Roberta Elizabeth Marshall Cowell
Early life
Roberta Cowell was born in Croydon, London, on the 8th of April 1918, and assigned male at birth. She was one of three children of Major-General Sir Ernest Marshall Cowell and Dorothy Elizabeth Miller Cowell, Lady Cowell. Sir Ernest was a well-known and respected surgeon who had served as the director of medical services for the Allied Forces in North Africa during the Second World War, and was appointed Honorary Surgeon to King George VI in 1944.
She attended Whitgift School, a boys’ public school in Croydon, where she was bullied for her weight and ‘feminine’ body type, and given the nicknames ‘Circumference’ and ‘Bottom’. In her autobiography, Roberta Cowell’s Story, she described her antipathy at school towards anyone perceived as homosexual, and any form of male contact:
‘My inclinations, as they developed, were entirely heterosexual. I hated and loathed any boy who showed the slightest sign of being a ‘sissy’. I treated any homosexual overtures made to me with complete horror and dislike. Although I made friends with other boys, I could not bear any form of physical contact with a male. Even shaking hands was unpleasant, and it was quite impossible for me to stand having someone link his arm in mine.’
Roberta became interested in mechanics and spent an increasing amount of time in engineering workshops. She joined her school’s Motor Club, and decided that she wanted to become a racing motorist and designer of racing cars.
In 1931, at the age of 13, she suffered from a burst appendix and needed emergency surgery. This was carried out by her father, Sir Ernest.
As a teenager, Roberta increased her knowledge of motor racing by sneaking into the area where cars were serviced at the Brooklands Race Circuit in Surrey dressed as a mechanic and offering her help to any driver or mechanic who would accept it. She began competing as a driver as soon as she turned seventeen and became legally old enough to drive on the road, and quickly became successful as a racing driver, winning her class at the Land's End Speed Trial. She competed in the 1939 Antwerp Grand Prix.
University, marriage and war
In 1936 she began studying engineering at University College London, and joined the RAF as a pupil pilot. Although she was the youngest officer in the service at the time, she suffered from persistent nausea due to airsickness and was quickly discharged. When war broke out in 1939, she attempted to become a fighter pilot, ‘bombarding the Air Ministry with applications, requests for interview, and telephone calls’. Her efforts were unsuccessful, and in 1940 she instead enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps.
While studying at UCL, she met Diana Margaret Zelma Carpenter, who was also studying engineering and shared her interest in motor racing. Diana would be the first woman to graduate UCL with an engineering degree. They married in 1941 and had two daughters- Anne, born 1942, and Diana, born 1944. The marriage was not a success, and Roberta rarely mentioned it in her writing, calling it ‘an episode in my life which is best forgotten’.
‘My marriage had been unhappy; in spite of our two little girls…there had been an underlying air of falseness about it. It is difficult and painful for me to say much about this marriage. But it must be clear from the way we lived— our house was at Hove, in Sussex, and I worked 53 miles away, commuting by car seven days a week, with a weekly trip to Manchester, 290 miles away, thrown in—that the two paths of marriage never joined for very long in our case, and that the rocks between them were very high indeed.'
Despite her airsickness, in 1942 she was transferred from the Army to the RAF and served a tour in a front-line Spitfire squadron. In 1944, while flying over Fruges, France, the oxygen system of her plane suffered a malfunction, causing her to pass out. The plane flew on its own over occupied France while being subjected to anti-aircraft fire until Roberta regained semi-consciousness and managed to fly the plane back to base. A few months later, however, her plane was hit near Bocholt, Germany. She was able to guide it to a crash landing, but was captured by German troops.
While being transported to an interrogation centre in Frankfurt she made two unsuccessful escape attempts, first by diving through a viaduct tunnel while crossing a railway embankment and then jumping out of a train. She spent six weeks in the interrogation centre, three of which were in solitary confinement, before being officially designated a prisoner of war. Roberta was crammed onto a single train coach with a hundred and fifty men for five days before arriving at the Stalag Luft I prisoner-of-war camp in north-eastern Germany.
Roberta occupied her time in the camp teaching classes in automotive engineering to other prisoners. There was also a camp theatre where, due to the all-male environment, the female parts were played by men, but Roberta refused to get involved in this.
