them for the purposes of ascertaining their sex, but not that only. I wished to ascertain something more, that was of my own accord, and my own idea.’
S omething more . Dr Paul’s career as a surgeon had hardly been glittering. He was hard-working enough, a belt-and-braces, run-of-the-mill surgeon with a barely adequate private practice and just his police work to keep the creditors at bay.
What set Dr Paul apart from the legions of other middle-aged, middle-of-the-road surgeons was that Dr Paul had an unusual hobby. He was interested – very interested – in sodomy and in sodomites. Dr Paul had been interested in sodomy and sodomites ever since he was a student, twenty years ago, when he had been taught by Dr Alfred Swaine Taylor, the celebrated and sometimes controversial father of English forensic medicine.
In one of his lectures to students at Guy’s Hospital in 1850, Dr Taylor had spoken about a bizarre and disturbing case he had been involved in as a young doctor nearly twenty years earlier. It concerned the death of one Miss Eliza Edwards. On 23rd January 1833, Miss Eliza Edwards had roused her ‘sister’, seventeen-year-old Maria Edwards, who was sharing her bed, and complained of ‘a wheezing in the throat’. It was clear to Maria and to the landlady of the ‘house of doubtful repute’ in Westminster that Eliza was very poorly indeed.
‘Maria, I am dying,’ Eliza whispered, gasping for every breath. ‘It has pleased God to call me.’
Five minutes later Eliza Edwards was dead. She was just twenty-four, and the probable cause of death was consumption, though some were convinced that it was syphilis. For many years Eliza Edwards had made a name for herself as an actress of some repute, specialising in playing tragic young heroines. But the parts had dried up and, for the past three years, Eliza and Maria had been forced to work as prostitutes.
At an inquest held two days later no one claimed Eliza’s body and the corpse was, in consequence, sold to Guy’s Hospital for dissection. The dissection was to be carried out by Dr Alfred Swaine Taylor and was expected to be a routine affair, but when Eliza’s nightclothes were removed, Dr Taylor discovered to his shock and amazement that the body of this young woman was in fact the body of a young man with a normal set of male organs strapped up with a bandage tied around the abdomen.
Outwardly, Eliza Edwards looked like a young woman.
‘There was no appearance of a beard or whiskers,’ Dr Taylor reported. ‘The hairs on the face seemed to have been plucked out with tweezers. The hair was upwards of two feet in length, of a soft glossy texture. The features were of a feminine character.’
No one had suspected that Eliza was a man: not Maria, Eliza’s supposed sister, who had lived with her since she was seven and who had worked with her as a prostitute; not Dr Somerville and not Dr Clutterbuck, both of whom had attended Eliza during her last illness; not the proprietress of the brothel in which Eliza and Maria lived and worked; and not, most of all, the succession of gentlemen callers who came, and came again, to pass an hour or so with the beautiful and talented Miss Edwards.
Pressing on with his examination, Dr Taylor noted that Eliza Edwards’s anus was deformed. ‘The state of the rectum left no doubt of the abominable practices to which this individual had been addicted,’ he wrote. ‘It was noticed by all present that the aperture of the anus was much wider and larger than natural.’ Dr Taylor was also shocked to discover that ‘the rugae or folds of skin which give the puckered appearance to the anal aperture had quite disappeared’ – so much so, indeed, ‘that this part resembled the labia of the female organs’.
Not only had Eliza Edwards dressed as a woman, acted as a woman, passed as a woman, she had, by the mysterious alchemy of sodomy, effectively become a woman.
This strange story of Eliza Edwards had fired the
S omething more . Dr Paul’s career as a surgeon had hardly been glittering. He was hard-working enough, a belt-and-braces, run-of-the-mill surgeon with a barely adequate private practice and just his police work to keep the creditors at bay.
What set Dr Paul apart from the legions of other middle-aged, middle-of-the-road surgeons was that Dr Paul had an unusual hobby. He was interested – very interested – in sodomy and in sodomites. Dr Paul had been interested in sodomy and sodomites ever since he was a student, twenty years ago, when he had been taught by Dr Alfred Swaine Taylor, the celebrated and sometimes controversial father of English forensic medicine.
In one of his lectures to students at Guy’s Hospital in 1850, Dr Taylor had spoken about a bizarre and disturbing case he had been involved in as a young doctor nearly twenty years earlier. It concerned the death of one Miss Eliza Edwards. On 23rd January 1833, Miss Eliza Edwards had roused her ‘sister’, seventeen-year-old Maria Edwards, who was sharing her bed, and complained of ‘a wheezing in the throat’. It was clear to Maria and to the landlady of the ‘house of doubtful repute’ in Westminster that Eliza was very poorly indeed.
‘Maria, I am dying,’ Eliza whispered, gasping for every breath. ‘It has pleased God to call me.’
Five minutes later Eliza Edwards was dead. She was just twenty-four, and the probable cause of death was consumption, though some were convinced that it was syphilis. For many years Eliza Edwards had made a name for herself as an actress of some repute, specialising in playing tragic young heroines. But the parts had dried up and, for the past three years, Eliza and Maria had been forced to work as prostitutes.
At an inquest held two days later no one claimed Eliza’s body and the corpse was, in consequence, sold to Guy’s Hospital for dissection. The dissection was to be carried out by Dr Alfred Swaine Taylor and was expected to be a routine affair, but when Eliza’s nightclothes were removed, Dr Taylor discovered to his shock and amazement that the body of this young woman was in fact the body of a young man with a normal set of male organs strapped up with a bandage tied around the abdomen.
Outwardly, Eliza Edwards looked like a young woman.
‘There was no appearance of a beard or whiskers,’ Dr Taylor reported. ‘The hairs on the face seemed to have been plucked out with tweezers. The hair was upwards of two feet in length, of a soft glossy texture. The features were of a feminine character.’
No one had suspected that Eliza was a man: not Maria, Eliza’s supposed sister, who had lived with her since she was seven and who had worked with her as a prostitute; not Dr Somerville and not Dr Clutterbuck, both of whom had attended Eliza during her last illness; not the proprietress of the brothel in which Eliza and Maria lived and worked; and not, most of all, the succession of gentlemen callers who came, and came again, to pass an hour or so with the beautiful and talented Miss Edwards.
Pressing on with his examination, Dr Taylor noted that Eliza Edwards’s anus was deformed. ‘The state of the rectum left no doubt of the abominable practices to which this individual had been addicted,’ he wrote. ‘It was noticed by all present that the aperture of the anus was much wider and larger than natural.’ Dr Taylor was also shocked to discover that ‘the rugae or folds of skin which give the puckered appearance to the anal aperture had quite disappeared’ – so much so, indeed, ‘that this part resembled the labia of the female organs’.
Not only had Eliza Edwards dressed as a woman, acted as a woman, passed as a woman, she had, by the mysterious alchemy of sodomy, effectively become a woman.
This strange story of Eliza Edwards had fired the
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