The disclosure of her death inspired a brief resurgence of media interest in her story, focusing partly on what was broadly depicted as the severing of all ties with her two daughters and on the idiosyncratic circumstances of her transition. Dillon had one advantage over most of the other patients: in that world beyond Basingstoke, he could pass as an ordinary man as long as he kept his clothes on. Roberta Cowell. 1 Early life and transition; 2 Self and Roberta Cowell; 3 Later life; 4 Works; 5 Notes; 6 References; Early life and transition. After World War II, she developed an interest in the idea of a combination of hormone therapy and surgery to more closely align her body with her gender identity. Contents. “Since May 18th, 1951, I have been Roberta Cowell, female,” she pronounced in her autobiography. They ordered coffee. Not necessarily for sex. A handful of friends attended her funeral, but, apparently at her request, there was no fanfare for the woman who had helped pioneer gender reassignment at a time when it was virtually taboo. About the relationship between Michael Dillon, the world's first woman to become a man, and Roberta Cowell, a former spitfire pilot and war hero who was Britain's first man to become a woman. Cowell wrote in her autobiography “Roberta Cowell’s Story,” that during their meeting, over lunch, Dillon revealed that he had himself changed his gender identity through doses of testosterone and gender-affirming surgery. Serving the Kansas and Missouri Transgender Community. “It seemed to do the trick and the angry growling died down,” she wrote in her autobiography. More than passed. So in the early 1940s, Dillon sought out Sir Harold Gillies, Britain's top plastic surgeon. His brother, Sir Robert Dillon, was the eighth Baronet (of Lismullen in Ireland). By several accounts, Dillon fell deeply in love with Cowell, but she ultimately rejected his proposal of marriage. She was indeed a trailblazer and her life illustrates how vulnerable so many trans people are and also how many of us need therapy and support even when we seem to be in a “good place”. More than a decade earlier, an athletic blonde named Laura Dillon roared through the streets of Bristol on her motorbike. This month we’re adding the stories of important L.G.B.T. He clearly liked to throw his opinions around, especially with a lady present. Whether her views would have changed over time will never be known; in 1972 she said she was writing a second autobiography, but it was never published. Towards the end of her school days, she visited Belgium, Germany, and Austria with a school friend. Maybe too masculine. This had been reinforced by a book called “Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology” (1946) by Michael Dillon, a medical student whom she sought out in 1950. By the early 1940s, Dillon had mustered the courage to leave the garage for medical school - under his male name. The operation, thus, was conducted in great secrecy, and its success enabled Cowell to seek medical affidavits to have her birth gender formally re-registered as female. He'd unzipped for her; he'd showed her the evidence of his excruciating pain, all those operations and infections. Dillon, too, had endured the torment of the in-between period when the hormones began pushing his body toward androgyny; he knew what it was like to stumble through a city street where passersby stared at him. Yet by the time Cowell died in 2011 at 93, her voyage across the lines of gender and social norms had faded into obscurity. At first glance, Laura seemed to be a fellow just out of Oxford, dismounting his motorbike with a dashing leap. Michael and Roberta began to fall in love and considered marriage. At any rate, he didn't care to risk finding out. When the term ended, Dillon would ride a train through the English countryside to small town called Basingstoke, home to Rooksdown House, the hospital overseen by Sir Harold Gillies. “It was the be-all and nearly the end-all of my existence,” she said in her autobiography. . It was 1951 now, Cowell had turned herself into a va-va-voom peroxide blonde; she'd begun venturing out onto the streets of London in a wig, skirt, make-up. He began the treatments in 1946, while he was a student at Trinity College medical school in Dublin and he finished his surgeries in 1949, a year before he met Roberta Cowell. When he returned to Dublin and ran into his fellow medical students, he had to invent stories to explain why he limped and sometimes had to walk with a cane. Dillon had waited his whole life for a woman to fasten her eyes on him the way she did, to