‘As always, the homosexuals took it for granted that I was one of their number… I was asked to play a female part in the camp theatre, but I refused without hesitation. I was still clinging to my masculinity. It had been quite different for the school play, where I had been virtually ordered to put on skirts. Here it would have been a public admission.’
Conditions in the camp were harsh, and worsened as the end of the war drew nearer. On one occasion the baker added shards of broken glass into the bread in retaliation for the death of his relatives in the Allied bombing of Hamburg. During a period where no Red Cross parcels came, the prisoners were forced to kill all the camp’s cats and eat them raw. ‘There is very little that you cannot eat if you are hungry enough’, she wrote.
Stalag Luft I was liberated by the Red Army on the 30th of April, 1945, by which time Roberta had been in the camp for five months. She was suffering from scabies and had lost three and a half stone.
Post-war and early transition
Once back in England Roberta quickly returned to racing, competing in ‘every possible event’. During her time in the prison camp, she had fantasised about what she would do after the war. Her goal was to design a car engine that would win the Grand Prix. In 1947 she and a partner started an automobile engineering firm, Cowell & Watson, borrowing thousands of pounds from her parents to do so.
‘Afterwards I was made to realise clearly that what was actually happening in this period was an attempt to compensate for the fact that I knew, deep down inside me, that I had a feminine nature. Outwardly I made frantic efforts to show the world at large how masculine and assertive I could be.’
Although she was following her dream, she found herself restless and unhappy. She began to secretly experiment with wigs, makeup and women’s clothing, eventually venturing out in public dressed as a woman. This put a strain on her already unhappy marriage, and she and Diana separated in 1948.
Roberta sought out psychiatric help from several different Freudian analysts, the last of whom gave her a series of tests including word association and ink-blot tests. These tests revealed, according to the analyst, that her unconscious mind was female.
‘The biggest shock my personal esteem got was when I discovered that my unconscious mind was predominantly female. Not only was it clearly shown by the tests, and the evidence was far too obvious to be denied, but as the analysis proceeded it became quite obvious that the feminine side of my nature, which all my life I had known of and severely repressed, was very much more fundamental and deep rooted than I had supposed.
I had confidently expected that the result of the analysis would be a discovery of the fact that I had an unconscious fear of losing my masculinity. I expected to find traces of the Oedipus complex and signs of repressed conflict between animal instincts and moral upbringing. I did not expect to find that, free of repressions, I was psychologically a woman!’
Roberta had spent her life striving to fit the masculine ideal and disdaining any male who showed any signs of femininity. To find these tendencies within herself horrified her, and led her to contemplate suicide. Her horror was both personal and moral. She held eugenicist principles, which dictated that a clear distinction between men and women was a sign of racial superiority, whereas in ‘lesser’ races the line was blurred. It seemed to her that her own existence violated this racial ideal.
‘According to [Russian philosopher and esotericist] Ouspensky one of the chief signs of racial degeneration is a weakening of the distinguishing marks of the male and female. In my own case my secondary sex-characteristics were poorly developed, and I had some female characteristics. It seemed to me that here was a strong moral argument for putting an end to my life.
The only argument in favour of continuing my existence seemed to be that as time went on I might become better adapted to life, and might become a useful member of the community. There was also the possibility that my intense death-wish was due to some residual psychological trouble which might resolve itself in time.
I decided that I would leave it for a year, during which time I would do everything possible to make a go of things. If at the end of twelve months I still felt the same, then I considered I should be justified in taking my own life.’
Having decided to ‘make a go of things’, Roberta underwent a thorough physical examination by a famous sexologist in Harley Street. The sexologist, according to Roberta, found that her body showed ‘quite prominent feminine sex characteristics’. He told her that ‘there seemed to be some degree of hermaphroditism present’, and that she might have female internal organs. This would form the basis of Roberta’s lifelong assertions that she was ‘biologically female’, which became a core part of her self-identity.
‘I found that this knowledge raised my morale very considerably. The intense shame I had felt began to disappear. Once I realised that my femininity had a substantial physical basis I did not despise myself so much. True, I now knew I was physically abnormal, but at least I could accept a degree of femininity without losing self-respect.’
