels en France. Paris: Harmatten 2003. Beziers: H&O 2006: Chp 2.
• “Michel-Marie Poulain”. Wikipédia: L’encyclopédie libre. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel-Marie_Poulain.
• “Michel-Marie Poulain”. http://we2are1.eu/11.html. A selection of her paintings.

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Foerster’s book is vague about the chronology, and does not even suggest that when Hirschfeld was in Paris it was right after the destruction of his Institute.  He must have been sick with worry, and one can only admire his professionalism that he was able to put on his doctor persona and attend to Micky.

Michel-Marie Poulain is not listed among the noted inhabitants for Nogent-Sur-Marne, La Colle-Sur-Loup nor Èze.

Neither of Michel-Marie Poulain's consultations with Hirschfeld are mentioned in Charlotte Wolff's biography of Hirschfeld.

Foerster says that she underwent ‘plusieurs interventions chirurgicales (several surgical interventions)” in 1946.  One can only ask where she went.   Hirschfeld’s Institute had been destroyed 13 years before; Georges Burou did not start sex-change operations until 1958; Harold Gillies did two and only two such operations ever; Lennox Broster operated only on “hermaphrodites” and refused to do ‘transvestites’ as he called them.    The Chronologie et bibliographie représentative du transsexualisme et des pathologies de l'identité sexuelle says that “Michel-Marie Poulain se fait castrer pour vivre en femme (castrated herself to live as a woman)”.  So I went with the latter.  There is no mention that she had other operations in later years when they became more available.

Marie André regarded Michel-Marie Poulain as a bad example who discredited the transsexual cause, in that she lived with her wife, and her daughter called her Papa in public.  This contrast of two types of transsexuals, of course, returns again and again through transsexual history under several different names.

Marie André Schwidenhammer (1909 – 1981) nurse, activist.

Georges Marie André Schwidenhammer was born into a rich industrial family in the Vosques. There were a few scandals before the war with regard to his crossdressing.

After studying physics and chemistry, he enlisted in the Army, where he attained the rank of captain.

Working with the Résistance in 1940, he helped several hundred prisoners-of-war escape the camp at Luneville. Then from late 1940 to 1943 he organized the production of a scouring powder, which employed a few dozen young people who would otherwise have been conscripted for compulsory labour in Germany. In 1943 he was arrested and sentenced to death by the Gestapo, and finally, interned at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp (in Alsace which had been incorporated into the Reich). There he was subjected to experimental hormonal treatment.

After 1945, he was forced to resign from the Army, and his internment was not recognized by the Military Pensions office.

Schwidenhammer now chose to live as female, using the name Marie André. She obtained diplomas in para-medical specialities and practiced as a masseuse therapist nurse, first in Paris hospitals and Monaco, then she moved to private practice, establishing a practice in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, where she worked until her death. She was in contact with most French transsexuals and transvestites. She also worked with Mme Bonnet who did waxing and electrolysis.

In the early 1950s, Marie André happened to meet Coccinelle by chance on a train, and informed her of hormones, and of the possibility of transition.

In 1963 Marie André was decorated with the cross for voluntary fighters in the Résistance.

In 1965 she founded AMAHO (l'Aide aux Malades Hormonaux), registered under the law of 1 July 1901 regarding voluntary associations. She proposed that transsexuals and transvestites were the result of growth hormones injected into calves and chickens which were then eaten by pregnant mothers.

She was for many years the transsexual spokesperson, frequently quoted in newspapers and books. She did not hesitate to approach government ministries on behalf of transsexuals. AMAHO issued membership cards that closely resembled the French National Identity Card. This was tolerated by the Prefecture of Police.

With a judgement in cassation in 1975, and and a ruling in the Court of Appeal of Reims, 1979, she was able to remove her first name ‘George’ from her identity papers. This became a precedent for all French citizens.

She became strident as was probably necessary for her work, but this did alienate some.

She died in a car accident. Her grave, very simple with her birth name only, is located near Chartres.

• Joseph Doucé. La Question transsexuelle. Paris: Luminière et justice. 1986 :159.
• Maxime Foerster. Histoire des transsexuels en France. Paris: Harmatten 2003. Beziers: H&O 2006: chp 2.

FR.Wikipedia    

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While rarely remembered outside France, she is of course a pioneer trans activist, who was working at the same time as Virginia Prince, José Sarria and Reed Erickson in the US and Della Aleksander and Charlotte Bach in the UK.

Both Doucé and Foerster express skepticism re the hormonal treatments in the concentration camp.  We have only Schwidenhammer’s own word for this having happened.

Ovida Delect (1927 - 1996) poet and political activist.

Jean-Pierre Voidies was part of the French Communist Résistance to the German invasion. He was arrested and sent to Neuengamme concentration camp.


After the war Jean-Pierre was a political activist, a poet, a novelist, a husband and father.

At the age of 55 Jean-Pierre transitioned to female and became Ovida. She lives in Normandy with her ex-wife, Huguette Voidies.

• Ovida Delect. La prise de robe. Itinéraire d'une transsexualité vécue. Edité à compte d'auteur, 149 pp 1982.
• Françoise Romand (dir). Appelez-moi Madame. France 52 mins 1986.
• Ovida Delect. La Vocation d'être femme: itineraire d'une transsexualité vécue. Paris: Editions L’Harmattan 384 pp 1996. (includes La prise de robe).

FR.Wikipedia

Here is a poem that the 18-year-old Jean-Pierre wrote in January 1945 without pen or paper after being marched 5 kilometres, barefoot in the snow:

Sous l'étoile trop pure
Du grand ciel froid
La toile de la tente
Au vent qui tourmente
Claque - et c'est la voile
Des galères d'autrefois.
Oppressés, compressés
Les prisonniers s'irritent
Des toux rocailleuses
Et des voix pleureuses
Des mourants qui s'agitent.
Le projecteur est dur
La sentinelle boit
Je ferme mes gerçures
Et mes lèvres sans joie.
Le projecteur est dur
La sentinelle boit
J'étire mes jointures
Et fais craquer le bois.

Exile in Siberia

In the Great War it was the convention that, among prisoners of war, officers were separated from other ranks, and, unlike the other ranks, were not obliged to work. In fact they were paid a small wage (this was largely discontinued in Russian camps after the Revolution). This left them time and opportunity to put on theatricals. The German and Austrian officer prisoners in the Siberian camp of Achinsk were in a White-Russian controlled area and were not freed until the Soviet Government took over the area in 1920.

The officers produced no fewer than 88 different stage productions before liberation.

The star in Achinsk was Emmerich Laschitz (189? - ?), described as "Siberia's most famous female impersonator”, who played female leads in many of the productions, and especially in Oscar Wilde’s Salome (which would not be seen in England until 1931). Like other camp stars, he lived in drag off stage, and had a circle of admirers who washed and ironed his clothes. He received passionate love letters from other prisoners.

• Hermann Pörzgen. Theater ohne Frau das Bühnenleben der kriegsgefangenen Deutschen 1914-1920. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Kriegsgefangenen des Weltkrieges, 2. Königsberg/Pr. [u.a.]: Ost-Europa-Verl, 1933.
• Alon Rachamimov. “The Disruptive Comforts of Drag: (Trans)Gender Performances among Prisoners of War in Russia, 1914–1920”. The American Historical Review. iii, 2 April 2006. www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/111.2/rachamimov.html.