1921 –
Roberta is well known both for being the first UK trans person to undergo gender confirmation surgery (in 1951, two years before Christine Jorgensen in the US) and for her colourful existence as fighter pilot, prisoner of war (eventually liberated by the advancing Soviet army) and motor racing driver.
Many who seek to condemn transwomen accuse us of wishing to look like fifties fashion plates and this is largely because the well known transwomen who end up in so many fashion plates, like Roberta and Christine Jorgensen were living through the fashion revolution of Dior’s ‘new look’ in the fifties- so one might ask, just what were they supposed to wear?
Roberta was able to change her birth certificate fairly easily in those far flung days (this was, of course, in the days before the judgement in Corbett v Corbett (the Rowallan/Ashley case) changed trans people’s lives until the advent of the Gender Recognition Act in 2004. Roberta wrote an autobiography: ‘Roberta Cowell’s story’, which is still available.
Roberta Cowell was able to do what so many trans people wish to be able to do- simply to blend back in and to get on with her life after a mild flirtation with the ‘Hello’ of its day: ‘Picture Post’.