Although she was beginning to envision the prospect of one day living as a woman, Roberta was still apprehensive about the stages in between. In particular, she was repulsed by the prospect that more people might perceive her as a homosexual.
‘One thing was certain; I had not the slightest desire to swell the ranks of the gentlemen of no particular gender. It is true that I had become a little more tolerant in this direction, and had I met one I would have refrained from actually kicking his spine up through the top of his head, but only with an effort. It was most desirable that I should allow some of my innate femininity to express itself, but I had not the slightest desire to become effeminate, which was an entirely different thing.’
In order to make her transition a success she felt she needed more understanding of the world of women, which she would not find in the very male-dominated environment of racing and engineering. Once again borrowing a large sum of money from her parents, she became a stakeholder in Sheridan of London Designs, which made haute couture dresses for films and celebrities. This allowed her to become, at least in name, the company’s managing director, and to apprentice with a ‘celebrated woman designer’ to learn all she could about women’s fashion. Moving from the world of engineering to haute couture forced her into proximity with the people she had tried all her life to avoid.
‘There were, of course, a lot of effeminate men and mannish women in our world. I rather liked most of the women, but could never get over an instinctive dislike of the “pansies”’
In November 1948 Roberta met Lisa Morrell, who would become a lifelong friend, partner, and confidante. Within a few days of meeting her, Roberta told her about the transition she was about to undertake. They decided to move in together, and for the sake of propriety, since Roberta was still publicly presenting as a man, Lisa adopted the identity of her wife. The exact nature of their relationship is not known, although a close friend of Roberta’s has claimed that they were romantically involved during this time. Lisa later described her experience living with Roberta during the turbulent period of her early transition in a two-part article for the Sunday Dispatch.
‘To those people who knew nothing of his inner struggle, Bob must have seemed moody and difficult to get on with, and I often wished I could explain this but it was impossible.
How could I tell them what he was like when we were alone together; how he was when he no longer considered it necessary to “put up a front” in order to hide his fading masculinity? With me he was bewildered and uncertain. Often he suffered a lot of pain which was in itself frightening. It is one thing to suffer a known pain– that is bearable– but his was unknown and unexplored.’
Around 1949 or 1950 Roberta began treatment under Alison Macbeth, the same ‘lady doctor’ who had helped Michael Dillon break the news of his transition to his family. Roberta described Macbeth as ‘a brilliant woman doctor, a specialist in glands’, and for some time she and Lisa moved into Macbeth’s house, to allow Roberta to be under constant observation. She was examined by a series of gynaecologists, endocrinologists and a professor of anatomy, who, she wrote, pronounced her case as ‘very unusual indeed, apparently unique of its type, certainly as far as British medical history went’.
Under Macbeth’s care Roberta began taking oestrogen, which rapidly changed her appearance. Although she still dressed as a man in public, people nevertheless treated her differently. Strangers began to openly speculate about her gender, and she estimated that about half the people she encountered would ‘go out of their way to treat me as though I were an unpleasant, perverted freak.’
‘It was necessary to resign myself to the fact that, whether I liked it or not, I was now midway between the two sexes. I could not be completely convincing as a male, but would have been equally unconvincing had I tried to live as a female.’
Michael
Although Roberta regarded her case as ‘almost unique’, she was nevertheless drawn in when she came across a book that described people with similar experiences. She wrote to Michael Dillon, author of Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology via his publishers, asking to meet. He was initially reluctant but eventually agreed to meet her for lunch.
Michael makes only one appearance in Roberta’s autobiography, in an account of their first meeting that takes up little more than a page. She makes no acknowledgment of any kind of romantic relationship between them, or even that their relationship continued beyond this one meeting.
‘He was a good deal younger than I had expected, and wore a full beard. His hair was beginning to thin and had receded at the temples. Not bad looking, he was a very masculine type. He was apparently a misogynist, and appeared to have a low opinion of women.
After lunch we sat talking over coffee, and he lit his pipe. We were discussing the connection between sex and intelligence, I, of course, maintaining that, given equal opportunities, women can be the mental equal of men. He disagreed violently.
