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26 March 2024

Lyn Raskin: Part III - Comments

Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinic 

Part II: Transition

Part III: comments

If Lyn Raskin is still alive she will be 93/4.

One hopes that she did not come to a bad end, but overestimating how well ones passes and having sex with straight men is a dangerous game. We know of other trans women who were murdered in such circumstances.

----

January 1969-July 1970. That is certainly a fast-track transition. Several surgeons would not accept her as she had not done a 12-month real-life test – “capacity to earn, dress and live as a female” as Money put it. Burou did not insist on such.

----

I do not start referring to Raskin as Lyn until she started dressing as female. She gave the same name to her diary, which she addressed as ‘Dear Lyn’ – so it was confusing. In addition even after starting transition she was using the name Edward. It was Edward who contacted Christine Jorgensen. I use ‘he’ or ‘she’ to signify whether Raskin is doing whatever as Edward or as Lyn.

----

Irmis Johnson was a noted journalist. Much of her work can be found in newspaper archives, but there is no webpage – and especially not Wikipedia page devoted to her. There should be,

----

Reviews of Diary of a Transsexual are almost non-existent in either the press or in academic journals. The only one I found was by Una Nowling on the Transas City site. Una writes: 

"Lyn, as she writes of herself, is a broken person. She has no real career over the course of the book, stuck in the doldrums of being a multiply-failed scriptwriter and lyricist for the stage, living on handouts from her father and menial jobs here and there." 

In Los Angeles they speak of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams after the 1933 hit song, as many thousands flock to Hollywood with dreams of making it in movies, but only a few succeed. Two films that capture this well are Sunset Boulevard, 1950 and The Day of the Locust, 1975. Likewise there are many broken dreams in New York, London, Paris and Rome. The failed aspirant is an inevitable, indeed an integral part of show-biz. Lyn Raskin was part of this demographic. It is not an easy life.

----

In Joanne Meyerowitz's How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States there are two (only two) mentions of Lyn Raskin. On p162 in a paragraph about negotiations to reduce the cost of surgery we find: 

"In 1970, Lyn Raskin convinced Georges Burou to reduce his $4000 fee to $1500". 

And on p201 we find 

"The new trend in autobiographies continued in later publications, although none surpassed Take My Tool in pornographic content. In 1972 Olympia Press published Lyn Raskin’s Diary of a Transsexual, in which she, too, described her sex life as a gay man and later as a woman." 

That is all. Raskin's book is much more than that. Unlike Benjamin's other patients she gives little details of the doctors’ offices and the prices they charge.


Jeffrey Escoffier mentions Raskin in his Sex, Society, and the making of Pornography. He writes 

“In 1972, Olympia Press, the Paris-based publisher of erotic and sexually provocative books by Henry Miller, Jean Genet, William Burroughs, and Vladimir Nabokov, published Lyn Raskin’s Diary of a Transsexual, which described her sex life as a gay man and as a woman, after her operation.” 

That is all.

----

$20 for an appointment with Benjamin in 1969. Using this inflation calculator, $20 in 1969 would be $169 now. $4000 for surgery in 1969 would be $33,800 now; $1500 would be $12,700.

----

Raskin dismisses Dr Money’s requirement that she must “earn, dress and live as a female before undergoing irrevocable surgery” as ridiculous in that drag was illegal in New York State. Was it?

In March 1964, Felicity Chandelle/John Miller was arrested in New York near her home by an officer of the West 128th Precinct for a violation of Section 887, Subdivision 7 of the New York Code of Criminal Procedure which designates as a vagrant any person who 'having his face painted, discolored, covered, or concealed, or being otherwise disguised in a manner calculated to prevent his being identified, appears on a road, lot, wood, or enclosure'. The law dates back to the 1840s when farmers were disguising as 'Indians' to harass Dutch landowners in the Anti-Rent Movement. Despite having no criminal intent John Miller was sentenced to two days, suspended. This resulted in losing his job with Eastern Airlines after 25 years, because such behavior ‘signaled homosexuality’, even though an Eastern Airlines manager actually phoned Harry Benjamin and was reassured that the conviction in no way impacted on Miller's competence as a pilot.

In April 1967, Mauricio Archibald, en femme, having been to a masquerade party, was on a New York subway platform waiting for a train. He winked at a passing police officer who then approached and asked if he were a boy or a girl, Archibald replied: "I am a girl". The officer charged him as being a vagrant in violation of subdivision 7 of section 887. He was tried and convicted.

Section 105 of chapter 681 of the Laws of 1967, which repealed section 887, came into effect as of September 1, 1967, "provided that the newly enacted sections were not to apply or govern the prosecution for any offense committed prior to the effective date of the act".

