April Ashley

English model, actress, author and restaurant hostess, outed as a transgender woman by the Sunday People newspaper in 1961, and one of the earliest British people known to have had sex reassignment surgery. Her marriage was annulled in a notable court case known as Corbett v Corbett (1969-1970).

She knew from youth that she was trapped in the wrong gender body and made a suicide attempt in her teens, receiving a dishonourable discharge from the Merchant Navy. A second suicide attempt resulted in Ashley being sent to the mental institution in Ormskirk aged 17 for treatments.

After leaving hospital Ashley moved to London, and having started cross-dressing, moved to Paris in the late 1950s, using the name Toni April and joining the famous French entertainer Coccinelle in the cast of the drag cabaret at the Carousel Theatre.

At the age of 25, having saved £3,000, Ashley had a seven-hour-long sex reassignment surgery on 12 May 1960, performed in Casablanca, Morocco by Georges Burou. She was the ninth person in the world to undertake such a surgery.

After returning to Britain, she began using the name April Ashley and became a successful fashion model, appearing in such publications as Vogue.

In November 1960, Ashley had met Hon. Arthur Corbett (later 3rd Baron Rowallan), the Eton-educated son and heir of Lord Rowallan. They wed in 1963, but the marriage quickly broke down, and was annulled in 1970. The judge ruled that the marriage was invalid since she had been born male.

After a heart attack in London, Ashley retired for some years to the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey she stated that Amanda Lear was assigned male at birth and they had worked together at Le Carousel where Lear had used the name Peki d'Oslo. Ashley was once great friends with Lear, but they had a major falling out.

In the 1980s, Ashley married Jeffrey West, on the retired cruise ship RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.