Then came the surprise, a surprise so shattering that the scene will be crystal clear in my memory for the rest of my life. He sat there, sucking at his pipe and toying with his coffee cup. He was silent for a minute or two, and I was idly wondering how long that beard of his had taken to grow.
Suddenly, “I don’t really see why I shouldn’t tell you,“ he said, “but five years ago I was a woman.”
Roberta begged Michael for help with the next stages of her transition. She had found herself trapped in a legal and medical limbo. Although she could no longer ‘pass’ as a man, she had been unable to find a surgeon willing to operate on her. She faced a legal hurdle in obtaining surgery, and thus being able to legally change her sex, that Michael had not.
The misogyny of the medical and legal system had, ironically, worked to Michael’s advantage. There was no legal obstacle for him to surgically alter a body which was classified as ‘female’- indeed, the modification and removal of women’s sexual organs, sometimes non-consensually, formed much of the basis of the field of gynaecology.
But the alteration of a body classified as ‘male’ carried serious legal consequences. No British doctor would consent to perform an orchidectomy (removal of the testicles), because a centuries-old law known as ‘mayhem law’ banned the removal of any healthy body part from a man who had the potential to become a soldier. This left Roberta in a double-bind. As long as she was still considered male, she could not legally have her testicles removed, but she could not change her legal sex until she had had the operation.
She presented this quandary to Michael, who, immediately enamoured with her, agreed to help. He was studying medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, while Roberta lived in London, but they began exchanging frequent letters, sometimes two or three a day. Only Michael’s side of this correspondence survives.
Later in life, Roberta denied that she had ever been romantically interested in Michael, and described his infatuation with her as entirely one-sided. Since only Michael’s letters have survived, the truth of this is impossible to verify. From his letters it is clear that he sincerely believed they were in a romantic relationship that was destined for marriage, and she gave him reason to believe this. She sent him photos of herself to display on his mantelpiece, and even met his family as his prospective future wife. Whatever Roberta’s real feelings towards Michael were, it seems clear that, at the least, she allowed him to believe that his feelings were reciprocated, and she apparently made no objection when in March 1951 Michael announced their engagement to his friends and family. Aside from his sincere desire to help Roberta, the question of her orchidectomy took on personal stakes for Michael. He had already legally changed his sex, but their marriage could not take place until Roberta had changed hers.
Michael’s own surgeries had been performed by pioneering plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies. He tried to persuade Gillies to perform Roberta’s orchidectomy, but although he was very sympathetic, Gillies was unwilling to take on the legal risk. Nor could they find another surgeon who would.
In desperation, Roberta asked Michael to perform the orchidectomy himself. Her hope was that once Michael had removed her testicles she could have her sex legally changed and then return to Gillies, who could confirm that she had never been a ‘proper man’, and would then be willing to perform the more complicated surgery of vaginoplasty (constructing a vagina).
Michael was horrified by this request. He was in his fifth year of medical school, but his only surgical experience was one appendectomy performed under the supervision of a surgeon, and he had never even seen an orchidectomy performed. But unable to find an alternative, he eventually allowed himself to be persuaded. ‘If you have a qualified man who could do the job so much the better’, he wrote, ‘but if it is a choice between myself and the family butcher I would rather do it’. They drew up a handwritten document in an attempt to protect Michael from legal consequences if the operation went wrong and Roberta was injured or died.
‘I, R.C. have, of my own free will asked and persuaded LMD, who I am aware is an unqualified man, a fifth year medical student, to perform an orchidectomy upon me. I am also aware that his operating experience has been confined solely to assisting at operations as a resident pupil in hospital and to one appendectomy in the presence of a surgeon and that he has neither seen nor practised this particular operation and is aware of his deficiencies. I desire that he be absolved from all responsibility in this operation, due to possible haemorrhage or sepsis, which I am desirous to undergo being fully aware that either might, per fortunam, be fatal.’