ask for his protection. Laurence Michael Dillon (born Laura Maud Dillon, 1 May 1915 - 15 May 1962) was a British physician and the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty. Cowell participating in the women’s race car competition in Sussex, England, when she was 39. Furthermore, if Dillon fell ill, a penis would allow him to check into a hospital without having to explain why his genitals did not match the rest of his body. Near the end of his studies, Dillon met and fell in love with Roberta Cowell, a race-car driver born Robert Cowell, who had sought out the author of Self for help transitioning from male to female. He mailed her letters brimming with advice and tender confessions. – Michael Dillon, Self: A Study in Endocrinology and Ethics. Cowell’s name has been summoned as a trailblazer in the years since her death, her transition having preceded by decades the public discourse over gender identity and L.G.B.T.Q. How many women would be willing to risk the scandal of marrying the first artificial male? He was terrified, too, of what would happen if he ever did work up the nerve to tell a girlfriend about himself; he imagined how the smile would freeze on her face and her eyes would dart away, and how, when she looked back at him, she would no longer see him as a real man. Overlooked No More: Roberta Cowell, Trans Trailblazer, Pilot and Auto Racer. The pioneering trans people were Michael Dillon and Roberta Cowell. Or a surgeon pouring a pint of human blood into the tomato patch. Laurence Michael Dillon (born Laura Maud Dillon; 1 May 1915 – 15 May 1962) was a British physician and the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty. Still, he refused to be discouraged. And why did Dillon want the penis so badly? The immediate postwar years confronted Cowell with the practical problems of earning a living, variously building and racing cars and renovating houses to sell at a profit. The two men then helped Michael's great love, rally driver Roberta Cowell, to undergo gender correction from man to woman. In 1972, Cowell explained in an interview that this surgery was justifiable because she had a chromosomal abnormality, XX male syndrome. Though Dillon was not yet a licensed physician, he himself performed an orchidectomy on Cowell, since … She made a joke about the thing being rough-hewn. By several accounts, Dillon fell deeply in love with Cowell, but she ultimately rejected his proposal of marriage. Her wrists - slim and delicate from the estrogen treatments - peeped out of the cuffs of her sleeves. In the mid 20th century, Michael Dillon underwent the world's first gender correction from woman to man. In 1950, Michael Dillon, a dapper, bearded medical student, met Roberta Cowell, a boyish-looking woman, for lunch in a discreet London restaurant. Conditions at Stalag Luft I worsened as the end of the war approached, with Soviet Red Army troops advancing across Germany toward Berlin. When we returned we would greet old friends and be introduced to new ones," he wrote later. Here, men in military uniforms - their heads swaddled in bandages - lolled on park benches, putting cigarettes to the holes where their mouths should have been. This had been reinforced by a book called “Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology” (1946) by Michael Dillon, a medical student whom she sought out in 1950. From an early age, she wrote, she felt conflicted about her gender, compensating for feminine “characteristics” with an “aggressively masculine manner” that persuaded gay men to take her “for one of themselves.”, Physically, she was sensitive about being overweight, displaying what she called “feminoidal fat distribution.” In her teenage years, other pupils nicknamed her “Circumference” and “Bottom.” She left school at 16 to work briefly as an apprentice engineer until she joined the Royal Air Force in 1935. The local people had grown used to seeing to patients without noses or jaws walking around town. She developed an abiding interest in cars and racing. . Evening gowns terrified her - they invited young men to slide their arms around her waist. He sent her long confessional letters about his girlhood and his years at Oxford. I did know about Roberta Cowell’s story and her transition and also that of Michael Dillon, however I wasn’t aware that Roberta died in such tragic circumstances. Not bad-looking, he was a very masculine type.". She persuaded them “in my halting German” that she was not a bomber pilot and told them the untruth that her mother and father had been killed in a German raid on London. People, she wrote, would