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”.

Mark Rees (1942–) 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 New 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.

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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.

Alice Purnell (1943 - ) chemist, activist, nurse, counsellor, poet

++February 2015 - revised after feedback from Alice.


Purnell was conceived in a haystack in the Wirral during an air-raid. He was sexually and physically abused at prep school by the headmaster who was later convicted. His parents had a 'messy horrid' divorce when he was doing his O-level examinations.

He felt confused in that he felt that he should be a girl but was not attracted to men. He developed an alternate identity as Anne who, by the age of 15, socialized only with people who knew nothing of Purnell's male life.

Purnell did a degree in chemistry. He found love with a woman to whom he explained about Anne. She accepted this side of him, but asked that Anne change her name as her sister was also Anne. Purnell had been called Dormouse at school, and, in homage to Lewis Carroll, became Alice.

They were living in Sussex. One evening on the way home from work as a research chemist, Purnell encountered, before the police arrived, a trans girl who had hanged herself in a tree. Her father showed up and expressed anger but not sorrow. Purnell felt that he could easily have been that trans girl, and this led to becoming a volunteer with the Samaritans, the advice line for those at risk of suicide. She found that a third of calls on the line featured gender difficulties.

Alice did not know how to express her femininity until she found a a copy of Virginia Prince's Transvestia in a sex-book shop in London's Soho. She used the Transvestia contact system to find like-minded persons, and became a member of the European Chapter of Virginia Prince's FPE.


Alice, Alga Campbell from Dublin, Giselle, a US expatriate, and Sylvia Carter, met in 1965 and agreed to found the Beaumont Society (named after the 18^th century transvestite pioneer). The membership numbering was started at 100 (which was assigned to Alice, and then issued back and forth from that to give the impression of greater membership. Initially there were almost as many overseas members as in the UK, with some in Malaysia, Kenya and other parts of the Commonwealth. Alice became the overseas contact person because of her French. Regional contacts were appointed but were often the only member in their region.

After an initial meeting in Hampstead, the first full meeting was held in Southampton in 1966 with 12 in attendance including two wives.

Purnell had been attending the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Clinic under the care of Dr Randell, and that same year was offered surgery.  However Purnell married his lover instead after five years together. They had two daughters and a son.

Following the practice of Prince in the US, new members had to be vetted, and the application form explicitly stated that no hint of overt gayness would be tolerated.

"It was also risky meeting others to sponsor them. I remember a character from Gibraltar who was very cagey indeed, who I arranged via the contact system to sponsor so she could attend meetings when in the UK; (you could not do so if not sponsored as they were often in people's homes). At the meeting in a car park this person told me my date & place of birth, schools and University, bank balance and workplace. I was horrified. He had discovered all this via our Secret Service for whom he worked in the Colony. He said he did this to secure his own confidentiality in case we breached his. I felt disinclined to sponsor him and was really horrified that even then governments held so much info' on all of us. I did sponsor him after discussion with Alga. It was a bit of a mutual standoff, but what an invasion of my own privacy!"

Alice, Alga, Virginia, Sylvia - 1971

In 1969 Virginia Prince visited the Beaumont Society in London, Leicester and Scotland. On her return in 1971 she stayed with Alice.

Alice was on BBC Radio 4 with agony aunt Claire Raynor. She attended the TV/TS conferences at Leeds University in 1974, and Leicester University in 1975 – the latter was organized by the Beaumont Society. Also in 1975, Alice was a co-founder of the Beaumont Trust, a registered charity, which separately from the Beaumont Society, set up a helpline and published educational booklets on transgender topics. In 1976 Alice became Vice-President of the Beaumont Society, and President a year later.

In 1977, Alice trained as a nurse, specializing in geriatric services. She then worked as such for 26 years, at one time becoming a matron, ++including nursing support for transgender surgery.

She ++finally had surgery in 1982 after the dissolution of her marriage, and remained President of the Beaumont Society until 1984. She also worked with Judy Cousins at SHAFT. She researched the then literature on trans topics and was disappointed. She joined HBIGDA (now WPATH) and attended its European meetings. She found that they were dominated by US concerns and that the Standards of Care were mainly to protect the surgeons, and that the emphasis was on psychiatry rather than on psychology/counselling. Using the contacts that she had made she organized the first of the GENDYS conferences which was held at Manchester University in 1990. This was intended as a British conference, and deliberately brought together each type of professional who deals with trans persons, and each type of trans person. There were a further seven GENDYS conferences held every two years. Alice edited all the GENDYS Conference Reports and often contributed papers.

