David Martin (1946 – 1984) burglar.

David, a heterosexual transvestite, had been in and out of prison several times.

After shooting a policeman when interrupted during a burglary in 1983, he became one of the most wanted criminals in Britain. After a chase across London, Martin was supposedly shot in Earls Court, but it turned out to be the wrong man.

Martin was arrested shortly afterwards, but hung himself in prison before coming to trial. The story was filmed as a television movie in 1994.

*Not the Scottish, nor the English, nor the Nebraska politician, nor the poet, nor the Governor of New South Wales, nor the musician, nor the gymnast, nor any of the footballers, nor the Texas axe-murderer.

• Paul Greengrass (scr & dir). Open Fire. With Jim Carter as DCS Young, Rupert Graves as David Martin and Eddie Izzard as Rich. UK London Weekend Television 105 mins 1994 TV.

Murry Pickford (? - 1976) drag performer.

Murry Pickford of  Boston was deaf-and-dumb. She worked a drag act with pigeons that she insisted were doves.

In 1947, when female impersonation was banned in Boston at the instigation of the Catholic Archbishop, she went to the officials and pleaded that because of her disability, she had no other way to make a living. She was issued a special license, and was the only drag queen then working in Boston.

• Minette, edited by Steven Watson. Recollections of a part-time Lady. New York: Flower-Beneath-the-Foot Press 1979: 22-3.

William Smith (190? - ?) farm worker.

William Smith worked in Queensland as a farm labourer, drover, railway navvy and cane cutter in the 1920s. He obtained 851 acres of land, but lost it and his cattle after a severe drought. He returned to labouring and moved with the seasonal farm work.

In 1928 he rode into New South Wales.  He took employment at the Waterside Estates. He agreed to a pay cut in the middle of a drought on agreement of higher wages afterwards. The drought broke in March 1929 but from then on he was not paid at all. He quit in May, and in June took legal action claiming £39 12s 3d.

Thomas Waters, the employer, first avoided the claim by transferring the property to his wife, and declaring bankruptcy, and then by claiming that William Smith was a woman. Smith gave interviews to a few newspapers in which he admitted that he might not be male. He was admired as a “plucky Sydney girl” trying to survive.

The first court case was on 28 August 1929 and Matilda Waters, now the owner of the farm, made a counter claim of £45 12s 3d for the keep of Smith and his horse. The defence solicitor pursued the argument that Smith was a woman based on the newspapers articles. Smith conceded that he he might be a ‘half-and-half’ or a hermaphrodite. The agreed wages had been at a male rate.

There were several adjournments and the second hearing was heard on 13 November. A doctor testified that Smith was a woman but with the muscular development of a man and capable of doing physical work as well as a man.

Evidence was also admitted through cross-examination that Thomas Waters had a previous conviction of obtaining £350 through false pretences, was a declared bankrupt and had been committed for trial on two charges of false pretences. The magistrate criticized Smith as “not an entirely truthful witness”, but but awarded him the full amount claimed plus £1 5s 3d cost. The counter claim was denied.

*Not the jockey, Bill Smith.

• Ruth Ford. “'Prove first you're a male': A Farmhand's Claim for Wages in 1929 Australia”. Labour History 90 2006: 52. www.historycooperative.org/journals/lab/90/ford.html.

Enza Anderson (1964 - ) civil engineer, political candidate, journalist.

Enzo Anderson was born and raised in Toronto by Italian-immigrant parents.  He graduated as a civil engineer in 1988, and worked as a supervisor at a concrete manufacturer.

At weekends he hung out with drag queens in Toronto’s gay village. When he was laid off, she became Enza and worked at a gay bar. She started calling herself ‘Supermodel’ although she has never walked a runway.


In 1998 she was on the cover of the Toronto Sun giving the then Toronto mayor, Mel Lastman, a sloppy kiss at the end of Pride. Two years later she ran against him for the office of mayor and came in third. In 2002 she ran for the leadership of the homophobic Canadian Alliance Party (previously the Reform Party and now the Conservative Party). Stephen Harper (now Prime Minister) won, and Anderson had to drop out because she was not raising enough money. In 2003 she ran against the city incumbent in the Toronto downtown ward, and came second.

In the same year, she had breast enhancement, charging it to her credit card.


She got herself a job writing for the free daily, Metro, by cold-calling the Toronto editor and reminding her of her political runs. She profiles Toronto’s party scene, attending 200 parties a year, and also profiles transit users. She also contributes to Fab and to Xtra.

She has done volunteer work with AIDS and gay youth charities, and was on the Police Liaison Committee.

In 2008 she was Grand Marshall for Toronto Pride.

She has a small part in the 2010 horror movie, Horrorween.

