Wilma Creith (1933-1980) electrican, bus driver

Creith, an electrician, was married and they had two children, and lived in Belfast. However Creith increasingly could not continue as a man. After Creith did some electrical work for Werner Heubeck, the German managing director of Ulsterbus, Heubeck considered her situation, and offered that she should train as a bus driver. She first drove as a man.

She was assigned to the school run for pupils of Sullivan Upper and Sacred Heart of Mary Grammar in Holywood/Ard Mhic Nasca and St Columbanus in Bangor, both in County Down. 

Photo in the Sunday World

Cara-Friend had been set up in 1974 as a volunteer counselling service for GLBT persons in Ulster. In 1976, a separate transsexual support group was formed – Wilma was part of the team.

In 1977, when she socially transitioned Heubeck gave her support. He provided a specially made uniform and shoes for her, and the union and the other drivers followed his lead. In December that year the Belfast Sunday World, outed Wilma on its front page “ ‘Call me Wilma’ says bus man Bill”. Despite this only a few adults objected to her, although some of the children were rather rude.

In 1980 Heubeck gave Wilma five weeks sick pay to travel to England, to St James Hospital, Leeds for completion surgery, and to recover afterwards. The operation apparently went well – making her the first Northern Ireland trans woman to have the operation. Heubeck was the first to phone her after the operation.

But there was a minor complication, and a second operation was carried out. A few days later she died from what was determined to be a pulmonary embolism from high levels of estrogen.

---

In November 2024 theatre director Paula McFetrige put on a play loosly based on Wilma Creith in an actual Ulster Bus from the 1970s parked in the grounds of Belfast Castle.

• Sean Boyne. “ ‘Call me Wilma‘ says bus man Bill”. Sunday World, December 1977.
• “Ulster sex change man dies“. Belfast Telegraph, 29 August 1980.p1.
• “Inquest on sex change victim“. Bradford Telgraph and Argus, 30 August 1980, p13.
• Andrew McNair. “The transgender bus driver in 1970s Belfast”. BBC, 18 November 2024. Online.
• Bronagh Lawson. “ARTS: All aboard for an inspirational slice of trans history”. com, November 22, 2024. Online.
• Paula McFetridge (dir). Suspected Device. Raphaël Amahl Khouri (scr) with Mariah Lauca as Wilam Creith. Performed at Belfact Castle 1 November-1 December 2024.

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Heubeck was renowned for many things, including redesigning all Belfast bus routes to go in and out of the city centre, and getting Ulsterbus to turn a profit despite the Troubles. But he's best remembered for actually carrying bombs from buses during the Troubles.

In total, 17 employees from both Ulsterbus and Citybus were killed during The Troubles, with 1,484 buses in total being maliciously destroyed from 1964 to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

St James Hospital, Leeds later became the location for the Leeds Gender Identity Service.

When I had surgery a few years later, I was told to stop taking estrogen before and during the operation. I thought that this was standard practice after the unfortunate death of Peggy Wijnen in 1967. I found no discussion of this aspect re Wilma.

Victoria Dolling (192? - ?) meat porter, British Railways clerk

Victor Dolling, who worked at Smithfield meat market as a porter, and Constance, both of Walworth, London, were married in 1950, and they had a child a year later. Shortly afterwards, Victor increasingly felt female, and twice, in 1952 and 1954, consulted psychiatrists at Guy’s Hospital. The endocrinologist Dr Peter Bishop prescribed female hormones. Dolling quit the job at Smithfield to live full time as female, found work as a clerk at British Railways, and left Mrs Dolling in 1957.

In May 1958 Constance Dolling applied for a divorce decree on the ground of cruelty. Her husband signed a court document as Victoria Dolling, and did not contest the suit. However the judge dismissed the suit saying 

“But it is utterly impossible to say that his consent to be treated this way for what is a mental illness is cruelty on his part. He cannot help it any more than any other illness.” 

He also pointed out that if Mrs Dolling waited until May 1960, she could apply for divorce on the ground of desertion. She appealed, but the appeal was dismissed.

Kenneth Robinson, Member of Parliament for St Pancras North (and Minister of Health 1964-8), asked the Attorney General, Reginald Manningham-Buller (noted for his 1959 unsuccessful prosecution of D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover), if his attention had been drawn to the legal difficulties arising in Dolling v. Dolling, and if the law of divorce could be amended to enable marriages to be dissolved when either spouse changes sex. The Attorney General gave a written reply: 

"I am not aware of any legal difficulties. The Court of Appeal held on the particular facts of this case that the conduct of the respondent did not amount to cruelty. I do not think that there is any need to amend the law by seeking to specify what acts constitute cruelty for the purposes of the law of divorce or by making express provision for the type of case mentioned in the question."

