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April Ashley was born in Great Britian in 1936. At first she desperately tried to keep that she was transsexual hidden. She even joined the Navy in a doomed attempt to awaken feelings of masculinity. From then on, April stopped trying to become a man and started dressing as a woman. Prior to surgery, April had been taking female hormones and living as a female. In 1957 (for two years), she worked as a showgirl at the Carousel, (the famous female impersonator nightclub) in Paris. After SRS in 1960 performed at Dr. Georges Burou's clinic in Casablanca, Morocco, she never again worked at the Carousel, despite the apartment and generous wage she was offered to stay.

In Gibraltar on 10th September 1963 she married Arthur Cameron Corbett (the heir of Lord Rowallen). Corbett, who prior to the marriage knew the facts of April's gender transition. The couple were together after marriage for only 14 days, although their relationship before marriage had lasted about three years. A petition by Corbett praying for a declaration that the ceremony of marriage which took place between himself and April, was null and void and of no effect, because the respondent at the time of the ceremony was a person of the male sex. The Rowallen family was seeking a basis on which to end the marriage and yet avoid the inheritance issues which would normally be raised. This was a landmark case which set a disastrous legal precedent in England which still affects transsexuals.

This significant precedent was thereby established, since up till that point no case law or legislative provisions for transsexual people was thought to have existed (although this belief is now questioned). After SRS transsexual people simply applied and were allowed to have their birth certificate altered, and they then simply enjoyed the normal status accorded to citizens of their new sex.

Desperate attempts, at the time to limit the effect of the judgement to the issue of marriage, in practice, as it remains the only judicial reference point in this matter, the outcome has been used as the basis on which to comprehensively deny transsexual citizens the most basic of civil rights.

April, as beautiful as ever, now lives in San Diego, California where she works as a guide and saleswoman in art galleries. Hopefully she has found some peace and happiness.

And don't miss visiting April's photography site image100.

All photos are with the kind permission of the owner Ms. April Ashley

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