the kind of rough-housing that became the hallmark of the group and later recalled that "I used to go out with the boys to Hyde Park and we had many rows with the Reds." That he was assigned female at birth was never picked up on by his fellow members. In 1927, he was brought before the Old Bailey on charges of possessing a forged firearm certificate after Rippon Seymour had pulled Barker's revolver on another member, Charles Eyres, in a dispute over party funds. "Colonel Barker" was found not guilty and left the group soon after the trial. Bankruptcy, prison and later life As Leslie Ivor Victor Gauntlett Bligh Barker, restaurant proprietor, he was made bankrupt in 1928; the London Gazette notice was amended some months later to "Lillias Irma Valerie Arkell-Smith ... commonly known as Leslie Ivor Victor Gauntlett Bligh Barker". In 1929, Barker was arrested at the Regent Palace Hotel, London, for contempt of court for failing to appear in connection with the bankruptcy proceedings. Barker was held in Brixton prison before transfer to a woman's prison, Holloway. He was ultimately charged with, and convicted of, making a false statement on a marriage certificate. The judge, Sir Ernest Wild, the Recorder of London, sentenced him to nine months' imprisonment for perjury; from the bench, Wild said that Barker had "profaned the house of God". After being released from Holloway, Barker moved to Henfield, West Sussex, where he lived as John Hill. While there, in 1934, he was arrested for theft but acquitted. In 1937 when employed as a manservant in London, he pleaded guilty to theft and was fined. Later, he wrote about his life several times in popular newspapers and magazines. As Colonel Barker, he appeared in a Blackpool sideshow called "On a Strange Honeymoon" in the 1930s. Death He died in obscurity, under the name Geoffrey Norton, on 18 February 1960. The probate notice refers to Lillias Irma Valerie Arkell-Smith or Geoffrey Norton, married woman, with an address in Kessingland, Suffolk. Legacy D. H. Lawrence, in the essay "A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover" (1929), described Barker as having "married a wife and lived five years with her in 'conjugal happiness'. And the poor wife thought all the time that she was married normally and happily to a real husband!", and stated that this was a tragic example of what could happen when women were