However it was still the case that a bar or club could be closed and patrons arrested, simply because a single person, deemed to be cross-dressed, was present. The Queens Liberation Front was founded in 1970, and they campaigned and hired lawyers to de-criminalize cross-dressing in New York, which was achieved in 1971. The words "homosexuals, lesbians, or persons pretending to be ..." were also struck, thus decriminalizing gay clubs and parties. In addition, the still extant 1965 Anti-Mask: New York Penal Law criminalizing "the wearing of mask or disguises by three or more persons in a public place" was found inapplicable to those in drag.

On the streets before September 1967 and in bars and clubs before 1971 there were many trans persons dressing as who they really were. See my The four years leading to Stonewall – a New York timeline for a partial list.

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In September 1969 Dr Rish spoke of a Dr Jones who required a record of cross-living before gender surgery. This was presumably Howard Jones at Johns Hopkins who did the operations on Phyllis Wilson and Dawn Langley Hall.

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Many of us do not fit into the typologies that are proposed for trans women. Raskin was definitely androphilic, but as a late transitioner was not a Blanchard ‘homosexual transsexual’. She insisted that she was a Benjamin Type 6 - Transsexual, true, high intensity”. But she was not. A type six would not have done nothing for 16 years after being fed a line by the doctor in Miami. Raskin did not dress as female, did not seek out other trans women, did not seek out trans social activities, didn’t grow her hair in the late sixties when even men were doing so. She wrote: “I’ve always loved ladies’ clothing. I love the feel of silk next to my body. I've been wearing women’s panties for more than five years. They give me a sexy feeling.” (September 14, 1969). So did Cary Grant and Al Capone apparently – that alone does not constitute transsexuality.

I think that Wollman was right to initially assign Raskin as Type 4. After 16 years of not doing anything, the onus was on Raskin to demonstrate that she was trans.

----

Some of the trans happenings in New York in the 1960s that Raskin was apparently oblivious of prior to January 1969:

  • The opening and growth of Harry Benjamin’s practice with transsexuals.
  • Harry Benjamin’s 1966 book.
  • The opening of the gender clinic at Johns Hopkins
  • The fuss when the press discovered Phyllis Wilson, Johns Hopkins first trans operation.
  • Rachel Harlow winning the Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant, 1968.
  • Siobhan Fredericks’ Turnabout
  • The Casa Suzanna events (although Raskins would probably have rejected them for their heterosexualism).
  • Darrell G Raynor’s A Year Among the Girls. (again heterosexualist)
  • The Lee Brewster organized drag balls for the Mattachine Society.
  • The drag performances at the Ridiculous Theatrical Company.
  • The Gilded Grape.
  • Female mimics magazine.
  • Carlson Wade’s She-male: the amazing true-life story of Coccinelle.

And in June 1969, The Stonewall riots.

However she does mention the Mattachine Society and The Boys in the Band – of which she read the script.

-----

·         Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2002: 162, 201.
·         Una Nowling. “Book Review – Diary of a Transsexual [Lyn Raskin]”.  Transas City. Archive.
·         Jeffrey Escoffier. Sex, Society, and the making of Pornography.  Rutgers Univerity Press, 2021: 171. 


25 March 2024

Lyn Raskin: Part II - transition

Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinic 

Part II: Transition

Part III: comments

Raskin was looking for a writer to write her biography, and a friend suggested Irmis Johnson, a noted journalist whom the Hearst company had sent to Copenhagen in 1953 to meet Christine Jorgensen. This had resulted in five consecutive weekly articles in the the American Weekly, actually written by Johnson but attributed to Jorgensen. Johnson expressed interest and even gave Jorgensen’s contact details. Raskin as Edward phoned several times starting the next day, and Christine told Raskin that her autobiography was being filmed. During this period Raskin continued attempting his theatre career as Edward. Wollman told Raskin that she should start to live in female clothes

In May Raskin got a reply from Dr Money at Johns Hopkins. Money said that “I had to prove my capacity to earn, dress and live as a female before undergoing irrevocable surgery” (May 3, 1969). Raskin and Wollman dismissed this as ridiculous as thry thought that drag was illegal in New York State (unlike Maryland – where Johns Hopkins is – where it was legal).

After feedback from possible publishers re an advance or not, Irmis Johnson bowed out from the project.

The next appointment at the Benjamin clinic was with Dr Benjamin himself, as Wollman would in future be seeing his patients at his Coney Island practice – although Raskin did visit him there to have a mole removed. Benjamin revealed that a) Wollman had her down as a “Type 4 – Transsexual, nonsurgical” b) the pills that Wollman had prescribed were not estrogen but Dilantin. In Jan Wälinder’s 1967 Transsexualism: a study of forty-three cases, he had reported finding an abnormal EEG in 28% of a group of transvestites and transsexuals, and that an anti-convulsive drug had led to a cessation of the desire to cross-dress in some cases. Benjamin had tested this on a few volunteers, but Wollman had prescribed surreptitiously. 