Victoria Dolling’s subsequent life is unrecorded.

• “Man Wanted to Become a Woman”. Manchester Evening News, 22 May 1958.
• “When a husband wants to be a woman”. Daily Mirror,23 May 1958,
• “Sex Changes and Divorce: Question by M.P.”. Birmingham Post, 26 November 1958.
• Richard Collier. Masculinity, Law and the Family. Taylor & Francis, 2002:115.
• Zoë Playdon. The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes: And the Unwritten History of the Trans Experience. Scribner, 2022: 92-3.

Dorothy Medway (192? - ? ) magician and lorry driver

++Initial version August 2012. 

Francis was raised in Liverpool, and after leaving school tried to lead a ‘normal life’, by training as a motor mechanic.   She also started a stage career as La Bettina, which enabled her to wear the clothes she felt most comfortable in. 

Advert on The Stage January 1949

When the war started in 1939 Francis volunteered but after a medical was rejected for unstated reasons.  For a few years she was a lorry driver and instructor, but the strain became too great and Francis was allowed to return to stage performance, first on a soldiers in skirts revue, and then in her own show as La Bettina, where she did a magic act.  

She was seriously ill in 1945, and on recovery decided to live as Dorothy Medway, off-stage as well as on.  She managed to find a doctor who not only prescribed female hormones but 'decided that I had been born with a completely feminine mind, controlling all my actions'.

However in the early 1950s no British doctor would do an orchiectomy because of the mayhem laws. She had to go to the Netherlands instead, where she had successful surgery at the end of 1953. She had her name changed on her driving licence, her medical insurance card, her passport and her ration book - but was unable to get her birth certificate re-issued.  

“No one in this country seems able to decide whether such operations as were performed on me are legal or illegal.  The issue is shunned and avoided.”

She wrote an article for the Sunday Pictorial which was published on 14 March 1954, on an inside page, on the day that most UK newspapers were featuring the Betty Cowell story.

Unlike Cowell she did not have the upper-class connections to be introduced to Sir Arthur Gillies, nor would she have been able to afford his fees.

• Dorothy Medway. “He-She: A moving personal story to help you to understand the front page dilemma”. Sunday Pictorial, 14 March 1954: 13. 
• Dave King. The Transvestite and the Transsexual: Public Categories and Private Identities. Avebury, 1993: 111.

* Not Dr Dorothy Medway, a doctor missionary who spent some decades in India, and was witness to the post-Independence massacres.

Nicky Kiranant (1983 - ) air hostess

Chaiya was the seventh child in an impoverished farming family in Lampang, Thailand. Chaiya was observed as effeminate and admired the local kathoeys but was warned that parents of kathoeys lose face. Chaiya helped plough the rice fields and looked after the water buffalo.

At age 15 Chaiya had an ID card, and moved to Bangkok. There he initially lived with his sister. He befriended kathoeys, took an evening class and found work in a travel agency, where he worked on a tour bus.

Chaiya took courses at Chandrakasem Rajabhat University, and entered and won the Miss Le Flore ladyboy beauty contest. From university Chaiya was able to get work as a flight attendant with PB Air, even though he had never been on an airplane before. Passengers commented about a female being allowed to wear the male uniform, and one wrote to the airline complimenting them on their open-mindedness. Chaiya was then requested to wear the female uniform.

This went well, and Chaiya started to dress female in her private life as well. She consulted doctors, and, for the first time, took female hormones. She obtained approval from the executive of the airline, and the operation was performed 31 December 2005. Although there were problems with internal bleeding and closure, they were dealt with.

She asked the airline executive for permission to enter the 2006 Miss Tiffany Universe contest held in Pattaya. They not only agreed: they sponsored her. She was featured in the media as a promising candidate, and became known as Nicky. The airline was complimented for its open-mindedness. She phoned her parents, and they came around to acceptance.

Like all other sao oraphet song in Thailand, Nicky still has a male ID card. This has prevented her from obtaining jobs at other airlines after PB Air went out of business in 2009.

Despite her media celebrity, Nicky was initially stealth with her boyfriend.

Nicky has since been employed by PC Air, which has also employed three other kathoey air stewardesses including the 2007 Miss Tiffany Universe winner, Thanyarat Jiraphatpakorn.

