Roberta Cowell

Roberta Cowell (1918–2011) was the first known British male-to-female transsexual to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Born Robert Cowell in Croydon, she was a Spitfire pilot and subsequently a prisoner of war in World War II, and a racing driver after the war. She had a vaginoplasty in 1951, via a surgical method invented and performed by Dr Harold Gillies. This occurred two years before Christine Jorgensen's surgery in Denmark. Roberta Cowell's surgical transformation and friendship with the female-to-male transsexual Michael Dillon, also operated on by the plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, is documented in the book The First Man-Made Man by Pagan Kennedy. Roberta's life is described in her biography, Roberta Cowell's Story.

In 1951, Roberta was able to have her birth certificate changed, which later became impossible (following the Corbett v Corbett decision) until the recent Gender Recognition Act. She was thus technically in a same-sex marriage until her divorce.

In 2010, Croydon Trans Group held a celebration of Roberta Cowell's life as part of LGBT History Month.

Roberta Cowell died in October 2011, but this was known to few people, and was first reported two years later, in the Independent on Sunday.