13 FLEUR RICHARDS

FLEUR RICHARDS C905/13/01-04 VHS 01-01

MENTAL HEALTH TESTIMONY ARCHIVE
 
 
 
 
 

FLEUR RICHARDS
 
C905/13/01-04/VHS 01-01
 
Original on DVC-Pro
Copy on VHS
 
Interviewed by Judy Mead
Camera by Faye
 
Transcribed by Julie Sharman
August 1999

 
 
 
 
[Start of DVCPro tape 1 of 4 – Start of VHS tape 1 of 1]
 
[Camera: C905/13 Fleur Richards, tape number one’]
`Ok…so… do you want to tell me a little bit about your very earliest memories? Can you tell me where you born, and what year?’
 
`[Both talking together] I was born on the 20th of December, 1923… and the newspaper… the Times newspaper said, that there was hail… there was hail stones, there was strong wind… ice… and that sort of thing, so… the… the time of my arrival into this world, the day was very… cold and bitter, and… but people had been doing… out there… been doing their Christmas shopping, and my father arrived home from work and he said to my mother, `Is that all I’ve got?’. I don’t know what my mother thought about that because she… already had two female miscarriages and… the doctor pulled me out my mother… [high pitched voice] I’m not sure… I was born cyanised [ph]… cyanosed, and we were both given Oxygen, and that was… my arrival into this world.’

`Were you the first born of the family?’
 
`Yes… but the two miscarriages were girls’

`And were there any brothers and sisters?’
 
`My brother was born about three years after me… [pause]. I… I don’t remember the place where I was born because… we left when I was two… and my first recollection was when I was three… my father had bought a house in Hounslow…’

`And you remember that quite distinctly do you?’
 
`The first thing I can remember was sit… sitting in the back garden, and it was a lovely morning… and feeling extremely lonely… [pause]. And a little girl came flying over the fence, with her pigtails flying, and I asked her name… and she said it was Joycey [ph], so we… got on very well together. We were very fond of each other… and my father said she was a dirty little wretch, but because I was so fond of her, he let me play with her, and come… into our house. Her stepmother didn’t like me… she said, `You’re a sissy… always playing with girls’…’

`So…’
 
`[Laughs]…’

`What was your name when you were born?’
 
`Oh, I was Billie…’

`Billie?’
 
`Mmm… I… and I didn’t mind being Billie, because that’s a girl’s name, as well, so I was… happy with that. But… I didn’t really like boys… I thought they were dirty and horrible. I did play with them…’

`Did… did you feel that you were a… a girl, although you born a boy?’
 
`I… I didn’t know anything about being a boy, because I just thought and behaved as a girl, and… it was only when people passed… started passing remarks like… `Isn’t Billie beautiful?… he should have been a girl’. I thought what was I… and are they taking about… talking about me ‘cause I am a girl… and… but it was a… sort of enterprising our avenue [???]… Bucksfare Avenue [???] there was a little girl at the end and… she had a lending library, passing a book… and although I didn’t like… [sneezes] excuse me… I didn’t like boys much, there was this little boy at the end of this… avenue, and I really… had this terrible desire… for him… and I ran after him to grab him and he ran in… into his mother… and so well… that was that… me frustrated, but… but the situation was made worse, because… I had to go to a very posh party, and then I realised that I was dressed in boy’s clothes and had my hair cut like… I hated it…’

`What sort of age would you have been then, when you had your hair cut?’
 
`Well then… I suppose between three and four. I was very chubby. I had lots of fat on me, you see so… that was a good thing… and… they had a row… my parents had a row about my gender in front of me when I suppose I was five… something like that, and my father said, `Billy’s a boy and he’s going to be a boy’, and my mother went white and she said `Billy’s a girl…’, so that was the way I… the way I… I ran upstairs and my mother came upstairs to… try and reassure me… you know… that I wasn’t…’

`That you were a girl?’
 
`That I was a girl, because it… you know she accepted that… I was… a… a girl. But… [pause]… so I had… quite a dramatic life really, as a young child… a lot of it was very happy… in my… my… I had a nice home… my father had a good job.’’

`What did he do?’
 
