Herman Karl Hedwig, a early German pioneer
A person, previously known as Sophia, successfully applied to a German court in 1883 for a revised birth certificate changing his forenames to Herman Karl. The doctor’s letter to the court specified...
View ArticleLance (1959 - ) UCLA GIRC’s first trans child
Lance had, almost since his first year, loved to parade in the shoes and clothes of his mother and sister. He also loved jewelry and makeup. The mother regarded this as just childhood play, but then a...
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Ira M Dushoff (1931 – 2013) plastic surgeon
Ira Dushoff was a plastic surgeon in Jacksonville, Florida, who, mainly in the 1970s, was noted for the Gender Identity Association (GIA), a private clinic that he headed which provided transgender...
View ArticleA black trans woman in 1960s New Jersey
A black trans girl, for whom we are not given a name, not even a doctor’s pseudonym, was in the New Jersey foster care system as her mother was disabled and indigent. As she entered her teens, she...
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Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez (1964 - 2016 ) sex worker, singer, prisoner.
++I originally wrote about Cristina Otiz in May 2008. A lot has happened to her since then.Cristina was born José Antonio Ortiz Rodriguez, the fourth of six children, in Adra, Almeria, Andalusia. Jose...
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Elmer Belt (1893 - 1980 ) urologist, pioneer sex-change surgeon.
++Original version April 2009; revised March 2019. Originally from Chicago, Elmer Belt moved to Los Angeles with his...
View ArticleCandy Lee (193? - ) female impersonator, bartender, Mardi Gras
The first gay 'krewe'– of the krewes that put on the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations – was the Yuga Krewe, founded in 1958. The name is an exoticism referring to the Kali Yuga of Hinduism. It was...
View ArticleEleno de Céspedes (1545–?) surgeon
The child was born in Castile but the initial name is not recorded. The father was Pero Hernández, a Castilian peasant and the mother an African slave. The child inherited her mother’s slave status,...
View ArticleThomas Hall (1603–?) soldier, seamstress, servant
Raised with the name Thomasine, Hall was born near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. At the age of twelve she was sent by her mother to live with an aunt in London. Hall’s brother probably died in the 1625...
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Two lives ended in a workhouse 1889-1899
Mary Mudge (1804-1889) dairy maidIn the 1850s Mary Mudge was running a small dairy farm of nine acres and three cows in a village close to Tavistock, Devon. She lived with her sister and also took in...
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Potassa de la Fayette (195? - ) model
Potassa was a star in the early days of new York's Studio 54, 1977-8, where she was noted when on the dance floor, and liked to pick up straight Wall-Street type guys and take them to a balcony for...
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Not Oscar Wilde
Unlike his co-accused, Alfred Taylor, there is no evidence that Oscar Wilde had any interest in cross-dressing, on stage or off. Despite this, a photograph purporting to be Wilde appearing as the lead...
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Willmer M. Broadnax (1922 – 1992) gospel singer
In the 1930 US Census, Augustus Flowers of Louisiana, registered himself, his wife Gussie (born Gussie Broadenax), his two stepsons, 13-year-old Wilmer Broadnax and 10-year-old William Broadnax, and...
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Ralph Greenson (1911 – 1979) UCLA psychoanalyst
Romeo Greenschpoon was raised in Brooklyn, by parents who were immigrants from Russia. His physician father, a Shakespeare enthusiast, had named his twins Romeo and Juliet, which created some ribbing....
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Seattle-Portland-Spokane Timeline - Part I – to the closure of The Garden of...
As I have commented before, there is now so much trans history, that a universal timeline is futile, and most that I encounter are badly done. I have already discussed which are the better universal...
View ArticleSeattle-Portland-Spokane - Part II – to the Buckwater & Kotala decisions 1996.
Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956.Part II – to the Buckwater & Kotala decisions 1996.Part III – to now.1957Jazz musician Billy Tipton moved to Spokane. He worked as a talent...
View ArticleSeattle-Portland-Spokane - Part III – to now
Part I – to the closure of The Garden of Allah, 1956.Part II – to the Buckwater & Kotala decisions 1996.Part III – to now. 1997Bob Birch died in December and Barbara Dayton disappeared within...
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Sarah Muirhead-Allwood (1947 - ) hip-replacement surgeon
William Muirhead-Allwood was educated at the Wellington independent school in Somerset, and was trained at the prestigious St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School. Muirhead-Allwood became a Fellow of the...
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John Campbell/Murray Hall (1850 - 1901) business man, Tammany Hall politician
John Campbell and his younger sister Marie, possibly from Govan, on the Clyde, were orphaned in 1861. Marie had worn male clothing due to ‘bad usage’ as a child. John died two years later when...
View ArticleTwo own-voice impersonators
Sometimes we get only a snapshot of a person, and never find out what happened to them later. Here are two trans woman surviving as performers, who are incidentally mentioned in books on other...
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