Alice in 2011

After obtaining a masters degree in counselling and psychology, she co-founded Gender Trust and subsidized it in its first year. It was intended to help transgender rather than transvestite persons, and was, like the Beaumont Trust, a registered charity. However after a year the legal counsel to the Gender Trust was insisting that the trustees were to view her counselling notes. She regarded this potential breach of confidentiality re those she had counselled to be outrageous and resigned from Gender Trust. She also took them to court to establish that the copyright to the 2005 book was hers, and was not held by the Trust.  ++She estimates that she has counselled around 500 trans persons.  

She is also a poet, a dog lover and a fossil collector. She has lived most of her life in Sussex.

Alice Purnell was made an OBE in the 2012 New Years Honours List: "For services to Transgender People".

• Alice Purnell. "Why does transexuality exist?" and "TV, TG, TS – What's in a label?" in Michael Trevor Haslam. Transvestism: A Guide. Beaumont Trust, 1993.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 1^st International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1991.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 2^nd International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1993.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 3^rd International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1995.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 4^th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1996.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 5^th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 1999.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Gendys 2K: Sixth International Gender Conference Report. London: BM Gendys, 2001.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.). Conference Report of the 7th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys,2002.
  
• A. Purnell (ed.), Conference Report of the 8th International Gender Dysphoria Conference. London: BM Gendys, 2004.
  
• Alice Purnell. Transexed and Transgendered People: A Guide. Gendys Conferences, 2005.
  
• Alice L100. "A History of the Beaumont Society". Beaumont Magazine, 13,4, 2005. Online at: www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/6971183/a-short-beaumont-history-the-beaumont-society.
  
• Alice Kelly Purnell. Be the Flame Not the Moth: An Anthology of Poems (and Some Prose). Golden Flower Press, 2010.
  
• Alice Purnell & Jed Bland (ed). Trans in the Twenty First Century: Concerning Gender Diversity. Beaumont Trust, 2011.
  
• "New year honours for Brighton and Hove LGBT supporters". Brighton and Hove News, December 31^st, 2011. www.brightonandhovenews.org/2011/12/31/new-year-honours-for-brighton-and-hove-lgbt-supporters/12027.
• email from Alice Purnall, 7 Feb 2015

Christine Burns interviewed Alice Purnell,20 May 2013




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We have a list of the 4 founders of the Beaumont Society, but we still don't have a list of the 12 founders of the Hose and Heel Club.

Alice says that the Beaumont Society was never really anti-gay, merely obliged to distance itself from being perceived as gay because of the laws at the time.  Whether you buy this or regard it as a post-facto PR position, the Beaumont Society has grown away from its Princian origins.  The interview with Christine Burns contains none of the mean spirited rhetoric that Prince herself retained till the end.

Note that Alice uses 'transgender' as a umbrella term apart from transvestites.  You find the same usage with Katherine Cummings, the Australian FPE alumna.   The sterile debate re transgender=heterosexual transvestite is mainly a US hangup.

++In the initial verion of this article I had assumed that Alice was non-op because a) she was president of a Princian organization and b) there was no statment to the contrary.   However it has now been clarified that the assumption was not so, and statements have been added in the narrative above.


Dallas Denny has an essay, Consumer relations: WPATH’s evolving relations with those it serves, in which she mentions that as late as 1989 she was still getting a run-around attempting to join HBIGDA. Alice had joined a few years earlier, but apparently in stealth.

Roger Ormrod - part 2: Corbett v Corbett.

 Continued from Part 1: Roger Ormrod (1911- 1992) barrister, doctor, judge.

Arthur Corbett, the heir apparent to the Rowallan Baroncy, had been married since 1963 to his second wife, the one-time model April Ashley but they had been living apart for some years. In 1970, Lady Corbett wishing to obtain the deeds for the house where she was living but which were in Arthur's possession, and getting no response, initiated a claim for maintenance instead. She was granted £6 a week in that her husband was working as a barman in Marbella at an estimated £18 a week. This of course did not take into account his assets.