• · “Equal opportunity employment”. Bangkok Today, 11 October 2006. Translated into English by Stephen Cleary. “World’s 1^st Ladyboy Air-Hostess”. Thai Blogs, July 19, 2007. www.thai-blogs.com/2007/07/19/world-s-1st-ladyboy-air-hostess.
• · Susan Aldous & Pornchai Sereemongkonpol. Ladyboys: The Secret World of Thailand's Third Gender. Dunboyne: Maverick House, 2008: 189-223.
• · Christina Wylie. “THE THIRD SEX: The life of a ladyboy in today’s Thai society”. Samui Holiday Magazine, www.samuiholidaymagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=421:the-third-sex&catid=41:may-2012&Itemid=16.

_____________________________________________________

Nicky’s account in the Aldous/ Sereemongkonpol Ladyboy anthology does not name PB Air, and neither EN.Wikipedia nor TH.Wikipedia on PB.Air mention their sponsorship of Nicky.

The story of PB Air requesting that Chaiya wear the female uniform is in her own account in the Aldous/ Sereemongkonpol Ladyboy anthology, but is not repeated in the Bangkok Today or the Samui Holiday accounts.

Poppy Cooper (192?–1988) bus conductor, performer

Cooper was working as a bus conductor in Preston, Lancashire in the late 1940s, where he was generally known as a pansy.

On a trip to Morecambe, he was able to catch Forces Showboat – The All-Male Revue at the Alhambra Theatre. "I thought that it was fabulous. The girls were so glamorous and the dresses looked gorgeous. In fact the costumes were a load of tat close to, but the lights were so wonderful in those days." He went backstage to see if there was a chance of a job.

"In those days I had quite a lot of blonde hair with a big quiff, and I reminded them of a queen who had just left because Loren shouted, 'Darling, we've got another Lucretia here – come and varder this one' ". 

Poppy was told to come back tomorrow with a wig and drag, and went down the market to make the needed purchases.

Men in Frocks p17

The going wage was £6 or £7 a week and half of that went on draughty digs where they sometimes had to share four-to-a-bed. However such shows were the only place at that time that a male-bodied person could dress female.

By the mid-1950s, the all-male revues had run their course and no longer attracted audiences.  Poppy popped over to Paris and was employed at Le Carrousel.

"There was more freedom there and you could go out onto the streets in drag if you wanted to, or go out with men to a restaurant after the show. …. French, Belgiums, Germans – they loved the travesti. The English seem different."

Poppy completed her transition to being a woman in the 1970s, and later did a striptease act using the name Tuxedo.

++When she retired from the stage, she set up home in south-west London with a lover who stayed with her till the end.   She passed away in her sleep.

• Kris Kirk & Ed Heath. Men in Frocks. London: GMP, 1984: 13, 15-7, 19-20, 24, 27,29-31.
• "Obituary - Poppy Cooper".  Glad Rag, 40, 1988.
  
• Paul Baker & Jo Stanley. Hello Sailor!: The Hidden History of Gay Life at Sea. London: Longman, 2003: 37,85.
  

John (1918 - ?) truck driver.

Frank was raised in a Baltimore orphanage. It was known that he was ‘physically abnormal’, and at age 7 he was diagnosed with hypospadias and undescended testicles, and taken to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The doctors, including Hugh Hampton Young, found a vagina, uterus, left ovary and Fallopian tubes, and decided that the child was definitely female. What had previously been seen as his penis was now declared to be an enlarged clitoris.

The child’s guardians were informed and Frank became Frances. Two years later Frances returned to Johns Hopkins with the complaint that she felt pressure to keep her clitoris hidden. It was mentioned that she had a “terrible habit” of masturbation. It made sense to the doctors that her clitoris should be removed, and they did so remarking that it was the size of a penis of a boy of the same age.

Frances next returned four years later at age 16, complaining of a mass in her lower abdomen. She had announced that when she turned 18 she would assume male attire and learn a mechanical trade. She was already 5’11” (1.8 m) and 125 lb (57 kg). She had beard growth on her chin and the ‘mammary regions were entirely masculine’, although her pubic hair was female in distribution. This time surgery found testicular tissue. Given that the damage had been done four years earlier, they excised all the testicular tissue and a rudimentary vas deferens.

The patient was last heard of in 1935. He had changed his name to John, and was working as a truck driver. He was reportedly happy.

• Hugh Hampton Young, Genital Abnormalities, Hermaphroditism & Related Adrenal Diseases. Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins company, 1937: 84-91.
• Elizabeth Reis. Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, Paperback 2012: 93-5.

