April Ashley

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April Ashley at the Southbank Center, London in February 2009

April Ashley , MBE (born April 29, 1935 in Liverpool , † December 27, 2021 in London ) was a British model . Considered the first English woman to undergo gender reassignment surgery by Georges Burou in Casablanca in 1960 , she was outed as transgender by the Sunday People newspaper in 1961 .

biography

Childhood and adolescence

April Ashley was born George Jamieson at Smithdown Road Hospital, Liverpool; she was one of six surviving children of her Roman Catholic father Frederick and her Protestant mother Ada. Her father was a seaman . By her own account, she was a frail child with a calcium deficiency who received weekly calcium injections at Alder Hey Children's Hospital. She had felt like a girl since she was about three, and as she got older she regularly prayed to wake up a girl the next morning. She attended St. Teresa's primary school. Because of her feminine nature and appearance, she suffered from numerous meanings and brutalities from her environment and was regularly and severely abused by her own mother: “She hated me. Because I was so different ”.

At the age of 14, she joined the Merchant Navy to escape the unhappy home life and confusion about her gender. This ended in a first suicide attempt, which led to her release. After returning home, she tried to commit suicide a second time and at the age of 16 was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in Ormskirk and then to Walton Hospital, where she Got electroshock therapy and male hormones .

Early adult life

After her release, she first went to London in 1955, where she first worked in an artist café, which also served as a secret meeting place for homosexuals who were being prosecuted at the time. She later went to Jersey and finally to Paris around 1957 years . She began to live as a woman and take female hormones ( estrogens ) and worked under the name "Toni April" in the famous Le Carrousel nightclub alongside other well-known transsexuals such as Coccinelle , Bambi and Capucine. After Coccinelle in 1958 in Casablanca a gender reassignment surgery (vaginoplasty) by Dr. Georges Burou , April knew she wanted to be a full woman too and saved all her money to have an operation too. The operation was performed in May 1960 in Casablanca by Dr. Burou made. By her own admission, she was his ninth patient and when she woke up it was "... the happiest day of my life" for her.

“I knew I couldn't have gone on living like that,… Anything was preferable, really. And, as soon as I woke up, I had the most extraordinary feeling. Even though I'd lost a lot of blood and all my hair had fallen out, it was as though my brain was in tune with the rest of my body for the first time in my life. "

- April Ashley

“I knew I couldn't go on living like this ... Everything was better, really. And as soon as I woke up, I had a very special feeling. Even though I had lost a lot of blood and all of my hair had fallen out, it was as if my brain was in tune with the rest of my body for the first time in my life. "

- April Ashley

New life and outing with serious consequences

After her successful operation, she moved to London. She now called herself April Ashley and became a successful model and mannequin. Photos of her appeared inter alia. in Vogue (photographed by David Bailey ), and she got a small role in The Road to Hong Kong , with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope .

After a “friend” revealed the secret of her past to the Sunday People newspaper , April Ashley was leaked under the headline “Her 'secret is out”. She came to the center of attention and a huge scandal, her career as a model was over and the film scenes shot with her were cut out of the film.

This fatal fame and the fact that after her operation the British government did not issue her with proper papers after her operation also meant that no one wanted to hire her: “I was a waitress, hostess, sold art for a while ... but always if the story got out about me, I had to pack my seven things and go somewhere else. "

Marriage, divorce, scandal

In November 1960, Ashley had met the Honorable Arthur Corbett (later 3rd Baron Rowallan), an Eton graduate, son and heir to Lord Rowallan. According to April Ashley's statement, Arthur Corbett himself liked to secretly wear women's clothes; he was a transvestite , but wanted to suppress this because of his position; he knew April's past. They married in 1963 and lived in Spain most of the time, but the marriage soon failed. April's lawyers demanded alimony from Corbett in 1966, to which the latter responded with a lawsuit in 1967 to have the marriage annulled. The annulment was pronounced in 1971 by Judge Lord Justice Ormrod, on April Ashley's extremely hurtful and humiliating reason that she was allegedly "a man" - although Corbett knew about her background before they married; all of this with the keen interest of the press and in front of the public.

This judgment served as a precedent for the British judiciary , which for decades prevented the proper regulation and legalization of the status of transgender people in Great Britain (up to the Gender Recognition Act 2004).