`He was a process engraver. He done his engraving in… wood, metal and stone… with a… commercial firm called `Grout’ [ph], somewhere in London, and he’d… interrupted that to go away to serve his country… in the army… and… he got badly wounded… badly wounded on… he was invalided back to England… to be nursed… by the military, and… my uncle died on the Western Front… he was killed in action…’

`In the first World War?’
 
`Yes… my Uncle Jim [ph] was killed in action, but they were in… I think different regiments. If we can go back to what I was saying about being called sissy, I… I climbed my brother’s high chair, and tried… tried to jump off it, and I tripped, and I… as a result I had… my appendix but… had ruptured which meant that I was very lucky to… to survive. Peritonitis is a very… dangerous illness, but I… I did survive, they felt fortunately, yeah… being in and out of hospital, but…’

`Were you just on the chair ‘cause you were playing, or…?’
 
`Pardon?’

`Were you just… jumping from the chair because you were playing or…? For a different reason? [Both talking together].’
 
`I was jumping because I didn’t know what a sissy was… meant by but I did… it sounded horrid to me and I didn’t want to be whatever this woman next door said, you see… so I was lucky to survive, you know, I was lucky to have a good surgeon to cope with me, you know… I mean I lost an awful lot of weight… but… and ‘cause I started to get interesting in… flying… I was… potty about flying, it’s all I could think about…’

`That was your ambition, even from a young…?’
 
`Yeah…’ [both talking together]

`…young girl was it?’
 
`When I was little my… my nanna said to me, `Why you keep looking at those planes and… in the sky, Billie?’, but I couldn’t ex… [ph]… I felt I couldn’t explain to her that I was potty about flying… you know that it was my… one ambition in… in life, was… was to fly… you know, which I… pursued… but… like everyone I… like walking and being on [inaudible]… I found puberty… difficult. Everyone does but it was particularly for me because I had the thought, you know, that I might become masculine, like my father. I didn’t mind him being masculine and of course it was… a sort of complicated…’

`So it was a…?’
 
`It was a sort of complicated… umm… puberty… it was very upsetting… and… but I had a shock that made me masculine, which I hate, at a very low age you know… but…’

`So you had a bit of a dread of growing up… is that right?’
 
`Yes, really… [pause]. I… of course I… I couldn’t think… I couldn’t… like a boy… I didn’t think like a boy, it didn’t mean… mean anything to me, I just wanted to be pretty, and so forth…’

`Did other people… did they treat you as a girl or a boy, when you were at school and so on?’
 
`Well the boys considered that I was a girl, so they didn’t want me. They didn’t want me at school. They didn’t… they… they were just thinking `we don’t want this girl with us, she took over the other side’, and they would open doors for me and things like that… you know, they would be very polite, but I don’t think they were keen, because they wanted to talk about masculine things, you know… and they… I suppose they found it rather difficult with me, sitting in the same class, but… I quite liked being at school otherwise, you know… I was a History monitor… and I didn’t tell the boys that there was a… that the… History teacher, Mr… Lewis… who was a Welsh man, had got a cane. I thought I won’t tell the boys, it might upset them that he’s got a cane… in the cupboard, and… and then we had a meeting at the school, to… elect prefects, and they had the short list. My name was on there, so they elected me… I suppose they thought `let’s have a girl’… and… ‘cause they don’t report us [???], you see, so when I… you had to close the gate at ten to nine of a morning, and I’d get my notebook and pencil out and I just pretended to write their names down.’

`Why did you have to write the names down?’
 
`To go to the Headmaster… all the late comers had to be reported to the Headmaster you see… but the… I didn’t write their names down, because I didn’t want them to get into trouble, but they didn’t mind, and the Head… and… as I say, I was a prefect, and the Headmaster had me in his study, and he said, `You’ve been late four times this term, but you won’t be late again will you?’, I said, `No, Sir…’, not likely! ‘Cause he used to thrash boys… in public though… and… and…’

`Did you have that happen to you?’
 
`No, that didn’t happen to me because I’d made up my mind that until I left school, I was never going to be late again. I’d had the cane at infant school…’

`And you remember that do you?’
 
`Yes… yes I remember, ‘cause… because the teacher said that the next person to do that will go to the Headmaster in the morning, but people had been… the children had been dropping things on the floor and I went for my… to get my scissors, and dropped them on the floor, and she said `Headmaster in the morning’… so I held out my hand… and it didn’t hurt… didn’t really hurt much. I… it hurt when he put my name in the… punishment book, then she made me sit in the corner, with the `Duncer’ cap on my head, so what… my mother took me away, and… [laughs] and sent me to another infant school…’

`And what… can you remember the names of the schools?’
 
