Victor Barker, born Lillias Irma Valerie Barker (27 August 1895 – 18 February 1960) and called Valerie Arkell-Smith after marriage and who also went by the pseudonyms John Hill and Geoffrey Norton, was a transgender man who is notable for having married a woman. He was an officer of the National Fascisti, as well as a bankrupt and a convicted criminal. Early life Barker was born Lillias Irma Valerie Barker on 27 August 1895 in Saint Clement on the Channel Island of Jersey, the child of Thomas William Barker, farmer and architect, and his wife, Lillias Adelaide Hill. The family moved to Surrey in 1899. In April 1918, Barker married an Australian, Lieutenant Harold Arkell Smith, in Milford, Surrey. The marriage lasted only a short period and the husband returned to Australia early the following year. On 26 August 1918, Barker enrolled as a member of the Women's Royal Air Force. After the war, Barker moved in with Ernest Pearce-Crouch, also of the Australian Imperial Force; the couple had a boy and a girl. After they had moved to a farm at Climping near Littlehampton, West Sussex, Barker started to dress in a more masculine way. Marriage Barker left Pearce-Crouch in 1923 and began a relationship with Elfrida Emma Haward. Although Barker was presenting as a woman when Haward first met him, Barker wrote that he told her that he was "a man who had been injured in the war; that I was really a man acting as a woman for family reasons. I made some excuse about it being my mother's wish, and she believed it." The couple began living at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. By then, Barker had begun to use the name Sir Victor Barker. On 14 November 1923 at St Peter's Church, Brighton, Barker and Haward wed in what was later judged to be an illegal marriage. Fascism In 1926 while living in London, Barker received a letter addressed to a different Colonel Barker, inviting him to join the National Fascisti. Barker replied to the misdirected letter with the missive "why not", reasoning that membership of what was a macho group would help him pose as a man. He lived at the National Fascisti headquarters in Earl's Court where he worked as secretary for the group's leader Henry Rippon Seymour, also involving himself in training young members in boxing and fencing. Barker involved himself in