Raskin asserted strongly that she was a “Type 6 – Transsexual, true, high intensity” and that the Dilantin had not decreased her urge to transition. Benjamin asked whether Raskin would still want to become a woman if she could not have sex afterwards. Raskin replied: “I said I wouldn’t but I understand once the vagina is created you can have fulfilling sexual relations”. Benjamin gave a subscription for real estrogen. (May 3, 1969)

The visits to Benjamin were $20 and the estrogen was $3.75 for fifty capsules.

At a final visit to Wollman’s office in Coney Island to finish the warts treatment Raskin expressed her displeasure at being classified as a Type 4, and over the Dilantin.

Benjamin transferred Raskin to his new associate Charles Ihlenfeld, and Raskin went in for hormone shots every second week. Benjamin wrote a letter to excuse Raskin from jury duty. Raskin finally started electrolysis having found an electrolysist who would do it for $10 per hour (most charged $20), and also started to let her hair grow. In September she bought dresses for the first time, and tried wearing them in the apartment. She finally had her nose job with Dr Rish. She spoke to Rish re sex change operations, and he claimed that he did not do them, but mentioned a Dr Jones who required a record of cross-living. A week later she wrote to Dr Burou in Casablanca to ask his prices.

In her diary she wrote: “I have definitely decided against having any New York doctors perform the sex operation on me. They require you to come to their office and have a castration done there — with only a local anesthetic. Then a month later they complete the surgery in a hospital.” (October 8, 1969). 

Two weeks after her letter, she received an answer from Dr Burou: 

“I received your letter of October 9. The cost of surgery and 15 days of hospital is $4000. You must send it before you arrive to the enclosed address. [It was a Swiss bank.] If you can come with another patient I can do the two operations for $7000. I have not a brochure or the itinerary for transportation, but you can find that in any travel office in New York City. You have not need to bring many things. Only your clothes. You can make operation of breast implant here, but is necessary that the Doctor see you before — and difficult for me to tell you what is the cost of the operation.

                                            Sincerely yours,

PS. Please if you think coming in April send to me a confirmation for reservation.” (October 20, 1969). 

In November Raskin wrote back and said that she could afford only $2000. 

For the first time, through a common friend, Raskin met with another transsexual, and compared notes. In January 2000 Look Magazine had a feature on transsexuals. Raskin felt chagrin in that she had approached them a year previously – however Look specifically featured transsexuals who had already transitioned.

Finally Raskin started wearing female clothing outside, but only after make-up sessions and shopping with female friends. Edward told the building superintendent that his sister Lyn would be staying in the apartment. Lyn met several transsexuals at a party given by her electrolysist. She was doing electrolysis as much as six hours a week. A friend suggested Maurice GirodiasOlympia Press to publish Lyn’s autobiography. Girodias was in New York after being pressured out of Paris in 1963. Lyn presumably did not know of his practice of not paying his writers.

Both Lyn and Edward had a joint bank account, and the manager, citing a possible discrepancy, insisted that both Lyn and Edward come in together. (May 7, 1969)

Edward had met Zelda Suplee twenty years earlier in the town of Homestead, Florida. Lyn encountered her again as she was now the director of the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF). Zelda was due to return to Florida, and said that she would visit Lyn’s father and explain things – although when there she was unable to do more than phone him. Zelda, Lyn, Dr Wollman, Constance (who had met Lyn at their electrologist, and had recently returned from completion surgery in Casabalanca) and cis actress Pamela Lincoln (who was purportedly seeking information about transsexuals and ten years later would be in the film Tootsie) were in a 28 minute filmed discussion sponsored by EEF. By this time Raskin had a job as Lyn, working from home doing sales promotion for a music company.

Constance had reported unhygienic practices at the clinic in Casablanca. However she had a history of lying; Zelda introduced Lyn to Bonnie, also back from Casablanca, who gave a much more positive account, and had negative accounts of three friends who had had problems after gender surgery in New York.

In June one of Lyn’s aunts supplied a check for $2500 (which Lyn suspected actually came from her father). She wrote to Dr Burou saying that she could afford only $1500, and that a flight was booked. This was accepted. Only then did Raskin apply for a passport – as Edward as stated on her birth certificate.