The orchidectomy, which occurred some time in 1950, was carried out in Dr Macbeth’s house, apparently on her kitchen table. In a later letter Michael quoted a line from a hymn, Father, hear the prayer we offer, which he apparently recited while performing the operation, and which he wanted played at their wedding:
‘Be our strength in hours of weakness, in our wanderings be our guide, in endeavour, failure, danger, Father be thou at our side.’
Despite Michael’s inexperience, the surgery was a success. Once recovered, Roberta visited Dr George Dusseau, an eminent gynaecologist, to once again be examined. Her hope was that Dusseau would discover her lack of testicles and write a statement that she had been born intersex, allowing her to legally change her sex. This risky strategy succeeded. Dusseau agreed to write the statement, and on May 17th, 1951, she became legally female.
The legal barrier to Michael and Roberta’s marriage was now eliminated. Michael was nearing the end of his last year at Trinity College. He had sent Roberta a ring wrapped up in a Players cigarette package, and instructed her not to open it until he had passed his final exams. He was afraid that he might fail, and he didn’t want to put the official seal on their engagement until he knew that he had qualified as a doctor and could provide for a wife.
In July 1951 Michael found out that he had passed his final exams and qualified as a doctor. He wrote to Roberta and told her to open the package containing the ring.
But Roberta rejected him. They met and she explained her reasons. The details of what she said are unknown- Roberta never revealed them, and Michael never wrote about her at all. Although in her own autobiography she called him ‘as genuine a man as any I had ever met’, she later told her biographer Liz Hodgkinson that ‘as far as I was concerned it [marrying Michael] would have been two females getting married, and I was certainly not interested in him in that kind of way’.
Her relationship with Lisa, whatever its nature, may have played a role in her rejection of Michael. In his letters, he refers to Lisa as the ‘TQ’, short for ‘tertium quid’, a Latin phrase meaning ‘third thing’- i.e. a third wheel. On several occasions he urged Roberta to cut off her relationship with Lisa. If Roberta felt that she had to choose between them, her choice is evident. Lisa remained her closest companion until her death in the late 1980s.
Vaginoplasty and publicity
With the orchidectomy complete and her sex legally changed, Roberta’s vaginoplasty was carried out by Dr Gillies in 1952. It was the first time this operation had ever been carried out in Britain, and there was almost no medical literature available, so Gillies developed his own technique, which he practiced on medical cadavers. Lisa cared for her after the operation and filled her hospital room with flowers.
When she had recovered from the vaginoplasty, Roberta returned to Gillies for further plastic surgery, this time on her face- giving her a ‘slightly retroussé’ nose and fuller lips. The purpose of this, she claimed, was to prevent herself from being recognised by people who had known her before her transition.
‘Although my body had changed completely…my face was still fundamentally the same.
It was certainly a lot younger-looking, and far softer than before, with a definite feminine aspect, but it was still quite recognisable, particularly in profile. There was an ever present fear that I might meet someone I had known previously who would recognise me.
The plan, therefore, was to have my face drastically altered. Then I should not have to fear recognition, residual traces of masculinity could be removed, and, incidentally, I could be made better-looking.’
The same year as she underwent her vaginoplasty, Roberta’s divorce from her wife Diana was made final. She had cut off all contact with her two young daughters, Anne and Diana, who had no idea what had become of the person they had known as their father. She would never have any communication with either of them again.
The story of Roberta’s transition became public on March 6th, 1954. It is not known who leaked the story to the press- it may have been Roberta herself. She released a press statement emphasising that her change of sex had come about as the result of an intersex condition, and claiming that she had always had ovaries. The surgeries and hormone treatment were presented as ‘expediting’ a change of sex that was already naturally occurring. Michael’s illegal role as her surgeon was, of course, never mentioned.
Roberta became a well-known public figure almost overnight. She and Lisa travelled to France and Italy, but were pursued by journalists wherever they went. She made a deal with the Picture Post to publish her story in installments for which, according to a rival tabloid, she was paid £20,000. The money was sorely needed, as she still owed thousands of pounds from the collapse of her engineering firm.
Newspaper coverage emphasised the uniqueness of her story, particularly the fact that she had fathered two children. Her ex-wife Diana had remarried quickly after the divorce, and her daughters were being cared for by their maternal grandmother. She told their elder daughter Anne, aged 11, about Roberta’s transition, but her younger daughter Diana was told nothing until she found out from a newspaper several years later. As an adult, Diana attempted to contact Roberta, but received no reply.