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 Dr Young finishes his account by speculating: 'If implantation of ovaries ever becomes successful in the human should this be done?'  He was still not accepting John's decision to be a man.  I think that we can assume that he knew about the failure to implant ovaries into Lili Elvenes (Elbe) as the English translation of Man into Woman had been available since 1933. 

Billy Thornley (1922 – ?) driver.

In 1957, truck driver Billy Thornley was booked into Los Angeles county jail on charges resulting from a fight with two other drivers.

On the second day, he was taken to the showers to clean up. And was found to be female-bodied.

• Tom De Simone, Teresa Wang, Melissa Lopez, Diem Tran, Andy Sacher, Kersu Dalal, Justin Emerick. Lavender Los Angeles. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub, 2011: 23.

Rachael Webb (1940 - 2009) lorry driver, housing officer, councillor, activist.

Tim knew from age six that he wanted to be a girl. He had little formal education but was self-educated by reading Marx and the 1950s existentialists. He was a beatnik, and an activist in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and spent time in the existential and gay scene in Soho. He did drugs to suppress the idea that he might be transsexual.

In 1967 he consulted with the Maudsley Hospital in London and started taking female hormones. However he married a woman, they had two children and he stopped taking the hormones. By 1972 he had broken up with his wife and restarted on hormones. However he then married again, qualified for a Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) license, became a long-distance lorry driver, and had two more children.

When this marriage finished in 1978, he was prescribed hormones by his family doctor in King’s Lynn, and saw Dr Randall at Charing Cross Hospital and started transition as Rachael. Female long-distance lorry drivers were not permitted at that date. Rachael became an active feminist, and was a member of the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party. She moved to London and worked as a housing officer with the Borough of Southwark. She was in the Self Help Association for Transsexuals (SHAFT) for a while but did not get on with Judy Cousins who ran it.  Rachael was expelled for being too radical.

From Bodyshock

Rachael became 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). The same year she was part of the campaign to elect Peter Tatchell in Bermondsey which encountered homophobia from left, right and centre. Rachael was left with a feeling of ‘personal inauthenticity’ and for a while was a patient of existentialist psychiatrist R.D. Laing. In 1986 she was elected as a Labour member of the London borough council of Lambeth.

Rachael’s personal collection of material was one of the first donations towards Richard Ekins’ Trans-Gender Archives. She was featured in Hodgkinson’s Bodyshock, Jane Jackson’s film and wrote a paper for Ekins and King’s Blending Genders. In the first she is quoted:

“We transsexuals have nothing to gain from our attempts to gain legitimacy and respectability from the medical profession. We confuse ourselves and other people by trying to adopt a false identity, and pretending that we are real women (1987: 108)”.

In the third she emphasises that she is a Radical Feminist, a constructed woman, and endorses the views of Janice Raymond:

“My position is rooted in a basic acceptance of feminist arguments concerning the misogynist nature of society and in the belief that male transsexuals perpetuate misogyny when they indulge in a manipulative game of getting others to collude in their fantasy that they are women. ...

I never cease to wonder at the number of men who express some sort of dissatisfaction with their identities and roles as men. I believe this is always connected with envy of women, particularly an envy of their ability to procreate. I think it is imperative that such feelings are brought out into the open and recognised for what they are, so that we can deal with them in a constructive rather than destructive way. For this reason we must create an environment in which we can admit to our feelings, even if this leads us to reject sex reassignment procedures. ...

Without claiming to be the most convincing transsexual there is, I am able to say that those who do not know my history do assume that I am a woman, born as such. I still believe that there is a problem with this however. To what extent am I, and others like me, causing harm by indulging in my fantasy?”.

After eight years as a councillor, Rachael returned to continental lorry driving, and became an activist in the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU). She was a delegate to the lorry drivers regional trade group, a member of the regional women’s committee, the regional LGBT working party, delegate to the two Labour Party conferences and the union’s delegate conference. She fought for equal wages and conditions for truck drivers across the EU. She was the TGWU delegate to the ITF conference for women transport workers in London in September 2005.

At age 66 she semi-retired and merely worked part-time.

Rachael died at a time of her own choosing at age 69.