Lyn Raskin arrived in Rabat, Morroco and then Casablanca July 7, 1970. Three days later all was complete. She returned to her apartment in New York. She still had appointments with Dr Ihlenfeld, and also with Dr Rish as she wished to increase her vaginal depth. Rish sent her to Dr Roberto Granato, who found the urethra and vagina infected. She was in Rish’s Yonkers Professional Hospital several times: for an operation on the urethra, to have her ears pinned, breasts implanted and a facial skin-peel. She started having sex with straight men, usually without mentioning her past.

Lyn’s book, Diary of a Transsexual, was published by Olympia Press in 1971. We don’t know if Maurice Girodias did pay any royalties. 

Later that year the agony aunt Ann Landers was on the tail-end of the Dick Cavett television show following a pre-op trans woman enthusing about designing her wedding dress. Landers felt that that particular trans woman was inauthentic, and resented having to comment on her performance. When Patrick M McGrady, Jr wrote this up in his 1972 book, The Love Doctors, he added a comment from Raskin as a footnote: “They should not have had that sort of person. Ann Landers had a perfect right to be upset. It was like having a guy in drag.”

Nothing is known of Lyn Raskin after that.

  • Roland Berg. “The Trans-sexuals: Male or Female”. Look Magazine, January 1970. Online.
  • I Am Not This Body, with Zelda Suplee, Leo Wollman, Lyn Raskin, Constance and Pamela Lincoln. EEF, US 28 mins 1971.
  • Lyn Raskin. Diary of a Transsexual. The Olympia Press, 1971.
  • Patrick M McGrady, Jr. The Love Doctors. Macmillan, 1972: 165-6, footnote.

24 March 2024

Lyn Raskin (1928 - ) aspirant playwright, bookkeeper, secretary

Part I: life until first visit to Benjamin clinic

Part II: Transition

Part III: comments


(Citation dates refer to entries in Raskin's book,  Diary of a Transsexual)

Edward Raskin, originally from Pennsylvania, was the fourth child of a father who became a Miami hotel keeper. He did an accounting degree at the University of Miami, where he was seduced by one of the professors. He then slept with many of the other students, and also with guests in his father’s hotel.

 In 1950 with dreams of making it as a playwright and lyricist for musicals, Raskin spent three months in New York before admitting defeat. 

In 1953 when the Christine Jorgensen story was in the press Raskin realized that she was more trans than gay, and went to see a doctor in Miami. The doctor said that Raskin was a perfectly developed male, and a sex change woule be possible only if she already had ovaries. 

Later that year the 25-year-old Raskin tried again to make it in New York. Shortly after arrival Raskin decided on the name ‘Lyn’ for her other self, and from then wrote her diary as if to Lyn. Edward left copies of his plays with agents and producers, and worked as a bookkeeper. There were false starts re producing his plays, but nothing came to fruition. Edward did get lots of gay sex, but was frustrated in that she really wanted to be made love to as a woman. 

“My frustration was not curbed by sleeping around as l have been doing, so I went to Bellevue Psychiatric Clinic for a free consultation with a Dr. Cassity, who I call Hopalong Cassity. He was always jittery, even when I was relaxed. I had about a dozen visits with him. He felt that of all his patients I was the one who accepted his homosexuality more than the others. Most of his other patients were latent homosexuals. However, he also knew my desire to be a woman. During my last visit, the receptionist said to go into his office, but the doctor wasn’t there when I walked in. They attempted to locate him, for he had just stepped out of his office moments before I arrived. They looked for him in vain. They never found him. I have a feeling he was an inmate in their psycho ward. He was probably nuttier than I was.” (September 24, 1955)

Raskin completed actor training at theatre school in 1964 but was unable to get cast as an actor. In 1966 he was working as a secretary. 

“l have been working as a secretary since last November. You know, it’s interesting being a secretary. I’m in competition with all women and I enjoy it. I feel more comfortable competing with women than I ever did with men. Being a part of the female world as I have been these past years, working as a secretary, I realize how much we have in common. I find I think very female. I envy their clothing.” (February 9, 1966). 

But the job lasted only a few months, although afterwards he did temporary secretarial work.

January 19, 1969 Raskyn ran into an ex-trick who told of a friend who was transitioning, and finally Raskin realized that the Miami gynecologist 16 years before may have been wrong saying that internal ovaries were required for a sex change. The next day Raskin phoned around and for the first time found out about Dr Harry Benjamin who had been actively aiding transsexuals since 1957. Benjamin’s secretary said that he was not practicing at that moment as he was writing, but gave Raskin an appointment for the next day with “Dr Len William” (actually Leo Wollman) at Benjamin’s office. This was shortly after trans philanthropist Reed Erickson had terminated his subsidy of Benjamin’s practice, which had therefore returned to smaller premises at 44 East 67th St. Raskin commented: 

“Walking into Dr. W.’s office today was like walking into a chamber of horrors. It is a Park Avenue address but it is a dingy office. You have to walk down a long dimly-lit corridor to get to his office. When I entered the waiting room several other patients were already there. It looked like a movie set for a quack doctor's office.” (January 21, 1969). 