Roberta publicly emphasised the complete change in her personality and the newfound femininity of her nature, while also denying that in her life as a man she had ever been effeminate. She stressed this distinction on the very first page of her autobiography.
‘I was not an effeminate male. I knew that my body had certain feminine characteristics, but no one ever suspected this because I compensated for it by endeavouring to be as aggressively masculine as possible. It was only after the war, when a violent emotional shock upset my glandular system and my feminine characteristics became more marked, that I realised the extent of my physical abnormalities. I ceased to fight against my femininity and accepted it. I became a feminist male, then a boyish woman, and finally a feminine woman. The change has been so great that it is extremely difficult for me to realise that I was once a Spitfire pilot with a liking for pretty girls, that I once hated children, that I violently shunned anything which could possibly be classified as ‘sissy’.
She often spoke about her desire to marry and have children, describing herself as having a strong maternal instinct. Her existing children were almost never mentioned.
Although initial press coverage took Roberta’s story at face value, some articles began to express skepticism. On March 14th, The People published an article titled ‘Roberta is no real woman’, emphasising that ‘just as Roberta had never been a full-blooded male, so she will never be a hundred percent female capable of motherhood.’ Her father, Sir Ernest, issued a statement supporting Roberta’s version of events.
‘I had a son Robert who is now Roberta, my daughter. Her mother and I had noticed her personality changing over the past few years.
Now her skin is white, her hands delicate and her bust has fully developed.
I can say, not only as her father, but as a doctor, that she is recognisable in every way as a woman, and her mother and I are both satisfied that she is now completely female.
It is obvious, of course, that the change must still be a gradual one. She cannot alter overnight from being a “tough young man” into a “pretty girl” at the age of 34. But her mental outlook is essentially feminine.’
He also told the Daily Herald that he believed it was ‘quite on the cards’ for Roberta to bear children, but was forced to retract this in an interview a week later. In this interview, the Daily Herald challenged his statement that Roberta was ‘completely female’ (implying the presence of a womb and ovaries), and forced him to agree that she was a ‘transvestist’.
On March 21st, the Weekly Dispatch published an article entitled ‘A Challenge to Roberta Cowell’.
‘Millions of people all over the world are asking: ‘Is Roberta Cowell really a woman in the complete sense– or is she just an effeminate man who has convinced himself he has changed sex?'
The mystery grew deeper last week as doctors, friends of Cowell’s, and people who knew this person well expressed doubts about the alleged changes.
The mystery of Cowell’s sex can only be solved medically. The Sunday Dispatch therefore issues this challenge to Roberta Cowell:
SUBMIT YOURSELF TO A FULL EXAMINATION BY MEDICAL EXPERTS SELECTED BY US, WE WILL PAY ALL EXPENSES AND WILL PUBLISH THE RESULT. IF THEY AGREE THAT THE MAN WHO WAS ROBERT COWELL IS INDEED A WOMAN IN THE FULL SENSE OF THE WORD WE WILL TELL OUR READERS THAT YOUR CHANGE IS GENUINE.’
There is no indication that Roberta ever responded to this challenge.
The People was particularly hostile in its coverage of Roberta. On the 11th of April, they published an article titled ‘Roberta: the ghastly truth at last’, which claimed that ‘the public has been misled’ about her case, denying that any physical changes had taken place naturally or that Roberta had ‘a single feminine organ’.
'There was no physical condition that called for the operations...They were done purely to meet Cowell's abnormal craving and because the psychiatrists thought his mental condition justified them.'
The article concluded by calling on an MP to challenge the alteration of Roberta’s birth certificate in Parliament, and for her to be re-registered as male. Another article expressed revulsion at Roberta ‘posing for ‘glamour’ shots’, and reported with horror on her stated desire to marry a man.
The backlash was never universal, and most press coverage more or less accepted her version of the story. Roberta’s autobiography was published in the spring of 1954, and was serialised in forty countries.
Later life
After the first intense burst of coverage, the press attention began to die down. Roberta faded from public view until she re-entered the public eye two years later when she attempted to return to flying.
