Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic. Part I: 1818-1982

Part I: 1818-1982
Part II: 1983-now
Addendum
Stuart Lorimer

The hospital was originally founded in 1818 with royal patronage as the Royal West London Infirmary, located behind Haymarket Theatre. Patient numbers forced a move to a site near the Charing Cross. Doctors were being trained from 1822, and from 1829 this was recognised by the newly founded University of London. The hospital was renamed to Charing Cross Hospital in 1827. After a major rebuild in 1877, the hospital had doubled in size, and it was further extended in 1902. In 1926 the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital was merged in.

Pioneering surgery on intersex persons, mainly those with adreno-genital syndrome (now known as Congenital adrenal hyperplasia) was being done by Lennox Broster as early as the 1930s. In 1936 the champion shot-putter and javelin thrower, Mark Weston underwent two operations. Broster said: “Mr. Mark Weston, who was always brought up as a female, is male, and should continue life as such". A similar operation was performed on Mark’s younger brother, Harry, a few years later. In 1938, Broster was co-author of a book on the adrenal cortex and intersexuality.  ++The same year, 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.

Because of the wartime bombing, the hospital was in effect moved to Boxmoor, Hertfordshire in 1940.

Broster's work on the Weston brothers was reported in The News of the World, in 1943 after Harry committed suicide. This report attracted patients who would now be regarded as transsexual. However there is no evidence that such persons were accepted, and Clifford Allen, the psychiatrist who worked with him, specifically rejected surgical treatment for ‘transvestites’ (the term then in use).

Charing Cross Hospital moved back to central London in 1947, but it was decided to relocate, although it would take many years before the new building was ready.

In 1950 John Randell was appointed Physician for Psychological Medicine at Charing Cross Hospital, where he worked with Broster. By then ‘transvestites’ were being accepted. Randell wrote up 50 cases of “transvestism and trans-sexualism” for The British Medical Journal in 1959, and his MD thesis for the University of Wales, 1960, discussed 61 mtf and 16 ftm cases. This was one of the first higher degree theses in English on transsexuality.

In 1957 it was proposed to join Charing Cross with the Fulham and West London Hospitals.

Through the 1960s Randell was seeing 50 ‘transvestite’ 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. However he was not 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. However most gender surgery performed in the UK was done at Charing Cross. ++Two transwomen who did succeed in obtaining surgery were the ventriloquist-magician Terri Rogers and sex worker Gloria Greaves,

1965 Lennox Broster died, aged 77.

The future Alice Purnell, a co-founder of the Beaument Society, had been attending the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Clinic under the care of Dr Randell, and in 1966 was offered surgery.  However Purnell married a second wife instead.

Randell contributed a paper: "Preoperative and Postoperative Status of Male and Female Transsexuals" to Richard Green & John Money (eds), Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, 1969.

The First International Symposium on Gender Identity was held at the Piccadilly Hotel, London, 25-7 July 1969. It was sponsored and organized by the Erikson Foundation and the Albany Trust. Arguments arose between the team from Chelsea Women's Hospital who regarded transsexuals as a form of intersex, and the team from Charing Cross Hospital who regarded them as having a psychological disorder. The Symposium did bring together the doctors working in the field. Randell’s name was mentioned several times in the press. The program for the symposium reported the situation in Britain as follows: “The treatment of transsexuals has also been undertaken by specialising teams of psychiatrists, physicians and surgeons but there is as yet no permanent gender identity unit”.

After reading about the symposium in The Times, Mark Rees, one of the future founders of Press for Change, contacted the Albany Trust, which passed him onto Dr Randell, at first at his Harley Street Rooms for a fee, and then at the GIC on the NHS.

One of Randell’s patients was the London school teacher, Della Aleksander, who had surgery with Dr Burou in Casablanca, 1970, and who was involved in the pioneering gender conferences in 1974 and 1975, and co-produced a BBC2 program on transsexuals in 1974.

