Timeline of UK Transgender History

This is a Timeline of UK Transgender History. It is intended to cover the full range of trans life in the UK in the widest sense, including transgender, transvestism, intersex, etc...

• 850s – a woman from Wimborne Minster is supposedly elected Pope Joan.
• 1682 – James Barry, army surgeon, dies and is allegedly found to have been a woman.
• 1766 – Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont, the Chevalier d'Éon comes to live in England (until 1777, returning in 1785).
• 1920 – Havelock Ellis coins the term "Eonism after the Chevalier d'Éon.
• 1951 – Roberta Cowell (previously Robert Cowell) has sex-change surgery and has her birth certificate changed from male to female.
• 1960 – Georgina Turtle (previously George Turtle) has her birth certificate changed from male to female.
• 1966 – Founding of trans organisation the Beaumont Society.
• 1968 – the Home Secretary confirms that Sir Ewan Forbes is male and can succeed to the baronetcy, despite having been registered and originally brought up as female.
• 1971 – the Corbett v Corbett case, involving April Ashley, establishes the precedent that a person's sex could not legally be changed from what it was at birth.
• 1972 – release of trans-related film, I want what I want.
• 1989 – Rose's club founded.
• 1995 – Mermaids founded for children with gender dysphoria.
• 2004 – Gender Recognition Act 2004 allows people to legally change gender.
• 2011 – Death of Roberta Cowell (not made public until 2013)
• 2013 – Death of Georgina Somerset (née Turtle).

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