Birmingham Post 1969.11.12 p9

Arthur Corbett replied by applying for an annulment of his marriage.  He did not care to wait for the new divorce law for he did not wish to pay alimony. Although he had been fully cognizant of Ashley's past when he married her, and in fact had pursued her precisely because of that past, Corbett the petitioner filed a petition for a declaration that the marriage was null and void because the respondent was a person of the male sex, or alternatively for a decree of nullity on the ground of non-consummation. Ashley, granted legal aid for her defence, asserted that she was female at the time of the marriage, and filed for a decree of nullity on the ground of either the petitioner’s incapacity or his willful refusal to consummate the marriage.

The case was tried by Justice Ormrod, which was considered appropriate as he was the only UK judge to be also qualified as a doctor.


Although Lady Corbett's transsexual status was not contested by the defence, she was examined
several times. First by the medical inspectors to the court, one of whom described the respondent as having a 'cavity which opened on to the perineum’. April's blood was examined by Professor FTG Hayhoe, a chromosome expert at Cambridge.

Next, for the defence, her person was examined by Dr Charles Armstrong of the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, Ivor Mills Professor of Medicine at Cambridge and Martin Roth, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. The doctor professors even wrote to Dr Burou in Casablanca for details. Dr Burou did not deign to reply.

For the plaintiff she was examined by John Dewhurst, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Queen Charlotte's Hospital and co-author of The Intersexual Disorders, 1969, Dr Charles Dent, Professor of Human Metabolism at the University College Hospital (who also had been one of the allied doctors sent to Belson Concentration Camp) and Dr John Randell of the Charing Cross Hospital Gender Identity Clinic. Dr Dewhurst performed the three-finger test, the then standard method of determining that a vagina can accommodate a penis.

At the trial, Dr Randell testified that he ‘considered that the respondent is properly classified as a male homosexual transsexualist'. Dr Dewhurst said: ’the pastiche of femininity was convincing’. Dr Armstrong testified that Lady Ashley was a pre-birth intersex and should be assigned to the female sex. Dr Roth was prepared to regard the case as one of inter-sex. The 1965 case of Ewan Forbes, as which Dr Armstrong had also testified, but which has never been entered into the public record, was not taken as a precedent, or even mentioned.

Judge Ormrod agreed with Dewhurst and Randell that when chromosomal, gonadal and genital sex are concordant, little regard should be given to psychological factors, and cut short attempts to widen that discussion.

April felt that Ormrod did not like her. "He never once looked me straight in the eye but glanced furtively in my direction and mumbled his references to me as if they were distasteful to him"(1983:214).

Arthur Corbett admitted his promiscuity with both men and women, and his visits to male brothels to be dressed as a woman. He portrayed himself as a pervert to cast his marriage to April as little more that a prank. A few days into the case, Judge Ormrod asked if it were necessary to continue wasting the tax-payers' money, but the barristers for both parties protested that it was important to hear the evidence in full.

The trial ended on 9 December, but the judgement was not read until 2 February 1971. Arthur was found that morning in a coma at his villa in Spain and thus did not attend the hearing.

Justice Ormrod included an unneeded and indeed impertinent description of the respondent: "Her outward appearance, at first sight, was convincingly feminine, but on closer and longer examination in the witness box it was much less so. The voice, manner, gestures and attitude became increasingly reminiscent of the accomplished female impersonator." He compared the current case to that of S v S 1962 where a woman [possibly intersex] with a defect of the vagina was held to be a woman in that her chromosomes, gonads and genitals were concordant. He also noted that the Sexual Offences Act 1967 (which decriminalized male homosexuality) "seems to have removed any legal objections which there might have been to such [sex change] procedures".

He then summarized the expert knowledge at that time of transsexualism and intersex conditions, and agreed with Randell and Dewhurst that in an intersex person "the chromosomal sex and the gonadal sex do not correspond with the genital condition of the patient", and that psychological factors were important only when the biological criteria were not congruent, while noting that Armstrong and Mills regard transsexuals as a type of intersex. He wondered if the respondent had Klinefelter's syndrome, but found that such a conclusion had not been established.