1970 was notably the year of Corbett v. Corbett, the divorce trial litigated by Arthur Corbett, the heir apparent to the Rowallan Baroncy, against his estranged wife of seven years, the model, April Ashley. Dr Randell appeared for the litigant and testified that that he “considered that the respondent (ie April) is properly classified as a male homosexual transsexualist”. This opinion contributed to the verdict which redefined legal intersex as chromosomal, gonadal and genital sex at birth not being concordant, and that psychological aspects not otherwise to be considered. It was ruled that Lady Corbett was not a woman for the purpose of marriage, and the re-issue of revised birth certificates for transsexuals stopped immediately.

Randell published a paper, "Indications for Sex Reassignment Surgery" in. Archives of Sexual Behavior,1971.

The new Charing Cross Hospital, now located in the site of the former Fulham Hospital was formally opened in 1973. Initially it was called Charing Cross Hospital, Fulham, but eventually the ‘Fulham’ was dropped.

In the 1970s when numbers increased, still only 15% of patients achieved surgery. By then Randell 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 a trans women, accepted for surgery, that ‘you’ll always be a man’.

By 1971 journalist/historian Jan Morris had been accepted in the program at Charing Cross, but withdrew as they insisted that Jan and her wife be divorced.

The future singer and actress, Adèle Anderson became a patient in 1973, the year that Randell’s one and only book, Sexual Variations, came out.

The model and Bond-girl, Caroline Cossey/Tula, was a patient of Randell, and was approved for surgery in 1974. Unlike other patients, Tula found him to be ‘absolutely charming’ (perhaps because she passed so well).

Rachael Padman arrived in England in 1977 as a Cambridge physics PhD student, and was quickly accepted at the Charing Cross GIC, and put on oestrogens.

Randell wrote an article, “Transsexualism and its management”, for the Nursing Mirror, also that year.

Rachael Webb, then a lorry driver, but who would become notorious in the press in 1983 when she used a £2,000 loan, available to all council employees, to pay for her operation (others used it as a deposit for a mortgage), became a patient at the GIC in 1978.

A 1979 episode of the BBC Inside Story documentary series was “George”, directed by David Pearson, about a pre-op transsexual. There was sufficient interest that this was expanded into a ground-breaking documentary, A Change of Sex, 1980, which followed the social and medical transition of Julia Grant (George) and also provided a snapshot of the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic. Randell is the unnamed doctor who shocked most reviewers by his attitude.



In 1980 the News of the World (12/10/80) claimed that Randell and his surgeon, Peter Phillip, had made London the ‘sex-change capital of the world’.

1981 Bülent Ersoy, Turkish singing star, had gender surgery at Charing Cross.

1982 John Randell died of a heart attack aged 64. Ashley Robin, who had retired after a heart attack, stepped in and became head of the GIC. Russell Reid became a consultant, and Alfred Hohburger joined, at first on a honorary basis.

Rachael Padman had GIC approved surgery in October, and her Cambridge PhD thesis was approved while she was in hospital.

Continued in Part II.

• 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.
• “Two Sisters Turn into Brothers”. The Star, 25 August 1939.
• “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.
• 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.
• R. J.Minney. The Two Pillars of Charing Cross: The Story of a Famous Hospital. London: Cassell, 1967.
• 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.
• Program of the First International Symposium on Gender Identity: Aims, Functions and Clinical Problems of a Gender Identity Unit. 25, 26 and 27 July 1969. PDF
• 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.

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Charing Cross (51°30′26″N 00°07′39″W) denotes the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square. It was the location of the most expensive of the Eleanor Crosses erected 1291-4. The cross was destroyed by order of Parliament in 1647, and after the Restoration, an equestrian statue of the first Charles Stuart was raised on the spot, and is still standing. A replacement cross was commissioned in 1865 by the South Eastern Railway Company and is still found in the forecourt of Charing Cross Railway Station. The site of the original cross is the official centre of London, and distances to/from London are to/from Charing Cross. The fact that Charing Cross Hospital later moved to Fulham complicates the issue.