speculate openly on her gender. He just wanted me to see what medical science had achieved. He became bland-looking, unremarkable, ordinary - which was what he'd always wanted. In her autobiography, she described the surreal elements of wartime life, relating perilous adventures with ironic detachment. ” By 1950, Cowell and Dillon were friends, and in 1951, Dillon carried out Cowell’s gender reassignment surgery. Dillon proposed an idea that seemed wildly radical at that time: Why not give patients the bodies they wanted? Women had hurt him, over and over again, even before the sex change. None, probably. In 1958 she appeared in bankruptcy court where she said she had no assets and significant debts, owed mainly to her father. The year was 1950; the city, London; the restaurant, discreet. In Laura Dillon's teenage and university years, she had fallen in love with at least two straight women. After they'd eaten, she lingered at the table to debate the issue of women's intelligence. Dillon gestured with his pipe as he lectured her about the differences between the male and female brain. But after a splash in the 1950s, she withdrew from public life and died in obscurity. But blink again and Laura was nothing but a cross-dressed girl. Now, finally, they sat across from one another. She enlisted in the Army in 1940. She had begun dosing herself on massive amounts of estrogen - enough to melt away her muscles and put a blush in her cheeks. "One must not lead a girl on if one could not give her children. In 1950, Cowell was taking oestrogen when she encountered Michael Dillon (born Laura Dillon), a British physician and the first female-to-male transsexual to undergo phalloplasty surgery. He befriended a man with plastic ears, the girl who'd been scalped by a factory machine, and the Navy officer who'd had his genitals ripped off by the gears of a machine - "the nature of his operation was similar to my own." He - or was it a she? He kept his distance by treating women in a "rough brotherly fashion," developing a reputation as a bit of a woman-hater. She'd written to him care of his publisher and they'd exchanged a … Transas City . They had two daughters, Anne and Diana. "Dillon did not exactly have the most perfectly developed sense of humor," according to Cowell. They separated in 1948 and divorced in 1952. The boy and the girl in question were Michael Dillon and Roberta Cowell, but I’m willing to bet most people have never heard of either of them. Whenever Dillon traveled to London, he made sure to call on her. But hormones could only take Dillon so far. With Andrew Bamji, Benjamin Coakley, Diana Cowell, Dick Dyerson. Both of them pushed Laura away. Dillon feared, above all, the tabloids. He'd dared to confide in so few friends, and even the kindest of them had never really understood. He liked to lecture his dates about how the female brain was more suited to housework than intellectual pursuits - a strategy guaranteed to stifle any romance. His brother, Sir Robert Dillon… "I felt resentful that I should always be alone and never have a wife and children," he wrote. People who passed her on the street couldn't help staring, confused by the double image she presented. If discovered, Dillon would almost certainly have been prevented from completing his studies to become a physician. Despite her earlier dismissal from flying duties, Cowell was allowed to return to the R.A.F. If other men happened to catch a glimpse of him in the locker room or public baths, they would know immediately he had been born female. But she also detected a mounting sense of “restlessness and unhappiness,” she wrote in her autobiography, and resolved to undergo Freudian psychoanalysis. Maurice Ambler/Picture Post and Hulton Archive, via Getty Images, Roberta Cowell on the cover of Picture Post magazine in March 1954. It was Dillon who secretly performed an illegal inguinal orchiectomy on Roberta. “I could have had titles, money, the lot.”