Roberta Cowell

"Robert" Cowell was classified as male at birth and was made to adopt a male role. As he grew up, he adopted increasingly rough habits, and extremely masculine dress. He became an engineer, a racing driver, one of the few fighter pilots who survived WWII, and eventually a prisoner of war.However, after the war Cowell sought psychological help for his increasingly frenetic behaviour.

The psychoanalysis revealed that Cowell was very feminine mentally, just as he was very feminine bodily and facially. Today we would say that he was intersex, and more female than male.

The psychoanalysis answered many questions. He realised that over the years he had struggled ever harder to maintain a male gender identity, which was not his. Now he set his mind to becoming as female, in body, as contemporary medicine would allow, and changed his name by deed poll from Robert Cowell to Roberta and got his birth certificate corrected. After changing her status officially, Roberta was divorced. But for a few months she was officially a woman, still married to another woman.

Thus Roberta Cowell became the first person in the UK to change gender, surgically. She wrote about her successful transition in Roberta Cowell’s Story, An Autobiography, to help others in a similar position.

See also:

• www.lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/history/robertacowell.htm
• www.carolrobson.co.uk/6.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberta_Cowell.

On Saturday the 13th of February we held a special event  to celebrate Roberta Cowell.

We had tea and cakes at the Croydon Clocktower, then walked to 4 Sydenham Road where flowers and informative plaques were left at the site of Roberta Cowell’s birthplace (now an office block) and then on to the Bird in Hand, further up Sydenham Road.

On arrival at the Bird in Hand, we viewed an exhibition about Roberta Cowell (slightly modified from the display which had been included in the LGBT History Month exhibitionin the Clocktower) and read some extracts from her biography. This was followed by a toast to Roberta Cowell, and photos.

We then had a private showing of two trans-related films: the short film Latecomers, directed by Olivia Humphreys about a gary man and a trans woman coming out later in life, and the a fascinating and very moving contemporary feature film XXY about an intersex girl.

The evening concluded with discussion about the films, and a buffet.

For more about Croydon's LGBT History Month events, and a link to some photos, see www.croydonlgbtnetwork.org.uk/historymonth.htm.

There was a brief article about the day's events in the Croydon Advertiser.