The Wikipedia article on Boxmoor does not mention that it was the wartime location of Charing Cross Hospital.

The WLMHT GIC web site says: “The West London Gender Identity Clinic at Charing Cross Hospital (CX GIC) is the largest and oldest clinic of its type, dating back to 1966.” But what happened in 1966? Lennox Broster’s work with intersex persons dates back to the 1930s, and John Randell’s with transvestites and transsexuals dates to the 1950s. On the other hand the 1969 symposium reported “there is as yet no permanent gender identity unit”.

Bülent Ersoy (1952–) singer, actor.

Updated 01/02/13.

Bülent Erkoç was born in Malatya, Turkey, and named after a footballer. His grandparents played classical Turkish music and he first took private lessons and then studied at Istanbul Municipal Conservatory.

For the purposes of performance, Bülent changed his name from Erkoç (=brave ram) to Ersoy (= brave lineage).

His first single came out in 1971. After establishing himself as a classical singer, he also recorded the more remunerative but down market arabesk. Ersoy also appeared in several Turkish films as a young naïve, somewhat androgynous heterosexual man, and was visible in the press with fake fiancées. However he was openly gay in his private life. He, along with the gay popular singer Zeki Muren, was seen in contrast to the regular macho Turkish man. In the film Evlidir Ne Yapse Yeridir, 1978, some women articulate ‘feminist’ demands: male domestic help, new clothes and listening to Bülent Ersoy.

By the time of the military coup in 1980, Bülent had started transition, and was wearing female clothing on stage, and while singing at the Izmir International Fair, she showed her new breasts. For this she was arrested and spent 45 days in prison.

She had surgery by Peter Philip at Charing Cross Hospital in 1981. She kept the male name, Bülent, because her career was already established.

Back in Turkey she had to endure several physical examinations and a long legal case in an attempt to be recognized as a woman, in which she emphasized her patriotism. Meanwhile the military government arrested 650,000 people, one of whom was Demet Demir. The military government also closed the trans brothels and forbad all performances by trans entertainers. Bülent was also banned, but under a law that required women to obtain police permission to perform. She chose, as a result of this, to live in exile in Germany and Australia through the 80s, although her films and albums were still sold in Turkey.

In 1988 the ruling Motherland Party under Turgut Özal, wanting to be seen as somewhat liberal, and to distance itself from the preceding military rule, allowed her to return, gave her a female ID and allowed her to perform. There was no relaxation of the oppression of other trans persons. Bülent resumed performing in prestigious nightclubs, many of her songs and films were instant hits. However she was shot on stage five times by Haci Tepe, a paramilitary right-wing extremist demanding that she sing the nationalist song “Rippling Black Sea” - the man's family disowned him and apologized to Bülent during her convalescence.  Shortly afterwards, she announced her engagement to her boyfriend, Birol Gurkanli.

Bülent enjoyed the support of Semra Özal, the Prime Minister’s wife. Bülent refused to acknowledge that she had been transsexual, and presented herself as a Muslim, nationalist, upper-class woman, and dressed more conservatively than before. She would no longer kiss her leading man. Some said that she was germ-phobic, but this was also the style of Turkan Soray, Turkey’s most popular actress. She also started using Ottoman words that had almost disappeared from the language. State television kept up a de facto ban on her performing, but with the new private channels she began to appear regularly, and had her own talk show on Kanal 6, owned by the Özal family.

In 1992 she recorded “Ablan Kurban Olsun Sana (Older Sister Would Sacrifice Herself For You)”, and she came to be referred to as Abla (older sister). She began to mention Allah in her songs, and in 1995 she recorded the adhan, the call to prayer. It was controversial for a woman to do so, but the controversy affirmed both her faith and her gender. In 1998 she married her then boyfriend, Cem Adler. This was controversial in that he is more than 20 years younger than she is. In 1993, she was badly injured in a car accident, and later that year she divorced Adler for infidelity.