• Antoine Tedesco. “My date with Enza: Enza "Supermodel" Anderson: drag queen, politician, and a great set of legs too” Scene and Heard. 2002. www.sceneandheard.ca/archive/V2_03/focus_enza.htm.
• Chris Dupuis. “Pride grand marshall: Model citizen”. Xtra June 19, 2008. www.xtra.ca/public/viewstory.aspx?AFF_TYPE=3&STORY_ID=4952&PUB_TEMPLATE_ID=2.
• Rita Zekas. “Enza gets her Marilyn moment”. The Toronto Star. Jun 21, 2008. www.thestar.com/living/article/444921.
• “Enza Anderson”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enza_Anderson.

Beth Elliott (1950 - ) singer, activist, writer.

++ revised August 2011.

Beth transitioned to female in her late teens. She became a hippy singer/ songwriter, sometimes using the name Mustang Sally, and antiwar activist. One of her songs, “Teen Love” was a doo-wop lesbian love ballad.

She was the first woman under 21 to be an officer in the pioneering lesbian organization, The Daughters of Bilitis, where her transition was known, and where after a heated controversy, she had been accepted. In 1972, she was vice-president of the San Francisco branch.

Bev Jo,  who had been a friend of Beth’s at college just before she transitioned, and, who was now active in the lesbian separatist Gutter Dykes Collective, accused the adolescent Beth of sexual harassment. Beth was was expelled from the Daughters for not being woman-born.

In 1973, Beth was one of the organizers West Coast Lesbian Conference held at the University of California, Los Angeles, and had played benefits to help finance it.  However the Conference split over whether Elliot should be allowed to perform. The Gutter Dykes protested the presence of a ‘man’.  Two-thirds of the women present voted to allow Beth to remain, and she performed as had been arranged, but she left after the performance.  The keynote speaker, the heterosexually married Robin Morgan, incorporated the protests into her speech the next day, and referred to Beth as a ‘male transvestite’ and as a ‘rapist’.

Beth was also a founding member of Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, an activist in the California Democratic Party, a Director of the California Committee for Sexual Law Reform, the lobbying organization that won repeal of California’s sodomy laws in 1975.

She put out an album, Kid, Have You Rehabilitated Yourself?  but the women’s music distribution channels were closed to her. In the 1980s she played bass for the all-women new wave band Satin Food Stamps; in the 1990s she was in the dykeabilly The Bucktooth Varmints with Anderson Toone; she did backing tracks for the drag king musical Hillbillies on the Moon, which again featured Anderson Toone. Her recent CD, Buried Treasure contains the tracks from Kid, Have You Rehabilitated Yourself?, some Satin Food Stamps tracks and some others (listen to previews of it at www.cdbaby.com/cd/bethelliott).

Beth was blacklisted by lesbian publishers, and was still traumatized by the 1973 events, until 1985 when she was profiled in Telewoman with a pseudonym and no photographs.  This eventually became the book, Mirrors, but that took another decade.  Bev Jo denounced Beth in 1985 and again in 1992, and this contributed to the decision to issue the book as 'told to Geri Nerrick'.  The 2011 re-issue of Mirrors clarifies that Geri and Beth are the same person.

Beth has been a writer for a variety of publications including a weekly column for three and a half years for the Bay Area Reporter. She has also written for off our backs and FrontPage Magazine.  She has recently written lesbian science fiction.

Beth is a keen softball player and hiker, and has traveled the world chasing and photographing solar eclipses. She is also the historian and genealogist for her long-time California family, which finally accepted her back. 

*Not the artist, nor the other singer with the same name, nor the romance novelist.

• • Beth Elliott. “Bisexuality: The best thing that ever happened to lesbian-feminism?” In Loraine Hutchins & Lani Kaahumanu (eds). Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out. Alyson Books 408 pp 1991.
  • Beth Elliott. “Holly Near And Yet So Far”. In Elizabeth Reba Weise (ed). Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism. Seal Press 320 pp 1992.
  • Geri Nettick and Beth Elliot. Mirrors: Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual. N.Y.: Masquerade Books 1996.  Revised edition: CreateSpace  2011.  
  • Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Ma, London: Harvard University Press.  2002: 259-260.
  • Beth Elliot. Don’t Call It Virtual. ENC Press 2003. A satirical lesbian time-travel novel. With an associated biography at www.encpress.com/Beth_Elliott.html.
  • Susan Stryker. Transgender History. Seal Press. 190 pp 2008: 102-5,108-9.
  • Marcia M. Gallo. Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006: 190-2.  
  • Josh Sides. Erotic City: Sexual Revolutions and the Making of Modern San Francisco. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009: 120-2. 
  • http://gerinettick.com.

Destiny Lauren (1979 – 2009) sex work, IRA bombings, miscarriages of justice and US royalty.