He granted Arthur Corbett’s prayer: "My conclusion therefore is that the respondent is not a woman for the purposes of marriage, but is a biological male and has been so since birth. It follows that the so-called marriage of 10 September 1963 is void." As April had been born with male chromosomes, gonads and genitals she was legally male in perpetuity.

Corbett v Corbett became case law in the UK and in Australia. The correcting of birth certificates for many intersex and all 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.   Mrs Corbett had not been successful in attempting to have her birth certificate corrected, and now was prohibited from doing so.

Justice Ormrod also cancelled the £6 a week alimony payment.

In March 1971, a month later,  a court in Grasse, France, in the case of Hélène Hauterive, who had had an identical operation from Dr Burou, was ruled to be female for legal purposes and able to marry because "she possesses external genitals of a feminine type and because her psychological behaviour is without doubt that of a woman".

Continued in Part 3: Aftermath

• 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 1982: 206 -31. London: Arrow 1983. Also online at www.antijen.org/Aprilv1.
• Edward Cazalet. "The Wit, Wisdom and Jurisprudence of Sir Roger Ormrod". The Family Law Bar Association, 6^th May 1988. www.jsasoc.com/Family_archive/Archive/Roger%20Ormrod/edward%20cazalet%20appreciation.pdf.
• Antony Bradney. "Transsexuals and the Law". SHAFT Newsletter, April/May 1988.
• "Sir Roger Ormrod". The Times, Jan 9 1992. Online at: www.jsasoc.com/Family_archive/Archive/Roger%20Ormrod/roger%20ormrod%20obit%20times.pdf.
• April Ashley with Douglas Thompson. The First Lady. London: Blake. 383pp. 2006: 263-290.
• Lisa Fishbayn. " 'Note Quite One Gender or the Other': Marriage Law and the Containment of Gender Trouble in the United Kingdom". Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, 15,3, 2007: 413-441. http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1252&context=jgspl.
• "Roger Ormrod". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ormrod.
• "Roger Ormrod". James Spottiswoode and Associates. www.jsasoc.com/Family_archive/roromrod.htm.

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Is legal aid still this good?  Two QCs and three doctor professors from top universities.

I agree with Dr Burou in not responding.   It was impertinent to go into the details of the operation.

While Lady Corbett as respondent replied that Arthur was unable to function sexually, there is no mention that he, unlike her, was examined by any of the doctor professors.

As Dr Hayhoe, a chromosome expert, examined April’s blood, I do not understand why the court was not given a definitive statement as to whether April has Klinefelter’s Syndrome.

What had the Sexual Offences Act 1967 to do with a sex change?  In the late 1960s transsexuality was still regarded as a type of homosexuality, but it had never been illegal as such.  However decriminalization did mean that Arthur and April could not be charged with homosexuality.

Corbett v Corbett established a legal definition of intersex.  However it was not the same as the medical definition.  In some forms of intersex, chromosomal, gonadal and genital sex at birth are not concordant.

It is odd to say the least, ironic maybe, to read Cazalet and Ormrod's obituary writers, who claim Ormrod as having 'moved with the times', 'more tolerant' etc.   Corbett v Corbett is perhaps the major exception to this, but some of his other rulings imply an old-fashioned sexism.  There is an obvious question about to what extent his attitudes reflect an old-fashioned establishment point of view vs simple homophobia.  None of the source documents that I consulted even raised this question.

The Fishbayn article is odd in a quite different way.  She attempts to rewrite Corbett v. Corbett in terms of Judith's Butler's concept of 'gender trouble', that concordant intersex persons are accepted as women, but transsexuals are trouble makers and are denied their desired gender.  She cites only recent US writers: Butler, Kessler & McKenna, Fausto-Sterling, Dreger, Bornstein, Garber but no UK writers, not even either of Ashley's autobiographies.  There are two other explanations, class and homophobia, but Fishbayn does not even consider them.  She refers to Arthur Corbett as Lord Rowallan although he did not gain that title until his father died in 1977.

Adèle Anderson (1952 - ) singer.

Adèle was born in Southampton and graduated in drama from Birmingham University. She started transition in 1973 with Dr Randell at Charing Cross Hospital. She worked as a civil servant and as a secretary, and was attempting to become a jazz singer.