`No, I can’t… no… I… I quite liked living in Hounslow, really…’

`And that’s… you went to Hounslow when you were two? Is that right?’
 
`Yes… I quite… it was quite pleasant actually, I quite liked it and… [pause]…’

`What age did you change schools?’
 
`Well, she took me to another infant school after I got the cane, and I… I just felt lonely because I… found them a bit difficult. I didn’t really want to play with boys at school, and I daren’t play that… I daren’t play with the girls at school, so I just lonely, and then we moved to Twickenham… where I sat next to the driver, in a pickford… [ph]… pick… pick… pickfords… pantechnic [???] and I sat in the driver… and I felt very odd… because we’d been to see the house under construction, and… by then I’d got a baby brother… which I didn’t want… [laughs]…’

`Why didn’t you want him?’
 
`Well I… I didn’t really like boys… [both talking together]…’

`You’d rather have had a sister?’
 
`I… I’d said to my mother, `What is it?’, and he said… and… she said, `It’s a boy…’, and I felt I had to get… I’d like to bury it, I’ll got and bury it… [laughs]…’

`Did you try?’
 
`No… I… I… I know I was quite cross with my mother for having it, and then he… he got my teddy bear… my teddy bear and he gave it a short back and sides… and… we never really got on… all that much. But then we moved to Twickenham, and… another infant school… [pause]… for six weeks… and then after… after Christmas, I was moved into the Junior School… and… when I used to go to the toilet, I used to wonder why the boys were… seeing how they could pee up against the wall, you know… it… oh, it disgusted me, but I didn’t realise that they were just… using masculine… they did masculine competition. I was born left handed, which gave me emotional problems. I… my parents didn’t mind… but I was… done beautiful… what we used to call `copper plate writing’… I was so proud… and the teacher came along and said, `Oh… you’re… we don’t allow pupils to use their left hands, you must use your right’, so… my writing deteriorated immediately. The Headmaster came along, and he said, `Is this your best writing?’, so I thought if I get this wrong… I’ll be walking to his study for the cane… so I said, `Yes Sir’, and… and… and he just walked away, so… that was… a narrow escape. I used to have a friend at that school and he says that he got the cane quite frequently from Mr Chenley [???], and he found it epicocious [ph] to put… wads of newspaper in his short pants, to absorb the pain… and…’

`What sort of thing was the cane given for?’
 
`Well, anything that they thought… where you… if you had stepped out of suit… out of line… having been late, or for any… well, anything they thought you deserved the cane for… you’ll… that you’d get it… you see… and I’m… my parents didn’t believe in corporal punishment, because my father got a thrashing from his father when he was a child, and he vowed that if he ever got married and had children, he’d never lay a finger on them… and they didn’t… they never touched me… ever… and I never touched my children or… either of them… because I think corporal punishment is wrong. I know it’s very tempting to do it, but… you know I was tempted as a parent to do it, but… I never did, you know, and… I still think it’s wrong today, personally, but I know that some people disagree with me over that, you know. They say `Well a little tap doesn’t do any harm’… but… I don’t… I mean I’ve seen parents hitting their children quite hard… and I think that… I don’t think it really solves anything… myself… but that’s only my… opinion.’

`Did you have quite a good relationship with your parents then?’
 
`Well… I loved my… I loved them both, despite my father’s disapproval of my femininity, I knew he loved me. I never doubted that… at all, and… course while I was at… while I was in… at Hounslow, I… my mother helped me to draw. I was… she made me join the Cubs… and I… [pause]… I… I left after three months because I wanted to be a Brownie, you see [laughs], so… I… I remember going to St Paul’s Cathedral for a service there once, and… and then we moved to… Twickenham, my… mother got me in the Scouts, ‘cause I… I wanted to be a Brownie… a Guide, but ever since I couldn’t be, I had to accept being a Scout… but I… I… apart from that I enjoyed you know, going to camp with the Scouts and… learning all these things that I got involved with… being a Scout, like… and the motto, `Be… Be Prepared’, you know…’

`What sort of things do you remember doing with them?’
 
