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T
he transgender rights movement has
achieved widespread visibility and recogni-
tion in the past decade. For some people,
this issue seems very new and modern –
a 21st-century development. They remi-
nisce of earlier times, perhaps their own
childhoods, when most people accepted the
distinct expectations and opportunities outlined for boys and
girls. In hindsight, the movements for women’s rights or gay
and lesbian equality seem modest in their critique of gender:
none demanded the eradication of the distinction between
men and women in public spaces, an ability to change one’s sex
legally or medically, or a shift away from gendered language
towards gender-neutral terms such as ‘they’.
From this perspective, the demands of the transgender rights
movement seem novel, as if the emergence of the community
itself was triggered by the dawn of a new century and little else.
But exploring the history of ‘transing’ gender shows us that
nothing could be further from the truth. While the transgender
community in recent years has somewhat coalesced around
a certain set of experiences, concerns and language, an explora-
tion of historical instances of transing reveals that people took
a wide range of paths in challenging gender.
One particular branch that caught my eye as I began
researching this topic many years ago was a group of people
called ‘female husbands’. This term was used to describe
someone who was assigned female at birth, transed
genders, lived as a man and married a woman. The phrase
was used first in the UK in 1746, circulating throughout
the UK and the US during the 19th century, then fad-
ing from prominent usage in the early years of the
20th century. The turn of the 21st century has been
designated the ‘transgender tipping point’, in part
due to highly visible trans women celebrities
such as Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner. Turn
back the clock to the 18th and 19th centuries,
though, and we find an era that belonged to female
husbands such as Charles Hamilton, James Howe,
James Allen and Joseph Lobdell. But who were they –
and why should we care?
Hamilton, Howe, Allen and Lobdell each
grew up poor and learned to scrape together a
living to support themself, even in their youth.
Each found love at least once in their life. For
some, it was fleeting, as unsuspecting lovers
rejected them for their difference. For
others, the spark of love led to marriages last-
ing 20 years or more. Most of them were
known only as men, the origins of their as-
signed sex undetected by neighbours and
co-workers for decades. Some embraced nonbinary
genders, moving between expressions of manhood and