Olave Baden-Powell (1889 - 1977) Chief Guide.

Olave St Clair Soames was born in Chesterfield. She was called Olave in that her father, a brewery owner, strongly anticipating a son, had decided on the name 'Olaf'. She was the third child, home-schooled, rejected by her mother, but close to her father with whom she would hike and shoot and whom she partnered in tennis matches. She also played the violin. They lived in 17 different homes in the first 23 years of her life.

Until her mid-teens she wore her hair cut short like a boy's, and by her late teens had articulated a dislike for conventional female clothing. She was much influenced by a family friend, the masculine Sybil Mounsey-Heysham who gave her a model of indifference to etiquette and fashion and a preference for uniforms. She adopted the twenties' fashion of flattening her breasts, and would use a handkerchief to conceal all hint of cleavage.

Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of scouting, then 55, on meeting the 23-year-old Olave on an Atlantic crossing, recognized her purposeful walk as one that he had noted in Hyde Park two years previously. He was attracted by her sporting prowess, and by the fact that the had the same birthday, 22 February. He was able to marry her whereas he had been uncomfortable with the femininity of other women, although he still had severe headaches from shortly after their marriage until he stopped sleeping with her after the birth of their third child.

As Lady Baden-Powell Olave enthusiastically took to dressing in the scout uniform, but not that of the girl-guides. However she was acclaimed Chief Guide in 1918, and World Chief Guide in 1930. She built up the world membership of the Guides to over 6 million.

She was made Dame Grand Cross of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (GBE) 1932. In addition Finland awarded her the Order of the White Rose, and Peru the Order of the Sun.

• Tim Jeal. The Boy-Man: The Life of Lord Baden-Powell. William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1989: 85, chp 11.

EN.Wikipedia

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (1857 - 1941) 1st Baron Baden-Powell OM, GCMG, GCVO, KCB.

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. hero of the siege of Mafeking, the founder of the Scouts, and thus of a new type of drag, was also an amateur female impersonator.


He had a very distinguished career with the British army in India, southern Africa and elsewhere, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-General.


All through his life Baden-Powell was keen on amateur theatricals, from Charterhouse public school where among other roles he played female operatic roles. With his music master at school he shared the ability of being able to sing in a convincing female soprano. In the army he made a speciality of female roles and would often make his own dresses. His stage specialty was what he called his skirt dance.


From 1881, he had a particularly close friendship with a younger man, Kenneth McLaren, whom he would call 'the Boy', and, after comforting him after McLaren's mother died, the two men became very close. They took a bungalow together and Baden-Powell's letters home were constantly referring to his new friend. They shared many activities, in particular polo and pigsticking.


At this time Baden-Powell wrote a short story 'The Ordeal of the Spear' about two officers, 'an unusually good pair of friends' who both wanted to marry the same woman. They decide that whoever inflicted the first wound in a bout of pigsticking would be the one to propose to her. The 'boy' drew first blood, but before he has a chance to propose, the young woman was thrown from the back of an elephant and trampled underfoot. This allowed the friendship to continue unchanged.


In addition to his drag shows, Baden-Powell balanced his love of manly activities with sketching, choosing fabrics and furnishings and designing embroidery patterns. He was quite uncomfortable with women in a context where he might be considered a prospective husband, but could get on with them quite well where all hints of sex were removed, e.g. in considering fabrics and embroidery.


He maintained a number of correspondences with girls, but let them lapse as they matured into women. He did not marry until the age of 55, when he chose an androgynous 23-year-old, Olave Soames.


At a time when British officers were very conscious not to socialize with their men, and hardly treated them as human, Baden-Powell spent much of his free time with the men under his command. He took them scouting, of course he participated in theatricals with them, he also joined them in gymnastic displays involving physical contact, and he gave them counselling. On the other hand this was only extended to young men; middle-aged men where more likely to experience his snobbery.

• Michael Rosenthal.  The Character Factory. Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Scouting Movement.  Panthean Books, 1984.
• Tim Jeal. The Boy-man: the Life of Lord Baden-Powell. William Morrow and Company, Inc 1990: 35,54,66-71,73,chp 3,144.
• Ian Buruma.  "Baden-Powell: Boys Will Be Boys" in The Missionary and the Libertine:  Love and War in East and West.  Faber & Faber, 1996.

EN.Wikipedia

There was previously a Wikipedia page called "Robert Baden-Powell's sexual orientation", but which has since been removed.    Here is its Archive.  

The Honourable Arthur Cameron Corbett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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