Wollman approved Raskyn for the operation, and said that it would take a full year. Each visit to Wollman cost $15, the initial physical was $35, the urine/blood tests were $43, and the operation would be $750. After her next unemployment check, Raskin purchased two copies of Benjamin’s 1966 book – one for her brother, and started dreaming about selling an exclusive about herself to a magazine such as Life. She also read Christine Jorgensen’s autobiography. Being unemployed, Raskin was reliant on monies from her brother and father, and so had to explain what she was doing. They spoke to their doctor in Miami who could find no listing for Drs Benjamin and Wollman, and suggested tests at Johns Hopkins. Drs Wollman and Rish (whom Raskin had seen about a nose job) pointed out the long waiting list at Johns Hopkins, but Raskin wrote to John Money anyway. The long waiting list was confirmed by a two-page article in the New York Sunday News that a friend clipped and sent. 


·         Jack Metcalfe. “They Change Men into Women”.  New York Sunday News, February 9, 1969:106-7.


19 March 2024

Mikki Nicholson (1978-2014) Scabble champion

Mikki started playing Scrabble in 2005 after discovering the game online. By 2010 she was coming first in 
tournaments including the British National Championship, which provided her with £1,500 so that she could compete in Malaysia later that year. In 2012 she was the clear winner at the 4th European Open Championship held that year in Malta. She was ranked as the fourth best Scrabble player in the world.

Mikki was living in social housing in Carlisle, Cumbria (population 74,000), where she was receiving psychiatric treatment, and had spent time as an inpatient at Carlisle's Carleton Clinic. After she was discharged, she was supported by a psychiatric nurse. 

She was subjected to transphobic abuse, and hoped to move to Newcastle, a city where people are more accepting. However she was warned that she would probably not be eligible for social housing there and she could not otherwise afford it.

She ended her life by stepping in front of a train.

  • “Mikki does it again”. Being Drusilla, 9 12 2010. Online. Online.
  • “Mikki Nicholson is 2012 European Open Champion”. Scrabble Malta, 2012. Online.
  • “Transsexual Scrabble player crowned as British national champion”. The Guardian, 2 November 2010. Online.
  • Stephanie Linning. “Transgender Scrabble champion killed herself after daily stigma and abuse”. Daily Mail, 22 April 2016. Online.
  • Mikki Nicholson. Remembering Our Dead, 7 November 2014. Online.

WESPA

------

Scrabble is one of very few sports that does not separate the genders.

28 February 2024

Patricio Manuel (1985 - ) boxer

Manuel was raised by a single mother in Santa Monica, California, and was five times the women’s national amateur boxing champion, and also competed in the 2012 Women’s US Olympic Trials until forced to withdraw with a shoulder injury. 

“I’ve never really felt any sort of relation to being a girl or a woman or really being female. I would identify myself as a boy or a man in my head even if I didn’t say it out loud to other people.”

He began hormone therapy in 2013, and had top surgery in Salt Lake City in 2014.

“I don’t really think of it as difficult because it’s been so fun. People may think it’s been difficult but it’s also given me these amazing experiences. I feel like I’m more in control of self-identifying as a man the way I want because I’m able to actually consciously construct it as opposed to it having been enforced on me since birth.”

He had to leave his longtime gym and trainer of nine years because the gym was church affiliated and insisted that he keep his story quiet – which he could not do. However he became a coach at a LGBTQ center in Long Beach.

He lost a year recovering after surgery, and then waited three more months before being officially declared eligible to box as a man. USA Boxing now make no mention that he once fought as a woman, but his story is no secret given his championship wins. And because his name is only one letter different from his dead name.

His first fight in the amateur male division was in May 2016 – which he won.

In September 2018 the California State Athletic Commission gave him a professional boxing license – making him the first trans man in the world to be so approved. He won his first bout as a pro boxer in December 2018. A fight was arranged in 2019, but Manuel had to withdraw because of a hip injury. And then there was COVID. But there was also uneasiness that a trans man was not only fighting but winning against a cis man. Manuel’s coach, Victor Valenzuela, commented: 

“a lot of the guys and coaches didn’t want to fight him. They think they have nothing to gain by it: Win, and you beat somebody that was a female. Lose, you got beat by somebody that was a woman.”


His next pro fight was in March 2023 – again a win. And again in June 2023. Although he was finding it difficult to find opponents.