++ updated August 2013.

On 5th November 2009, Destiny Lauren aged 29, was found strangled in her flat in Kentish Town in northern London.   She was rushed to hospital but died shortly afterwards.

She was pre-op and worked as a prostitute.  Whether we classify her as a transsexual or as a prostitute, deaths like this are far too common.

Destiny had an interesting although rather sad family nexus, that most newspapers, with the exception of the Hampstead and Highgate Express, her local newspaper, did not pay any attention to.


Elizabeth and Paul Hill, brother and sister, were raised in Belfast, but moved to London.

On 5 October 1974 The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated two bombs at two pubs, The Horse and Groom and The Seven Stars, both in Guildford, Surrey, and both popular with British Army soldiers.  Four soldiers and one civilian were killed; a further sixty-five were wounded.  Under pressure to come up with results, the police arrested Paul Hill and three others (Gerry Conlon, Patrick Armstrong, Carole Richardson).  They were convicted and imprisoned.   Elizabeth Hill was also questioned and held at the police station for a week.

Elizabeth married a Mr Samuels, and they had four sons, including Justin who felt that he should have been a girl, and grew up to be Destiny.  Elizabeth endured the strain of campaigning for 15 years for her brother’s release.

In 1990, The Guildford Four were released.   Their convictions were overturned on appeal in that they were based on confessions extracted by torture, and evidence of innocence had been held back by the police.  In addition, at the trial of the Balcombe Street Four, the IRA men instructed their lawyers to draw attention to the fact that innocent people were serving time for the Guildford bombings.

The movie, In the Name of the Father, 1993, based on the autobiography by Gerry Conlon, is the story of the Guildford Four.

After release, in 1993,  Paul Hill married Mary Courtney Kennedy, the fifth child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy of Massachusetts.  They legally separated in 2006.

Elizabeth committed suicide in November 2005, at the flat that she shared with her daughter, Destiny.  Destiny, was well-known in London’s transsexual scene, and was an acquaintance of Boy George.  She continued to live in her mother’s flat, until she was found strangled.

Leon Fyle, 23, was convicted for the murder and jailed for 21 years in September 2010, but the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction the next April,  and he was again found guilty at the retrial.  He had stolen £350 found on her and spent £250 of it on two sex workers at a brothel in Kings Cross the same night.  Det Insp Liz Baker pointed out that Fyle never showed any remorse.

• “Tragic story of murdered transsexual, whose uncle was one of the Guildford Four”. Hampstead and Highgate Express. 26 November 2009. www.hamhigh.co.uk/content/camden/hamhigh/news/story.aspx?brand=NorthLondon24&category=Newshamhigh&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newshamhigh&itemid=WeED26%20Nov%202009%2016%3A32%3A18%3A477. 
• "Man Jailed for "Brutal and Pre-Meditated" Murder".  LBC, 3/6/11.  www.lbc.co.uk/man-jailed-for-brutal-and-pre-meditated-murder-30611.
• "Man guilty of Destiny Lauren murder in Kentish Town".  BBC News, 21 Sepember 2011.  www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15010132.

Hibiscus (1949 – 1982 ) performer.

George Harris Jr was born in Bronxville, Westchester, New York. His family moved to Florida and lost their money in real estate.

On return to New York, child George worked as a model in commercials, and at Caffe Cino and other off-off-Broadway theaters. At 13 he left home to live with an older man, with the understanding of his parents. One of his contacts was Jack Smith, the avant-garde filmmaker who was already cross-dressing his actors.

At 17, George had an offer to drive to California, and arrived in San Francisco in time for the Hippy thing. He grew his hair, became vegetarian and wore robes and headdresses. At midnight on December 31, 1969, The Palace, let him, as Hibiscus, and several others put on a show and the Cockettes were born. They put on periodic reviews using castoff junk for their props, and dressing in drag and as whatever they liked. They attracted the attention of celebrities, and were featured in articles in Rolling Stone and Paris Match.

One night after a performance he came home to find that his apartment building had burned down. He took a break, but on return found that he had been voted out of the group, and that shows were no longer free. He founded a new group, Angels of Light, which did their first performance in Grace Cathedral before the police evicted them. Allen Ginsburg did his first drag with the group and was was Hibiscus’s lover for a while.

Hibiscus left the group and returned to his family in New York, and started an East Coast version of the Angels. They were discovered by Swiss choreographer, Maurice Bejart who financed a European tour.

He died of AIDS at age 33.

• Mark Thompson. “Children of Paradise: A Brief History of Queens”. In Mark Thompson (ed). Gay Spirit: Myth and Meaning. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987: 61-8.
• “Hibiscus (entertainer)”. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_%28entertainer%29.