Five historical London cross-dressers
Posted at 10:15 am, November 20, 2011
http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2011/11/20/five-historical-london-cross-dressers/It's hard to stand out from the crowd in London, but where there's a will, there's a way. Read on to find out about five historical Londoners who dared to be very different indeed.
James Miranda Barry (above) so completely refused to let her gender hold her back that in 1812 she became the first woman to graduate as a British doctor, and she managed it by dressing as a man. She entered medical school in Edinburgh as a bloke, apprenticed at Guys and St Thomas' and practised as a surgeon in the army in South Africa before retiring to London. It was only discovered that she was a woman after her death. Clearly as talented an actor as she was a medic.
Ernest Boulton and Frederick Park are the sort of chaps who would be dancing the night away to a Lady Lloyd DJ set at Madam JoJos these days. They spent their evenings in silk and satin dresses cruising the Strand as 'Fanny' and 'Stella'. They were tried for 'conspiring and inciting persons to commit an offence' in 1871, but acquitted due to lack of evidence that men dressing as women was actually breaking any law.