In December 2023 the World Boxing Council floated the idea of a separate league for trans boxers.

 “The WBC completely rejects any boxing activity between people born male against born female, regardless of their current sexuality; so the creation of a Committee to create a competition manual was approved with the possibility of having a transgender league welcoming those who wish to participate in our sport.”

Unsurprisingly, Manuel demurred. 

“It is heartbreaking to me to have the WBC, a leader in my sport, argue that I don't have a place in the ring as a man.

Given the WBC’s stated values of sportsmanship, diversity and respect (via their philanthropic arm WBC Cares), I trust this intended new policy was made with the best of intentions to be inclusive of transgender boxers. 

Yet, in reality, the WBC is inherently dehumanizing transgender people by implying that trans men aren’t men and trans women aren’t women. 

This rhetoric flies in the face of both existing policies at the highest level of governing bodies in the world of sports and my own lived experience.”

A trans league is almost impossible because of lack of numbers alone. The WBC’s position rests on a report that has never been shared publicly, and that remains contested among neurologists and medical experts.

  • Jim Buzinski. “ 'Proud, butch lesbian' aims to make U.S. Olympic women's boxing team ”. Outsports, Feb 14, 2012. Online.
  • Kylie Krabbe. “Pat Manuel Poised to Blaze Trail as Transgender Amateur, then Pro”. The Ring, Dec 3, 2015. Online.
  • Karleigh Webb. “Trans boxer Patricio Manuel wins first match in four years, improves to 2-0”. Outsports, Mar 22, 2023. Online.
  • Patrick Djordjevic. “Transgender male boxer Patricio Manuel picks up a THIRD straight victory to continue his unbeaten record... 11 years after competing in the women's U.S. Olympic trials”. Daily Mail, 23 June 2023. Online.
  • Ben Wyatt. “Trans Boxers Are Stepping Into the Ring. Will the Sport Let Them Stay?”. Rolling Stone, Sep 23, 2023. Online.

EN.Wikipedia             patriciomanuel.com

26 February 2024

David Martin (1946 – 1984) burglar.

Original version: December 2009

David Martin was born in Paddington, London, and was educated at the Finsbury Park comprehensive school. He was trained as a motor mechanic. However he also started stealing things. By 1968 he was in a borstal serving time for 30 cases of theft. There he studied electronics, to better understand alarm systems. He managed to spring a lock, and escaped. In 1972 he was on remand for more burglaries. In the prison van he picked the lock of his cubicle, and then did the same for the other prisoners. In 1973 he was in Brixton Prison. He and 20 others hijacked a dustcart and used it to ram the prison gates. Martin was one of the few to actually get outside, but was apprehended hailing a taxi. In 1974 and 1975 he made near attempts to escape from Parkhurst Prison and then Gartree.

Martin was also gender fluid switching genders socially and also to case premises or to commit crimes.

In 1982 he had decided to get into the then expanding businesses of video (VHS) piracy and also pornography. To get the required equipment he burgled film recording and processing firms in London and took what he needed. On other times he broke in with a master tape of a recent Hollywood film, and used the equipment to make multiple copies. Later that year he used his knowledge of alarm systems to break into the gunsmiths Thomas Bland & Sons in Covent Garden and took 24 handguns, ammunition and holsters. A few weeks later he and others stole £25,000 in the City of London where he shot a security guard in the leg. One of the security guards said that he thought one of the gang was a woman dressed in motorcycle clothing. A week after that he shot a police constable in the leg when challenged in a film processing firm in Marylebone. 


The police spoke to their informants and were given the name David Martin. A gun dealer came forth about an attempt by a David Martin who wanted to sell guns, and who had left an address in Crawford Place, Marylebone. For several days armed undercover officers watched Martin’s flat wondering why there was no sign of him. Only then did they realise that the tall blonde woman who came and went was, in fact, Martin. An informant explained to them that Martin was a transvestite. They were waiting for Martin on the seventh floor when she stepped out of the lift. This became a fracas, Martin’s gun was knocked away but she pulled out a second gun, and a detective constable fired. Martin was hit in the back of the neck. Martin was taken to hospital where the bullet was removed, and then held in remand at Brixton Prison. On Christmas Eve 1982 Martin was taken to Marlborough Street Magistrates Court (now the Courthouse Hotel) and charged with attempted murder, armed robbery, theft of guns and other offences. He was then taken to the court cells to await the prison van for the return journey. However his lock-picking skills served him well. He made his way to a skylight, and then over the nearby roofs to the London Palladium theatre. A service door was open, and Martin walked out through the foyer and into the Christmas crowds.