1970s

In 1970 April Ashley worked at AD8 restaurant near Harrods . She was a kind of receptionist there who, because of her fame, was supposed to attract guests. However, through this work she was also seduced into drinking. According to her own account, she drank up to 32 martini per evening. After a few years this led to a heart attack and her health collapse.

Next life

Together with Duncan Fallowell she wrote the (auto) biographical book April Ashley's Odyssey , which was published in 1982.

In the 1980s she married Jeffrey West on the decommissioned cruise ship RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.

In the 1990s and early 2000s April tried again and again to have their true female gender legally recognized and transgender legislation changed, and also wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair and then Lord Chancellor .

It was not until 2005, a year after the Gender Recognition Act 2004 was passed, that April Ashley, now seventy years old, was legally recognized as a woman in Great Britain and was given a new birth certificate. John Prescott , the then Deputy Prime Minister, who she knew from the 1950s, helped her with the process.

“45 years and four months after I became the woman I wanted to be, I had a piece of paper to prove I really am April Ashley. I feel free at last. "

- April Ashley

“Forty-five years and four months after I became the woman I wanted to be, I had a piece of paper to prove I was April Ashley. I finally feel free. "

- April Ashley

In 2006 April Ashley edited an updated autobiography First Lady and appeared on UK television several times (on Channel Five News, This Morning and BBC News). In an interview she said: "This is the real story and contains a lot of things I just couldn't say in 1982". ) That concerned affairs with Michael Hutchence, Peter O'Toole , Omar Sharif , the sculptor Grayson Perry and the future 19th Duke of Infantado. However, the book was withdrawn when it was found to be largely a reprint of the 1982 book.

She lived in Fulham , South West London. Ashley died in late December 2021 at the age of 86.

Awards

Documentation

In 2011 the director Michiel van Erp shot the documentary I'm a woman now . This shows five former transsexual women (April Ashley, Bambi (Marie Pierre Pruvot), Colette Berends, Corinne van Tongerloo), which in the 50s and 60s in Casablanca of Dr. Georges Burou were operated on. In 2012 a film project about April Ashley's life was planned for Pacific Films and Limey Yank Productions. This project has not yet been implemented.

literature

  • Duncan Fallowell & April Ashley: April Ashley's Odyssey . Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1982. ISBN 978-0-224-01849-4 .
  • Douglas Thompson & April Ashley: First Lady . Blake Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-84454-231-9 .

Web links

Commons : April Ashley  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Pioneering trans model April Ashley gets honor from Queen Elizabeth Article by Dan Avery from July 27, 2012 on queerty.com. Accessed January 11, 2018.
  2. ↑ Liverpool model April Ashley MBE dies aged 86
  3. ↑ a b 'Her' secret is out - the extraordinary case of top model April Ashley Original excerpt from the Sunday People article from November 19, 1961 on the Daily Mail page. Accessed January 11, 2018.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k April Ashley: Early life biography on the site of the Museum of Liverpool. Accessed January 11, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b c d Short biography "Portrait of a Lady" Short biography of April Ashley on aprilashley.org. Accessed January 12, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b c April Ashley UK's transsexual subject pioneering new exhibition Article by Ruth Styles in the Daily Mail of September 26, 2013. Accessed on January 11, 2018. (english)
  7. ↑ Interview with April Ashley Article by John Preston from September 25, 2013 in The Telegraph. Accessed January 12, 2018.
  8. ↑ a b April Ashley: Life after Surgery biography on the Museum of Liverpool website. Retrieved January 12, 2018, viewed January 2018.
  9. ↑ New MBE List of newly appointed MBE in The Gazette from June 16, 2012. Accessed January 11, 2018. (English)
  10. ↑ a b "April Ashley, Portrait of a Lady" Exhibition description on aprilashley.org. Accessed January 11, 2018.
  11. ↑ European Diversity Award 2014 Article on eqview.com from October 3, 2014, archived on archive.org. Accessed January 11, 2018.
  12. ↑ Speech on the occasion of the award of the honorary doctorate at the University of Liverpool on December 7, 2016 Recording of the acceptance speech on youtube.com. Accessed January 11, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Ashley, April
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jamieson, George (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British model, trans pioneer and idol, actress
BIRTH DATE April 29, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Liverpool
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH London