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Popular and Medical Understandings of Sex Change in 1930S Britain

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Popular and Medical Understandings of Sex Change in 1930S Britain POPULAR AND MEDICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF SEX CHANGE IN 1930S BRITAIN A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2014 CLARE R. TEBBUTT SCHOOL OF ARTS, LANGUAGES AND CULTURES Contents Images ................................................................................................................. 5 Abstract ............................................................................................................... 6 Declaration .......................................................................................................... 7 Copyright Statement ............................................................................................ 7 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................. 9 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 10 Chapter One: Sexual Ambiguity in the Clinic ....................................................... 34 Mark Weston: A Medical Case Study .................................................................... 34 Intersexuality and Medical Discourse ................................................................... 37 Lennox Ross Broster .............................................................................................. 42 Broster amongst the Endocrinologists .................................................................. 49 The Adrenal Cortex and Intersexuality (1938) ....................................................... 57 Not Changing Sex ................................................................................................... 63 Body and Mind ...................................................................................................... 67 Ab/normality ......................................................................................................... 75 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 83 Chapter Two: Changing Sex in the Popular Press ................................................ 85 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 85 The Popular Press’s Power and Reach: Disseminating Sex Change ...................... 93 ‘Wilts “Woman” Who Is a Man Now to Marry Nurse’: Evan Burtt ..................... 100 ‘“Girl” Athlete’s New Life after Change of Sex’ ................................................... 111 GAOL SECRETS OF MAN-WOMAN TESTS ............................................................ 119 The ‘Tragic Misfit’ ................................................................................................ 122 ‘SISTERS ARE NOW BROTHERS’: Mark and David Ferrow ................................... 124 Donald Purcell and the Desire to Change Sex ..................................................... 128 2 Men-Women ....................................................................................................... 134 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 140 Chapter 3: Glands, Hormones and Popular Culture: Contextualising Sex Change ........................................................................................................................ 142 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 142 Glands and Hormones in Popular Culture ........................................................... 149 Retelling Stories of Sex Change ........................................................................... 165 Urania .................................................................................................................. 168 London Life .......................................................................................................... 178 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 189 Chapter Four: Sport Changes Sex ..................................................................... 191 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 191 Sport and the Prospect of Feminism and Sex Extinction .................................... 193 The ‘Self-Made’ Body .......................................................................................... 199 Muscularity and ‘Musculinity’ ............................................................................. 200 Inscribing Sport on the Body ............................................................................... 206 Boys’ Suits: Unsexing Sports Attire ..................................................................... 210 Machine-Enhanced Women: Women’s Motor Sports ........................................ 218 Athletic Women ................................................................................................... 229 ‘Metamorphosis a Habit with Athletes!’: Sport Changing Sex ............................ 233 Mark Weston ....................................................................................................... 236 Zdenek Koubek .................................................................................................... 244 Sex Testing and the 1936 Berlin Olympics .......................................................... 248 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 255 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 258 Appendix ......................................................................................................... 264 Press stories in the British local and popular press ............................................. 264 3 Bibliography .................................................................................................... 270 Archival Sources .................................................................................................. 270 Other Unpublished Sources................................................................................. 271 Newspaper Articles.............................................................................................. 272 Articles from London Life ..................................................................................... 278 Articles from Urania ............................................................................................ 279 Published Books, Articles and Electronic Sources ............................................... 280 Newsreels ............................................................................................................ 295 Word Count: 74,078 (excluding Appendix and Bibliography). 4 Images Figure Page 0.1 ‘Sex Determination’, News Chronicle, 1 January 1932, p. 1. Cutting 10 in FD 1/3108 The National Archives, Medical Research Council, Sex Hormone Committee, Lennox Ross Broster, 1932 2.1 ‘Amazing Mystery of a Man-Woman’, Daily Express, 24 March 1930, 89 p. 1 2.2 ‘Man’s Twenty-Nine Years as a Woman’, Daily Mirror, 25 March 102 1930, p. 1 2.3 ‘Doctor Changes Sex of 24: Patients Have Married’, Daily Mirror, 5 129 May 1938, p. 2 2.4 ‘Police Tell Wife: Your Husband Was a Woman’, Daily Express, 27 132 January 1958, p. 1 3.1 ‘Scientists Seeking to Solve the Secrets of Sex’, London Life, 21 May 143 1932, p. 23 3.2 ‘What Should We Do with Our Grandfathers?’, Daily Mirror, 19 June 154 1928, p. 9 3.3 ‘A Knife and a Syringe Can Build a New Woman!’, Daily Mirror, 15 162 March 1938, p. 12 3.4 ‘Baffling Sex Mysteries’, London Life, 30 September 1933, p. 32 178 4.1 Louise Leers, London Life, 19 January 1929, p. 17 205 4.2 ‘Woman in Trousers Case’, Daily Mirror, 28 February 1930, p. 1 215 4.3 ‘“She” Now a Man’, Daily Mirror, 29 May 1936, p. 6 239 4.4 ‘Girls Who Set Up New Records at World Games’, Daily Mirror, 13 245 August 1934, p. 24 5 Abstract This thesis considers how understandings of the sexed body changed in Britain during the 1930s. Popular versions of sex changeability were grounded in medical science and I examine how medico-scientific research into hormones changed understandings of where sex was located in the body. I examine the historically specific concept of normality, which medics employed to ascertain whether or not individuals ought to have their sex reclassified. I focus on L. R. Broster, a surgeon at London’s Charing Cross Hospital. I analyse Broster’s case studies, published in 1938 as The Adrenal Cortex and Intersexuality, which showed the markers medical professionals were using to assign sex. The thesis investigates how Broster’s work in the burgeoning field of endocrinology generated distinctive narratives of sexual mutability and locatedness in the body. Broster was an important figure in the press stories about changes of sex and provides a link between them and the medical research occurring at Charing Cross. During the 1930s the popular daily, local and Sunday newspapers contained numerous articles about individuals whose sex had changed. These accounts were treated in a mostly positive tone and were held up as being symptomatic of scientific modernity. I argue that this concept of ‘sex change’ does not neatly map on to present day categories, be they intersexuality, transsexuality, transgender
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