April Ashley

The activist who became a pioneer for her work with the LGBTQ community fighting for equality, rose to fame from poverty in Liverpool and became one of London's ...

Chins up — get on with life and be as brave as you can.” She lectured at Oxford university, released a memoir, The First Lady, and was the subject of a yearlong museum exhibition in Liverpool. Ms Ashley was resilient, and went on to open a popular restaurant in London where she worked the door. Corbett case. Ashley was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2012 Birthday Honours for her services to transgender equality. She was born in Liverpool in 1935, and her early life was harrowing.

The life of a woman who was one of the first people in Britain to have gender reassignment surgery is to be celebrated in a special documentary.

Most recently, she was on ITV chat show Loose Women in 2015. She suffered a heart attack in 1975 and retired. The annulment was granted in 1970 on the grounds that Ashley was male, but Corbett had known about her history when they married. Later in her life, she moved to Fulham, South London, and died in her home on 27 December 2021 at the age of 86. The surgery took place in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1960 when Ashley was aged £25 and cost £3,000. She became one of the first people in Britain known to have gender reassignment surgery.

APRIL ASHLEY was a transgender model and campaigner who was one of the first Britons to undergo a sex change.But who was she, and was she married?Who.

She married second husband Jeffrey West in the 1980s, and divorced after about a decade according to The New York Times. Was April Ashley married and did she have children? She returned to Britain in 2005, and was legally recognised as a woman following the Gender Recognition Act. Their divorce in 1970 established a legal precedent when the judge ruled that the marriage was invalid on the basis that April was "born male", and sex couldn't be legally changed. In 2012, she was made an MBE for her work as a campaigner for trans rights and equality. She opened a restaurant in London's Knightsbridge called April and Desmond's, though the scrutiny she faced following a humiliating court case against her first husband was overwhelming. APRIL ASHLEY was a transgender model and campaigner who was one of the first Britons to undergo a sex change. Born into a working class family in Liverpool in 1935, she was one of nine children, and joined the merchant navy as a teen. But who was she, and was she married? Who was April Ashley? April Ashley was an actress, model and trans-pioneer. Who was April Ashley?

April Ashley was a trailblazing model, actor and author and her life story is set to be explored in Channel 4's new documentary, The Extraordinary Life Of ...

It was a humiliating time for Ashley, but she went on to open a Knightsbridge restaurant. She went on to marry aristocrat Arthur Cameron Corbett in 1963, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1970. Born into a working-class family in Liverpool, she was one of nine siblings.

Channel 4's emotional and hard-hitting documentary charted April Ashley's incredible journey from merchant sailor to Vogue model.

After trying to take her own life as a teenager, she was incarcerated in a psychiatric ward and subjected to electric shock treatment. But the scope of her reinvention was something else. Being one of the first British people to have gender reassignment surgery – in 1960, when such procedures were in their experimental stages – was remarkable in itself.

In the UK, almost half of transgender teenagers have attempted suicide. April Ashley – trans pioneer, MBE, model, socialite, author and actress – was among them ...

Otherwise, there was little recognition that transgender people go through much of the same struggles – an obsession over anatomy, a pre-occupation with genitals, and the pervasive idea that trans people are trying to “trick” others – today. But there was little interrogation of how her story had changed things for transgender people today. But Ashley, as the documentary made abundantly clear, was not one to allow such hiccups to trip her up. After dancing in Paris’s famed Carrousel Theatre (where Elvis was reportedly a patron) and finding her tribe, Ashley travelled to Casablanca to undergo gender reassignment surgery. But this was not a hellish tale of relentless misery, rather a celebration of Ashley’s successes and after just 10 minutes of the film, the depressing moments made way for years of trans joy. They painted a picture of Ashley as a force of nature.