In 1984, she auditioned for the all-girl singing group Fascinating Aida, where she impressed with her vocal range. A niggling doubt caused one of the others to actually ask if she were a man, which Adèle denied. However she was accepted into the group.

An old friend of Dillie Keane had known the pre-op Adèle and later on told her, but Dillie and the others sat on the knowledge until a review in the Financial Times of their performance at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1985: “You could have fooled me that the one with the smoky brown voice isn't a man in drag”, which Adèle took badly, and Dillie and the others told her that they knew and that did not make any difference.

But the press had started to sniff out the story: they phoned Adèle’s parents late at night. The group decided that the press had to be told, and supported Adèle before and after she gave an interview. Later Dillie would deflect questions on the topic by claiming that she was the transsexual in the group.

Adèle had a cameo in the film Lady Jane, 1986 , and in Company Business, 1991 playing a Marlene impersonator in a Berlin drag bar, and was special advisor for the transsexual love story Different For Girls, 1996.

Fascinating Aida was retired in 1989, revived in 1994, retired in 2004, revived in 2008. Dillie and Adèle are the only early members still involved, and are still performing 25 years after they met.

• Dillie Keane. Fascinating Who? Fascinating Aida: the anatomy of a group on the crest of a ripple. Elm Tree. 1986
• Liz Hodgkinson. Bodyshock: the truth about changing sex. London: Columbus, 1987: 109-112.
• Keith Cheetham (dir) Fascinating Aida scr: Dillie Keane & Adèle Anderson, with Dillie Keane, Adèle Anderson and Denise Wharmby. A television special of the cabaret act. UK 1988.
• Jenny Gilbert. “How we met: Dillie Keane and Adele Anderson”. The Independent. 2 Feb 1997. www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/how-we-met-dillie-keane-and-adele-anderson-1276629.html.
• www.gavinbarkerassociates.co.uk/html/aida.htm
• www.gavinbarkerassociates.co.uk/actresses/adele-anderson.htm

Rachael Padman (1954 - ) physicist.

Padman did a degree in Electrical Engineering in Melbourne, and then worked for two years in CISRO’s Radio-Physics Laboratory in Sydney. In 1977, he went to the then all-male St Johns College at Cambridge University because of the cutting edge radio-astronomy work at Cavendish Laboratory.

Soon after arrival he got a referral to John Randell at Charing Cross Hospital gender identity clinic, as an NHS patient. He was put on a prescription of oestrogens. He dressed androgynously but was not out. After 18 months he informed his PhD supervisor, and things went well. His parents visited in 1979, on a round-the-world trip after his father’s retirement, and he was able to tell of the coming change. He had intended to take the name, Susan, but there were two Susans in the lab. He woke up one morning feeling that Rachael was the right name.

Rachael changed her name by deed poll, in 1981, and she went full time at Easter on a trip back to Australia. She returned as female, and completed her PhD. She was the first female student at St Johns which was about to start admitting female students. She had surgery in October 1982 , and her PhD was approved while she was in hospital.

Six weeks later she left for a two-year fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1984 she returned to Cambridge.

In 1996 she was offered the position of Director of studies in physical sciences, Newnham College, the sole remaining all-female college at Cambridge. While the Governing Body, in general, knew that Rachael had been transsexual, her fellow Australian, Germaine Greer, was also a fellow of the college. Greer, who is known as an anti-transsexual activist, made a fuss about it, and the issue was in the newspapers. Almost all the other Fellows did support Rachael, and she is still there.

• Emma Wilkins. “Fellow who had sex change divides all-women college”. The Times. June 27th 1997. Online at: http://intermargins.net/repression/deviant/transgender/news/2001Jul-Dec/transnews_20011025e-1.htm.
• David Batty. “A Gender for Success”. Guardian. 14 Aug 2004. http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialcare/story/0,,1282713,00.html.
• Rachael Padman. “Rachael’s Story”. Transsexual Women's Successes. http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TSsuccesses/RachaelPadman.html. Also at: www.gendercentre.org.au/55article6.htm.
• www.phy.cam.ac.uk/people/padmanr.php www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~rachael.

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.

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.