In 2004 Bülent broke her practice and gave an interview to the newspaper Milliyet in which she apologized for diluting the classical tradition by singing arabesk for money. She followed this with a concert at the open-air Cemil Topuzlu where she sang only classical songs, some dating back to the 13th century.

However on television and in her other concerts she did continue to sing arabesk and modern pop. When an old friend mentioned that she had done (the male only) national service she furiously denied it. On the television show Canli Hayat, a re-enactment of her early life was performed by a female actor.

Bülent became a regular and a jury member on Popstar Alaturka. In 2007 she married one of the contestants on the show, but divorced him a few months later. Later in 2007 drag star Seyfi Dursumoglu was banned from public television, and soon afterwards Lamdainstanbul which had worked with transsexuals was ordered to be closed. Later still that year when the Armenian human rights activist Hrant Dink was assassinated and thousands marched in the streets chanting “We are all Armenians!”, Popstar Alaturka opened with an Armenian song in sympathy. However Bülent later in the show gave a monologue to the effect that as the Muslim daughter of Muslim parents she could never say that she was Armenian.

In February 2008 Popstar Alaturka was devoted to the Turkish soldiers who had died in Northern Iraq, and Bülent made the common but illegal comment that she would never send a son to the army. She was subsequently prosecuted for disparaging the military. The comment brought the support of many intellectuals, but to Ersoy’s chagrin, she was also endorsed by the (Kurdish) Democratic Society Party (DTP), and her sales took off in the Kurdish southeast. However nationalist Turks made comments that the DTP leader was not as brave as Ersoy to have his thing cut off, and similar remarks. Bülent called a press conference and asserted her patriotism and her support of the military, and that she was leaving part of her wealth to a military foundation for disabled war veterans and their families. At her trial she was found not guilty.

In 2012 Bülent claimed that she had once met the iconic left-wing activist Deniz Gezmis. His lawyer denounced her for saying it, "he was against such people of lower morals". The press was critical of such 'traditionalism' on the left. The lawyer then apologized by identifying with the Raoul character in The Kiss of the Spider Woman, who likewise was initially intolerant of the queer character.

• “Shot transsexual singer out of danger”.  Sydney Morning Herald, Oct 16, 1989.  Online
• Akbar S. Ahmed and Hastings Donnan. Islam, Globalization, and Postmodernity. London: Routledge, 1994: 29, 35.
• “Turkish singer defiant in court”.  BBC News, 24 Sept 2008.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7633338.stm
• Rustem Ertug Altinay. “Reconstructing the Transgendered Self as a Muslim, Nationalist, Upper-Class Woman: the Case of Bulent Ersoy”. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, 3&4, Fall/Winter 2008:210-229.
• www.bulent-ersoy.net
• “Bülent Ersoy”. Outcyclopedia. http://outcyclopedia.0catch.com/bulent_ersoy.html. No longer available.
• “Bülent Ersoy”. TurkceBilgi. www.turkcebilgi.com/b%C3%BClent_ersoy/ansiklopedi.
• Elif Shafak.  "From homophobia to a moving apology in Turkey".  The Guardian,  18 January 2012.  www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/18/homophobia-turkey-moving-apology.
• Jimmy Trash. "Bülent Ersoy: The Remarkable Untold Story of a Turkish Icon, Transgender Diva and Unintentional Revolutionary".  Huffington Post, 12/19/2012.  www.huffingtonpost.com/network-awesome/bulent-ersoy-remarkable-story_b_2330277.html.

