April Ashley
| April Ashley | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
George Jamieson 29 April 1935 Liverpool, England, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Spouse(s) |
Arthur Corbett (m. 1963; div. 1970) Jeffrey West (m. 1980s; div. 1990s) |
| Website | www |
April Ashley, MBE (born 29 April 1935) is an English model and restaurant hostess. She was outed as a transsexual woman by the Sunday People newspaper in 1961 and is one of the earliest British people known to have had sex reassignment surgery.
Born George Jamieson on 29 April 1935, in Sefton General Hospital, Liverpool, she was one of six surviving children of a Roman Catholic father and a Protestant mother. In her childhood in Liverpool, Ashley suffered from both calcium deficiency, requiring weekly calcium injections at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital, and bed-wetting, resulting in her being given her own box room aged two when the family moved house.
She joined the Merchant Navy in 1951 at the age of 16. Following a suicide attempt, she was given a dishonourable discharge and a second attempt resulted in Ashley being sent to the mental institution in Ormskirk aged 17 for treatments.
In her book The First Lady, Ashley tells the story of the rape she endured while still living as a man. A roommate raped her, and she was severely injured as a result of the horrific sexual assault.
After leaving hospital Ashley moved to London, at one point claiming to have shared a boarding house with then ship's steward John Prescott. Having started cross-dressing, she moved to Paris in the late 1950s, began using the name Toni April and joined the famous French entertainer Coccinelle in the cast of the drag cabaret at the Carousel Theatre.
...
Wikipedia