The Daily Herald reported that she was now flying jet planes for experimental medical research. Although she initially claimed that her transition had caused her to lose interest in her former masculine pursuits, she made many attempts to return to flying and racing over the course of her life. She went back on her previously expressed desire to marry and have children, telling reporters in 1956 ‘I have no intention of getting married and I intend to devote myself to flying’.
In 1957 she returned to racing, setting the record of fastest woman driver in the Shelsley Walsh Hill Climb, and appearing in a British Pathe news reel. She had won the same race prior to her transition in 1948. She told the Daily Mirror:
‘If I married I would have to chuck up flying and racing…you can’t compromise. After winning my first car race as a woman I’m hardly likely to throw it all away’.
Her second attempt at a racing career failed to fully take off. In June 1958 she appeared in court for bankruptcy proceedings, with debts of £12,800 and no assets. £8616 of the money was owed to her father, Sir Ernest. She told the Daily Express that she was unable to find a job which wasn’t linked to her transition, and she didn’t want to make money out of ‘being a freak’.
‘I can get a job, playing the piano, at £1000 a week– provided the label of sex-change goes along with it.
I could always get my hands onto good money. But that would be debasing myself.’
She described future plans to race in the Grand Prix, and to break jet flight records, but none of these materialised. The second volume of her autobiography which she was working on was never published.
In 1969, she brought a libel action against author and journalist Ursula Bloom for her book ‘The Mightier Sword’, which disparaged Roberta’s driving and cast doubts on her claims about the nature of her transition. Bloom apologised, and unpublished copies of the book were withdrawn. The following year she was quoted in The Guardian stating her opposition to gender-affirming care for trans people being provided by the then newly set up Gender Identity Unit, and describing discomfort with people who had written to her asking for help with their own transitions. “It is extremely distressing that so many people think they can change sex just like that. Sex is fixed at conception and cannot be changed.”
In an interview with the Sunday Times in 1972, promoting the unpublished second volume of her autobiography, she expressed further disdain for trans people, claiming that she had XX chromosomes, and further underlined that she had nothing in common with trans people. She also expressed her opposition to the Women’s Lib movement.
“I was a freak. I had an operation and I’m not a freak any more. I had female chromosome make-up, XX. The people who have followed me have often been those with male chromosomes, XY. So they’ve been normal people who’ve turned themselves into freaks by means of the operation.
At Hammersmith hospital the surgeons carry out about two operations a month. Many of those people will regret the operation later. There have been attempted suicides. They don’t change sex, as everyone knows, because the operation doesn’t alter the chromosomes.
Many people thought they could copy me. But it’s like admiring someone without legs, like Bader, and having your legs off to be the same. Or it’s more like seeing a thalidomide child, and having an operation to be the same.”
The article also alludes to her sexuality, in contrast to the stringently heterosexual image she had presented in the 1950s.
‘She’s never sought the company of men, though she’s found they’ve sought hers. “When the story first broke I received 400 proposals. Some of them of marriage. I could have had titles, money, the lot.” She’s always preferred women, but this isn’t something she’d write about, out of consideration to friends.’
The same year, at the age of 53, Roberta made yet another attempt to return to racing. This was cut short when she was charged with dangerous driving for driving the wrong way on the M1 motorway. She was fined £100 and banned from driving for a year.
Lisa Morrell, who had remained Roberta’s closest companion, died in the late 1980s. For decades they had lived in neighbouring houses and seen each other every day. After Lisa’s death Roberta took over caring for her dozens of foster cats. She moved into sheltered housing in the 1990s.
Roberta died in 2011 at the age of 93, in her flat in Hampton, West London. Only six people attended her cremation, and her death was not reported on until two years later. In 2013 the Independent interviewed her two daughters, then aged 69 and 71. Both expressed their sadness that they had never gotten to know her in later life.
"I just think it's sad we could never be friends," says Anne, "especially now we know that at the end she died alone in sheltered housing."
"She was an extraordinary woman," says Diana. " I would have loved to have been with her before she died, and said, we are your family, and whatever happens there is a bond that nothing can change."