 EN.WIKIPEDIA    TR.WIKIPEDIA    IMDB     TRANS.ILGA   

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It is a lot more difficult to be gay or trans in Turkey than in western Europe, and therefore we should not be as critical.   However the statement in the en.wikipedia page on her: “Over the years, Ersoy has become a symbol for the increased tolerance for LGBT figures in Turkish media” does avoid the fact that post 1988 she has avoided and even badmouthed gays and trans.   By being known as transsexual and being a major singer she is a role model, but I am unable to find any example of her speaking up for other transsexuals.  Altinay quotes Esmeray, a Turkish activist as saying:  “Bülent Ersoy is as transsexual as Michael Jackson is black”.   Also she has announced that she is leaving a bequest to a military foundation, but has not said anything about a bequest to any gay/trans organization.

Does a good Moslema initiate divorce? Twice?

Stephanie Anne Booth (1946 - 2016) marketing executive, sex worker, business woman.

Keith Hull’s father spent ten years, including the Second World War hospitalized with what was finally diagnosed as ankylosing spondylitis, and was told that he would never work or even walk again. However when his wife became pregnant with Keith, he did find work, and eventually rose to being a production manager.

They lived in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. When Keith was seven, his parents became Jehovah’s Witnesses. Keith had frequent dreams of being a girl.  He was in a group of friends that dressed up which let him do some cross-dressing, and for two years had an arrangement with an adult woman who had him wash her naked body and dressed him as a girl. In teenage he was popular with girls, but preferred a platonic friendship with them. He left school with four O-Levels: his parents felt that further education was pointless as the end of the world was nigh.

At 21 he became a sales representative at Hoover, and fell in love and married Marylin. They had twin boys and then a girl. He was promoted to area manager and then to marketing. He became head of Saga DIY Retail and then sales and marketing director of Hestair Group (now part of Findel PLC) which specialized in educational supplies.

He was a workaholic and his home life deteriorated. Marylin persuaded him to see a doctor who hypnotized him with Marylin present, and she and the doctor decided that he was transsexual. Marylin dressed him in female clothes for the first time since childhood. He encouraged Marylin to take lovers, and became very depressed. He almost committed suicide.

He signed on with a new doctor (actually in the same practice as serial killer Dr Shipman), started on hormones and was referred to Dr Russell Reid at Charing Cross Hospital GIC. He hired a woman to coach him in femininity and deportment. His wife left taking the three children. He chose the name Stephanie Anne as his twin boys were named Stephen and Andrew, and chose Lloyd from his chequebook. At the end of 1983 at the age of 37, Keith left his job and returned early 1984 as Stephanie Anne Lloyd, having had surgery with Peter Philip.

One of the employees sold the story to The Daily Mirror, and Hestair was besieged by reporters. Stephanie was persuaded to resign. She signed over all her assets to Marylin and had left just her clothes and 78p. She quickly found that no company wanted to employ her despite her experience in marketing.

However she soon had two rich men after her, even after she told them of her past. The Elders of the Jehovah’s Witness summoned Keith and disfellowshipped him, which required that Stephanie’s parents regard her as dead.

She decided to open a retail business for transvestites, and advertised in the Manchester Evening News for business partners who would provide capital. The first partner was her femininity coach’s brother, and a second partner was David Booth who owned a chain of supermarkets with his wife.

They found a suitable property on Bury Old Road, Prestwich, Manchester. The business Transformation, opened in October 1984, catering as a beauty salon to women and also to male transvestites. Because the business was not doing so well, Stephanie, with the advice of a solicitor, sold herself as a prostitute in the upstairs flat, until subjected to a full-scale police raid. At the trial in December 1985, Stephanie was given a suspended sentence.

David’s wife divorced him, and David and Stephanie became lovers. They were married in Sri Lanka in 1986 as it was not then legal to do so in the UK. They expanded the business, opening a London Branch just around the corner from Euston Station, and another in Birmingham. They created the Albany Gender identity Clinic which is located across the street from the Prestwich shop. In December 1989, when there was a controversy in that Lancashire County Cricket Club did not permit women members, Stephanie took advantage of the fact that she was technically still male and took out a membership in her male name. Thus she was able to get into the AGM and contributed to women members being accepted.