• Liz Hodgkinson. Bodyshock: the truth about changing sex. London: Columbus, 1987:102-8.
• Jane Jackson (dir). Sex Change - Shock! Horror! Probe. Scr: Kristiene Clarke, with Rachael Webb and others. UK TV Channel 4 50 mins 1989.
• Terri Webb. “Autobiographical Fragments From a Transsexual Activist”. In Richard Ekins & Dave King (eds). Blending Genders: Social Aspects of Cross-Dressing and Sex-Changing. London & New York: Routledge 1996.
• Richard Ekins. Male femaling: a grounded theory approach to cross-dressing and sex-changing. London & New York: Routledge. 1997: 45,97.
• Rachael Webb. “Working life”. Transport International Online, 26 Jan 2007.  Archive. 
• Fiona Fox. “Tribute to Rachael Webb...”. Fiona Fox’s Tales, 4 Feb 2009. http://foxstales.blogspot.com/2009/02/tribute-to-rachael-webb.html.

_______________________________________________________________________________

The two Ekins references refer to Terri Webb, formerly Rachael.  Presumably she changed her mind and went back to Rachael.

Maggie Fiona Fox published an email from Rachael on her blog, which is valuable.  However Maggie then published a rant in February this year on TS-SI, attempting to posthumously convert Rachael into an HBS/CT activist.  It should be apparent from her life and writings that she was nothing of that sort.

Christine Goodwin (1937 – 2014) bus driver.

Goodwin had dressed female since childhood. He married and fathered four children. He worked as a bus driver. He had aversion therapy in 1963, but later was accepted on the program for transsexuals at Charing Cross Hospital, London in 1985.

She started hormones, had vocal cord surgery, and started living full time as female. She had genital surgery paid by the National Health in 1990. However, like all transsexuals in the UK at that time, she was unable to marry as a woman, suffered embarrassment and harassment at new employment when her National Insurance Card and birth certificate revealed her previous gender, was unable to draw a pension at the female age of 60 and was obliged to continue National Insurance payment until age 65.

She sued the UK government, and then appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. At that time the only other European countries that did not recognize a sex change as legally valid were Andorra, Albania and Ireland. The European Court in 2002 ruled in her favour, overturning its previous rulings in the case of Mark Rees and Caroline Cossey, and awarded £14,685 costs and expenses.

This victory was a major push to the Government’s passing the Gender Recognition Act of 2004.

She died after a long illness at age 77.  


*Not the painter, Christina Goodwin.

• ” Grand Chamber Judgment In The Case Of Christine Goodwin V. The United Kingdom”. European Court of Human Rights. 11 July 2002. www.echr.coe.int/Eng/Press/2002/july/GoodwinjudGrand%20Chamber.htm.
• “Transsexual wins right to marry”. BBC News. 11 July, 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2122094.stm.
• Joshua Rozenberg. “Transsexual bride wins the right to marry man”. The Daily Telegraph. 12 Jul 2002. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4183012/Transsexual-bride-wins-the-right-to-marry-man.html. 
• "Christine Goodwin, whose case launched the Gender Recognition Act, dies".  Pink News, 19 December 2014.  www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/12/19/christine-goodwin-whose-case-launched-the-gender-recognition-act-dies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bill Allen (1906 -1949) mill worker, labourer, bus conductor, murderer.

Margaret Allen was born in Bolton, Lancashire, the twentieth of twenty-two children, and raised in Bacup.

He dressed as a man, even in childhood. Other people referred to him as Bill, but usually shunned him except when he was buying drinks in the pub. He worked in the mills, and loaded coal.

In 1935 he had a mysterious stay in hospital, and afterwards claimed that he was now a man.

From 1942 to 1946 he worked as a bus conductor, a ‘clippie’ on the Rawtenstall buses, but was dismissed for pushing the passengers, and even cuffing them on the back of the head when they moved too slowly. He then moved to live in Bacup Rd, Rawtenstall in what had earlier been a police station.

In August 1948, Bill murdered Nancy Chadwick, an elderly eccentric neighbour who was believed to be a rich miser. He made himself obvious to the Lancashire C.I.D. and Scotland Yard officers, got under their feet and pointed out Chadwick’s missing handbag in the River Irwell behind his house. They searched his house and found bloodstains in the coal cellar. The defence counsel argued that Margaret passing herself off as Bill was a form of insanity.

He was hanged January 1949 at HMP Strangeways, the last trans person to be hanged in the UK.

• Colin Wilson & Patricia Pitman. Encyclopedia Of Murder Pan Books 1961, under Allen, Margaret
• Jay Robert Nash. Look For The Woman. Harrap 1981, under Allen, Margaret.
• Molly Cutpurse. The Tragic and Transgendered World of Margaret Allen. 2012. 
• "Odd Man Out: Did bus conductor Maggie Allen really commit murder?".  Lancashire Telegraph, no date. Online. 
• Denise Beddows.  Odd Man Out: A Motiveless Murder. 2018.