`Well… going to camp, singing round the camp fire… and digging latrines. We had to dig the latrines. I wondered why we were digging… he wanted… the Scout Master wanted to dig the… latrine, so quick, and the reason was because he gave… us our stew… the next morning, ‘cause we needed the latrine, so… I… I thought Baden Powell was a fine man. I met his wife, Lady Baden Powell, and… he was the hero from Africa and… the Boar War… and I met them and they’re really wonder… wonderful people… you know, great… they had great experiences of life, specially Baden Powell in… in South Africa and… we had a jamboree in the park, and we constructed… we constructed a bridge made out of ropes, and… and we… we put together… I had… we put on all the Gang Show… I was an American Boy Scout… you see, that was my problem at school. The only way I was… I daren’t be a girl… [laughs]… it was all right the boys being…’

`In plays?’
 
`…girls… being girls, that… and I… if I hadn’t known they were girls… I wouldn’t have sworn they were girls, they were so happy being girls, you know…’

`In plays you mean, that they liked taking the part of girls?’
 
`Yeah… pardon?’

`…if there was a play on?’
 
`I think that… I think it’s… part of what happens to people in life. It… it… it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to turn into a girl, it… it’s just that… I know some men tip them over in their… in their glands and chromosomes, but… eventually to make them one thing or the other, and… so I was quite happy in the Scouts, really…’

`Did you make friends there?’
 
`Oh yeah… the boy next door… the boy next door was my Patrol Leader. He was… I was in Eagles, the 8th Triclam [???] and they decided that he was… boy… he was a bit too mischievous to be my Patrol… Leader, and they moved me into the… Hebrit [???] Patrol, where the Patrol Leader was more… more a sort of sober side, and I wouldn’t…’

`More what sorry?’
 
`More sober… he was more sober, and I would get into less… mischief… with him… and he persuaded me to go… to learn dancing, and… in Hounslow, I… so I went to Mrs More… Norman’s dancing class, and I… enjoyed that… and… like Henry Hall and… Victor Sylvester, the strict [???] and… particularly liked the… Tango… so I had a dancing partner and I used to take her dancing. Her name was Sylvia, and my parents used to sing a song, `Who is Sylvie… Sylvie who is she?’, but I never… I never brought her home.’

`Why was that?’
 
`Well, I don’t know… it just didn’t occur to me. I had struck up a friendship with a girl, when we were on holiday in 1939, a girl called Vera… and I thought she was my girlfriend, but… [pause]… yes, going back to Sylvia, she saw I was sort of getting keen on her, so she said gently that… she said, `We’re going to get married’, you know… so…’

`So what age were you by this time?’
 
`Well I was about… I was about seventeen by then.’

`When you were doing the dancing?’
 
`Yeah, well… I started dancing at sixteen. Anyway, she told me she was going to get married, I thought `Oh dear’… that’s me… [laughs]… that’s me out the window, and I said, `Well I hope you’ll be happy, and I walked across from Twickenham to Hounslow, and knocked on her door to wish her… hope she’d be happy, and her mother opened the door and slammed it in my face, so… anyway, she had… she married an airman and I went dancing, in Hounslow one day. I went up to Hounslow… [inaudible]… and she was there, but she didn’t… she didn’t look at all happy… probably because her husband was posted somewhere where they wouldn’t see one another, and… but this girl I met… [pause] when we were on holiday at Christchurch at… I was fifteen. I’d lost my job at the Melody Maker, I got the sack, and I said `Can we keep in touch?’, so she said `Yes’, and I used to cycle up to her place and her parents used to visit. We used to exchange visits, and I thought... I was no naïve, I thought she was my girlfriend, you know…’

`What was her name?’
 
`Vera… Vera Pinner… so I… then I completed my training to be a wireless operator, and I got my sparks badge on my arm and I’d got my Air Crew… UT (?) Air Crew white flash… I used to love… laundering that [inaudible]… and I arranged to meet her in… and we sat on a bench in… in Leicester Square, and I said, `I love you… I want you to get engaged to me’, and she promptly burst into tears… and she said, `I knew this would happen’, but she’d been jilted by a Sailor. Everyone seemed to get jilted by Sailors, I don’t know whether… sailors have a habit of jilting their girlfriends, but anyway… she said `Give me six months’. I said, `You’ve had… you’ve known me four years… if you don’t know now you never will’, and she got upset. I… I walked her to the bus stop. I tried to kiss her but she wouldn’t let me and… so when I got to Scotland… [pause] I wrote and I apologised for my behaviour, and I said, `You… take as long as you like’, but she never replied, so that was that.’