When Stephanie was ill in hospital, David contacted her parents, and was able to bring them to visit and reconcile them to her. Stephanie published her autobiography in 1991.

Another police raid with an extensive search found that their own-made videos did not have certificates from the British Board of Film Classification. They were fined ₤6,000 and sentenced to a year in prison, which Stephanie served in a women’s open prison near York. She was released on appeal three months later.


They have an adopted child, and raised David’s two children. Two of Stephanie’s children from her first marriage have accepted her.

Together, Stephanie and David have built a chain of six hotels in North Wales, where they also run transvestite getaways.

Following the change of UK law, they re-married in 2006. She has been voted the leader of the Llangollen Chamber of Trade and Tourism. In 2009, she was featured in a four-part documentary on BBC Wales.

++Stephanie was killed in a tractor accident at age 70.  

• Liz Hodgkinson,. Bodyshock: the truth about changing sex. London: Columbus, 1987:120-1.
• Susan Jimison. “Sex-swap dad finds love and hapiness as a bride”. Weekly World News. 16 may 1989. http://books.google.ca/books?id=WOwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=stephanie+anne+lloyd&source=bl&ots=nB-WZYdbQx&sig=MqSjtTTEtQ2X-vrxyA2XdX4_AX4&hl=en&ei=acwgTKPIJoaglAfImbFK&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=26&ved=0CJABEOgBMBk#v=onepage&q&f=false.
• Jane Jackson (dir). Sex Change - Shock! Horror! Probe. Scr: Kristiene Clarke. UK TV Channel 4 50 mins 1989.
• Stephanie Anne Lloyd with Sandra Sedgbeer. Stephanie: a Girl in a Million. Ebury Press 1991.
• Shannon Turner. “How We Met: David Booth and Stephanie Anne Lloyd”. The Independent. 27 March 1994. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/how-we-met-david-booth-and-stephanie-anne-lloyd-1431938.html.
• Julia Grant. Just Julia: the story of an extraordinary woman. London: Boxtree Press London: Pan Macmillan viii, 272 pp1994: 265-7.
• “The Tranny Trib Celebrity Interview”. The Gender Society. May 2004. http://gendersociety.com/trib-2004-05-May.shtml.
• Catherine Jones. “Millionaire businesswoman had to fight after she had a sex change”. Wales on Sunday. Nov 1 2009. www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/11/01/millionaire-businesswoman-stephanie-booth-had-to-fight-all-the-way-when-she-had-a-sex-change-91466-25061639.
• Hotel Stephanie. BBC1 Wales 2 Nov 2009.
• “The Story of Stephanie Anne Lloyd”. Transformation. www.transformation.co.uk/en/transgender-resources/true-life-stories/127-the-story-of-stephanie-anne-lloyd. 
• Kelly Williams, David Powell & Saeah Hodgson.  "Recap: Businesswoman Stephanie Booth killed in tractor accident".  Daily Post, 19 Sep 2016.  www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/recap-businesswoman-stephanie-booth-killed-11906569.
• www.transformation.co.uk.
• www.tv-hotel.co.uk.

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Stephanie is not listed but should be as one of the notable local persons in the Wikipedia articles on   Prestwich and Llangollen.

It is certainly unusual for a gender identity clinic to be owned by a retailer.

Apparently Stephanie never did a real-life test before surgery.  It is not clear from her account whether Russell Reid was aware of that.

It is also not clear whether she was a private patient, or did she transition on the NHS.

By her own account, Stephanie never was a transvestite herself.

While her shops are obviously needed, both Andrea James and Julia Grant have criticized them for being overpriced and for selling products that do not work.

“A girl in a million” is a bit of an exaggeration.  Transsexuals are a lot more common than that.

Claudia (1958 - ) opera singer, drag performer.

As a boy in Glasgow, he was bullied because of his androgynous looks. At 18 she started dressing as female, and was accepted and complimented on her appearance.

