April Ashley (29 April 1935 – 27 December 2021) was an English model. She was outed as a transgender woman by The Sunday People newspaper in 1961 and is one of the earliest British people known to have had sex reassignment surgery. Her marriage was annulled in the court case of Corbett v Corbett. Early life Born at 126 Smithdown Road (then Sefton General Hospital) in Liverpool, Ashley was one of six surviving children of a Roman Catholic father, Frederick Jamieson, and Protestant mother, Ada Brown, who had married two years before. During her childhood in Liverpool, Ashley suffered from both calcium deficiency, requiring weekly calcium injections at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital, and bed-wetting, resulting in her being given her own box room, at the age of two, when the family moved house. 1950s to 1970s Ashley joined the merchant navy in 1951 at the age of 16. Following a suicide attempt, she was given dishonourable discharge, and a second attempt resulted in her being sent to Ormskirk District General Hospital psychiatric unit at age 17. In her book The First Lady, Ashley tells the story of the rape she endured before transitioning. A roommate raped her, and she was severely injured. Gender transition After leaving the hospital, Ashley moved to London, at one point claiming to have shared a boarding house with then ship's steward John Prescott, later deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom. Having started cross-dressing, she moved to Paris in the late 1950s, began using the name Toni April, and joined the entertainer Coccinelle in the cast of the drag cabaret at the Caroussel Theatre. At the age of 25, having saved £3,000, Ashley had a seven-hour-long sex reassignment surgery on 12 May 1960, performed in Casablanca, Morocco, by Georges Burou. All her hair fell out, and she endured significant pain, but the operation was successful. Modelling career and public outing After returning to Britain, she began using the name April Ashley and became a successful fashion model, appearing in British Vogue, for which she was photographed by David Bailey, and winning a small role in the 1962 film The Road to Hong Kong, which starred Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. A friend sold her story to the media in 1961 and The Sunday People outed Ashley as a trans woman. She became a centre of attention and some scandal and her film credit was