Martin’s (major) girlfriend was the 25-year-old Sue Stephens. They raided her flat in West Hampstead, but to no avail. They put her under surveillance and listened to her phone.

A yellow Mini.

Stephen Waldorf, a 26-year-old film editor, vaguely resembled the male David Martin. His sister’s boyfriend, Lester Purdy, was acquainted with Stephens. Waldorf and the boyfriend picked up Stephens in a yellow Mini. With the police following, the Mini got stuck in traffic in Kensington. Armed police surrounded the car and opened fire. Waldorf fell out of the car door face down and was shot again. Only when they turned him over, did the police realize that it was the wrong man. The other man in the car fled in terror, but later went to the police.

Waldorf had suffered five bullet wounds—which damaged his abdomen and liver—as well as a fractured skull and injuries to one hand caused by pistol whipping. Stephens was grazed by a bullet. Both were taken to St Stephen's Hospital. Within an hour, a senior officer at Scotland Yard issued a public apology and promised an immediate investigation by the Metropolitan Police's Complaints Investigation Bureau (CIB). Waldorf went into full cardiac arrest, but doctors managed to restart his heart. He was in hospital for six weeks. When he regained consciousness, a senior Met officer visited him to apologise.

Stephens had been grazed by a bullet, was paid £10,000 for her story by the Daily Mail, but was also charged with receiving stolen property. Out on bail she worked with the Flying Squad. Martin phoned and they arranged to meet “at the last place we met”, which was a restaurant in Heath Street, Hampstead. Many police were waiting, but Martin fled down an emergency spiral staircase at Hampstead Underground Station, then the length of a stationary train, jumped from the drivers’ cab and onto the rails. Station staff immediately switched off the electricity. Some police followed while others waited at the two adjacent stations. They caught him at Belsize Park station – he had no gun with him.

His trial was at the Old Bailey, September 1983. He refused to plead to any of the charges, and the judge ruled that a plea of not guilty be entered. The trial ended 11 October and Martin was sentenced to 25 years. He vowed that he would escape or die! 

Waldorf eventually made a full recovery. He sued the police, who did not contest the case, and was awarded £150,000 in an out-of-court settlement early in 1984. Stephens also sued the Met and was awarded £10,000, but she, Purdy and one other were sentenced to six and nine months respectively for receiving stolen goods after police found property including £15,000 of security equipment, body armour and holsters and medical equipment.

Three officers were suspended; two were charged with attempted murder. They were tried at the Old Bailey in October 1983, pled that they had a genuine, albeit mistaken, fear for their lives, and were acquitted of all charges. They were returned to duty, though their firearms authorisations were withdrawn.

Martin was sent to Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, where he met celebrity prisoners such as the gay serial killer Dennis Nilson. Sue Stephens stopped answering his letters, and refused to visit him. 

He succeeded in killing himself 13 March 1984.

The police regulations regarding guns were tightened.

The story was filmed as a television movie in 1994 with Rupert Graves as Martin. 

*Not the Scottish, nor the English, nor the Nebraska politician, nor the poet, nor the Governor of New South Wales, nor the musician, nor the gymnast, nor any of the footballers, nor the Texas axe-murderer, nor the Ottawa humourist, nor the casting director, nor the Dr Who scriptwriter, nor the CBC news correspondent, nor the sociologist/priest, nor the jazz pianist, nor the chef, etc. Nor the author of Rewriting Gender?: You, Your Family, Transgenderism and the Gospel, 2018.

  • Nick Davies & Stephen Cook. “Yard apologises for shooting”. The Guardian, 17 January 1983. 
  • Pat Clarke. “The gunman who like to dress aa a woman”. Daily Post, October 12, 1983: 3.
  • Roger Beam. “Two faces of the transvestite gunman” and “Waldorf: ‘Shot five times and pistol whipped’. Model’s brush with death”. Daily Mirror, October 13, 1983: 1,7.
  • Ian Henry. “Six Month’s Jail for ‘Infatuated’ Sue Stephens’. Daily Telegraph, 22 November 1983.
  • “David Martin, the transvestite burglar who became Britain's most wanted...”. UPI, 14 March 1984. Online.
  • “David Martin: No prison will hold me!” Real-Life Crimes … and how they were solved, 38, 1 Jan 1993. archive
  • Paul Greengrass (scr & dir). Open Fire. With Jim Carter as DCS Young, Rupert Graves as David Martin and Eddie Izzard as Rich. UK London Weekend Television 105 mins 1994. IMDB YouTube.
  • Duncan Campbell. The Underworld. Penguin Books, 1996: 160-2.
  • James Morton. Gangland Soho. Piatkus, 2008: 6.
  • Dick Kirby. “London police opening fire: 1983 to now”. The History Press. Online.
  • Dick Kirby. The Wrong Man: The Shooting of Stephen Waldorf and the Hunt for David Martin. The History Press, 2016. 