Whilst at hairdressing college she found her boyfriend. He was from a family of musicians and got her started as an opera singer. She had some success, for example playing support to Marc Almond. She was also a drag performer.

After being beaten by a Dutch border guard who took exception to the discrepancy between her appearance and the ‘male’ in her passport, they decided it was time to complete the change. She was prescribed female hormones by a psychiatrist in Glasgow in 1985. She had surgery in 1986, rushing it so that she could have a specific surgeon before he retired. She was referred by Russell Reid.

Her boyfriend left her in 1987 when she developed a hair-ball in her vagina. Other prospective boyfriends left when she told them of her past. She lost her confidence to face an audience. She suffered a breakdown, that was made worse by transphobic response from the Glasgow police after she was raped.

She now regrets that she had the change. While reading The Silence of the Lambs, she decided that she should have been rejected when she applied for a sex change. She is pursuing a civil claim against Russell Reid.

• David Batty. “Mistaken identity”. The Guardian. 31 July 2004. www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1271931,00.html. Also at society.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,7890,1273045,00.html.
• Julie Bindel. “Mistaken Identity”. The Guardian. May 23, 2007. www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329899169-110592,00.html

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Julie Bind is of course the cause of an outcry from transsexuals etc because she has been short-listed by Stonewall UK for an Award as Journalist of the Year. She has issued a statement in reaction to this outcry in which she cites the case of Claudia again. I, and I think most transsexuals, feel that Bindel is incapable of understanding us, and wish that she would stop writing about us. Her current statement contains reactions from transsexual and intersex persons, some of whom are well known activists. The statement is worth reading, but do continue on through the comments, and notice that initially Bindel responds, but then doesn't. Many of the most salient points elicit only silence from her.

My second declaration of interest is that I went through Russell Reid only two years later, and he passed me onto James Dalrymple, FRCS. In those days UK surgeons were Mr, not Dr. I understood quite well that Reid was acting as a gatekeeper. That he was deciding whether I was suitable, and that there was no question of the session being therapy. At the price that he was charging, I did not want to stay for therapy.

I am intrigued by Claudia's rush to get a specific surgeon before retirement. Neither Batty nor Bindel name this surgeon. My guess is that it was Peter Philip, who mentored James Dalrymple. Why Claudia thought that Dalrymple would not do is not explored.

Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs, whilst a fairly good thriller, is however badly researched on the issue of applying for a sex change. Some readers, with reason, regard the book as transphobic. Notice the sentence in the Wiki summary: Lector "explains that Bill isn't actually a transsexual, but only thinks he is".

Both Batty and Bindel hold back Claudia's surname. This is odd in Batty's case as the print edition in the Observer Magazine included a full page photograph of Claudia. Is her privacy being respected or not? Ironically I learned Claudia's surname in an article about Bindel. However I see no reason to print it. Indeed I suspect that 'Claudia' is also a pseudonym. If you have had an international career as a drag performer and have sung opera as an opening act to Marc Almond, we should be able to google something.

There is an apparent discrepancy in Bindel's account. She says that Claudia started living full-time only after starting hormones in 1985. But she was crossing a border as female when she was assaulted, and Batty implies that she had started at age 18. The discrepancy may be only an artifact of journalistic style.

Bindel opens her new statement by being 'angry' at Vancouverite Kimberly Nixon for suing a rape crisis centre after it rejected her for being trans. The treatment that Claudia got after being raped in Glasgow shows just how essential it is that all rape crisis centres should have transgender counsellors for those who need them.

It is of course ironic that Bindel, who condemns transsexual surgery as something imposed upon us by heterosexual men, then condemns Reid for not adhering precisely to the Standards of Care Guidelines.

Claudia's case is of course a sad one. However Batty interviewed her 17 years after her boyfriend left and Bindel three more years after that. She does not seem to be attempting to de-transition, nor rebuilding her life after the common female experience of being abandoned by a boyfriend. She also waited 20 years before suing Reid.