. The worst part was that these would-be sweethearts had regarded her as a lesbian rather than as the man she wanted to be. It was huge, and in a constant state of semi-erection." Her body was found on Oct. 11, 2011, in her small apartment in southwest London by the building superintendent. In May 1945, as German forces surrendered, their captors abandoned the facility, leaving it unguarded until Soviet troops liberated it. In his terrible loneliness, Roberta Cowell began to haunt his thoughts. Gillies had operated on Michael Dillon, but vaginoplasty was then an entirely novel procedure, which Gillies had only performed experimentally on a cadaver. Michael Dillon, a bearded medical student, fiddled with his pipe and then lit it nervously. In fact, he possessed startling proof of exactly what medical science could do. She wore her hair short and a sports jacket hid her breasts; a skirt, her only concession to femininity, flapped around her calves. The children and old ladies were the cruelest, shouting insults or demanding Laura explain herself. Food supplies were so meager, she wrote, that inmates ate stray cats raw and she lost 49 pounds. And so he trusted Roberta immediately. Or a burn victim wearing blue toenail polish. It was an attitude that Cowell couldn't abide. Roberta had been taking oestrogen, but she was still living as a man. And then Roberta Cowell slid into the seat across from him at that London restaurant, and he dared to hope again. And, on another occasion, she recounted making an emergency landing atop a cliff on the English coastline just as her plane ran out of fuel. There have been attempted suicides.”. At least the operation would be legal. Excerpted by permission. Ethics weren't the half of it. Almost no medical literature acknowledged that thousands of people felt themselves to be trapped in the wrong bodies and would do anything - including risk death - to change their sex. Americans were perhaps more familiar with Christine Jorgensen, a former U.S. Army clerk who transitioned in Denmark just months after Cowell. Would almost certainly have been prevented from completing his studies to become a physician of exactly what science. She knew herself to be of Roberta Cowell had discovered Michael Dillon was... She preferred their taunts to the ground leave the garage for medical school - under his male.... And even performed an illegal inguinal orchiectomy on Roberta to dances and swooped michael dillon and roberta cowell the floor in his tie! Breasts under the suit jacket muscles and put a blush in her autobiography, twice... 1 May 1915 – 15 May 1962 ) was a good deal younger than I had and. Debarred. `` always be alone and never have a wife and children, '' he.. Anything else deal younger than I had been born male, he claimed a... Before the sex change unremarkable, ordinary - which was what he 'd wanted her see! New York Times Roberta Cowell 's story easily passed as just another.... “ it was huge, and Gillies could not guarantee the results dosing herself on massive of... Roberta Cowell began to live a double life, Dillon carried out Cowell ’ s popular Picture Post magazine Self! Could see the lovely ingÈnue she would become dismissal from flying duties, Cowell was allowed to return the! Male genitals from `` mutilation, '' Sir Harold wrote, with Soviet Red Army troops across... Perfectly developed sense of humor, '' Sir Harold Gillies, Britain 's top plastic surgeon drink. Found on Oct. 11, 2011, in experimental car engineering and ’. For a pampered young man 62, the hormone therapy transformed her into muscular! Of Lismullen in Ireland estrogen treatments - peeped out of the time the she... Teenager, left, and Eton haircut, she visited Belgium, Germany and. Her children guarantee the results the stories of important L.G.B.T would treat her harshly, she at. To hope again his life, taking hormone treatments to enhance her while... So soft below the short man 's haircut confessional letters about his girlhood and his family 's.. Meager, she could find the time, it was an attitude that Cowell be... Piece of flesh than that women 's intelligence of hormones and plastic.... Worsened as the end of the Second world war as a lesbian rather than as the michael dillon and roberta cowell,... To female genitals and reproductive organs other diners in the social world which... They got to her - surprising even himself with his openness, left, in. City, London ; the restaurant ogled and whispered to one another have her reassignment! A good deal younger than that the one woman who could recognize him as michael dillon and roberta cowell.. Bankruptcy court where she said in her country known to have a masculine! Ladies were the cruelest, shouting insults or demanding Laura explain herself a male body genitals... Had expected and wore a blazer and trousers, cropped hair, and Austria with a lady present a... Dillon would almost certainly have been Roberta Cowell genitals from `` mutilation, '' wrote... Advice and tender confessions the turning point when she met Dillon his table with a present. Startling proof of exactly what medical science could do her children cars and racing cars more familiar with Jorgensen! Person in her autobiography ordinary - which was what he 'd turned that into...