EN.Wikipedia  

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There is no indication that Martin ever went to any of the trans support groups available in London in the late 1970s-early 1980s: The London TV/TS Group, the Beaumont Society or SHAFT. 

Real-Life Crimes includes the paragraph: “One detective who dealt with him said: He turned to homosexuality in prison. He liked the idea of being in drag, but he was such a chameleon, so good at disguise, that he found a brilliant device to help him in crime, too.” Kirby mentions “an acquaintance who was a homosexual lorry driver. Apparently, he and Martin had shared an interest in yoga, wholefoods and the occult while the driver was waiting for a sex-change operation.” Real-Life Crimes says that they were dating. Other writers claim that Martin had an affair in prison with Dennis Nilson. 

I see only a heterosexual cross-dresser. In the early 1980s many still confused trans and being gay.

This is the arial view (from Google maps) of the block containing the Magistrates Court and the London Palladium.  To get from one to the other across the roofs seems quite feasable.




21 February 2024

Peggy Deauville (1899 -? ) performer

 Tom’s father, Benjamin Davies, was the minister at Caersalem Baptist Chapel in the coal-ming village of Abergwynfi, Naeth Port Talbot, South Wales, and was a prominent figure in the local temperance movement. However by age eleven, young Tom was drinking beer with a next-door neighbour. He was also transvesting. 

“I was awfully interested in ladies clothes, and always dressing up as a woman, before I left school really. So now, and if my sisters had anything new, a hat, a coat, or a dress … I wasn’t happy until I tried it on.” 

He avoided the cricket and football that the boys played, and preferred hopscotch and skipping with the girls.

At age 14 he left school and found work in the drapery department of Glyncorrwg Co-operative Stores where he enjoyed working with fabrics and fashion. After war was declared in August 1914, Tom saw a newspaper advertisement for performers to join the army entertainment corps. He was auditioned in London and accepted. After several months at the dancing school run by John Tiller (famed for the Tiller Girls) – his natural singing voice was good enough to be professional – he was assigned to a YMCA-funded concert party led by the actress and suffragette Lena Ashwell, which performed in France close to the Western Front doing as many as forty concerts in a fortnight. Tom found Ashwell’s format too serious for his taste and wanted something less formal and where he could talk to the audience.  He transferred to other troups. He worked in Dieppe, Deauville and Paris. He also performed in the hospital on Saint-Pol-sur-Mer, the first hospital from the front line where many of the patients were badly injured soldiers, some groaning in pain. The act was basically what would be found in any music hall with risqué songs. Tom performed en femme

“I’d come out in this beautiful sequin gown you know, and then I used to take my gown off, and I had sequin briefs and a sequin bra, and I was naked then but for my tights.  And I had these two big ostrich feather fans, and I had learned to manipulate them … they wouldn’t see anything, and I could hear them saying, Jock, how would you like her in the bunk tonight …. There were many who wouldn’t believe I was male, you know, because I was so dainty.” 

By now Tom’s nom d’étage was Peggy Deauville.

After the Armistice Peggy stayed on in Paris, working in the Folies Bergères for five years and the Casino de Paris for two. The act featured impersonations of well-known women of the period such as the nurse Edith Cavell, Jane Renoir and the actress Gaby Deslys. The French press was fascinated in that Peggy was a woman off-stage also, and as such she travelled around France. 

Tom/Peggy worked in Germany for a while, and after returning to Britain worked with Bud Flanagan - a fellow performer from the war years - at the Victoria Palace and the London Palladium, and then four years in Malta with the John Bull Music Hall Company.

By 1939 Tom was back in south Wales and working again at the Glyncorrwg Co-operative. However with the outbreak of the next war, he returned to army revue shows.

After 1945 Peggy mainly performed at British Legion and working men’s clubs. Peggy assisted Roger Baker with his research for Baker’s 1968 book, and performed in the London show associated with the book.

Tom remained a regular church-goer, and never drank on Sundays.

  • Roger Baker. Drag: A History of Female Impersonation on the Stage. A Triton Book, 1968: 173.
  • Cliff John. “What a Man is Peggy Deauville”. Neath Guardian, 29 January 1970:7.
  • Roger Baker, Peter Burton & Richard Smith. Drag: A History of Female Impersonation in the Performing Arts. Cassell, 1994: 191-2.
  • Daryl Leeworthy. A Little Gay History of Wales. University of Wales Press, 2019: 24-7.
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All quotes from Leeworthy.

New York's Radio City Rockettes were an offshoot from the Tiller Girls.