`And was that upsetting for you at the time?’
 
`Well yes, because… I mean I was eighteen, oh no [???]… and…’

`Did you used to fancy girls and… or did you feel attracted to boys, or…?’
 
`Well I… I… because I become masculine I was attracted to girls, you see… it was only much later, that… I was attracted to men… you know… and… but… but I mean… the… we used to walk in the Bunker, you know… in that was… everything was there, the… the food, the naffy [ph]… everything was down there, and they… and the girls realised that I was… I was feminine you see. They never actually said anything… but they decided… they said `Let’s play forfeits’ and then made sure I… I lost… so `What is Bill going to do for his forfeits? Oh, he can take Vic into the accumulator room’. I… I was very cross… the… I was very cross that they’d got… done this to me.’

`Can you tell me what the `accumulator room’ is?’
 
`Well, it’s for… it gives a low tension supply to the… the valves in the radios… it’s in the… in the receivers. Anyway, I… I kissed her… you see, I kissed her. When we came out we’re going… and the girl said `We thought you’d… we thought because… uniform… Bill would be torn off… so that was that [???]. ’

So they were really teasing you… or more than teasing you?’
 
`Yeah…’

`Did it feel like bullying or…?’
 
`No, it wasn’t bullying… because I liked them, you know… but they… we were all… all good pals… and…’

`And that was in…? sorry…’
 
`…and… I fell asleep… I was on this pre-invasion watch and… the wireless operator said, `You’re taking over this now… I listened to the morse coming…’, I said, `That’s not the morse code’, he said, `Yes it is, it’s… [inaudible]…’, so I said, `Never heard of it, what do you mean?’. He said `You’ll get used to it in three weeks’, so in three weeks I did, and I fell asleep… I was having a lovely… I just drifted off… to say it nicely… and Vicky woke me up, she said… she said, `But I’ve had a ‘phone call from the officer on the scramble ‘phone… why… that you’re not answering, and…’, she said, `I’ve got you off the hook, haven’t I?… I’ve told him that your… accumulators have run low and they’re going to change it…’, I said, `Well, thank you… thank you…’, and… and… and we… we were walking along the cliffs at Aberdale [ph], and she tried to seduce me again, and I thought `Oh no… no thank you… no thank… not likely… I thought you was…’ just sleeping with a divorced Sergeant, and I’ll get [inaudible] my post… and officers [???], besides I thought…’ as I still do I think, but… if you’re single, you stay away from… basically you stay away from sex. You know… you stay celibate and I…’

`And that was very much the norm in those days?’
 
`Yes… yes…’

`Can I take you back a bit again…? You were… you’d been telling me about… well, we’ll take a break there…’
 
`[Whispers] [Inaudible]…’

`It’s a Suzuki GS125…not that… that big…’
 
`There it is… hotted up, things, has it…?’ [???]

`Umm… well, it’s not that big actually… it’s quite small…’
 
`[Inaudible]’

`Ok… ok… are you ready for me to carry on?’
 
`Yeah… yeah… but I think you’d better prompt me…’

`Oh yeah… that’s no problem… I will… so, you’ve been telling me so far a bit about your early life…’
 
`Yeah…’

`And that you were two when you moved to Hounslow, and then you went to Twickenham when you were six… and then you joined the Scouts…is that right?’
 
`Yeah…’

`And… and then you were telling me that you had been made a Monitor at school and so on…? And you briefly mentioned that you’d worked at Melody Maker, is that when you left school at… at fifteen is it or…?’
 
`Yes… my father worked at Fartham’s [ph] Press. He’d had… he had worked at [inaudible], which were the commercial… printers, in London, but when he came back from his war service they cut his apprenticeship down to five years… and… he was just working during the day and he’d be home about six o’clock at night so we’d be waiting for him… used to bring me this… this lovely cellophane wrapped jellies… and….’

`Cellophane wrapped…?’
 
`Jellies… jellies… sweets…’

`Oh right…’
 
`And then he had the chance of working for the Daily Herald and The People… and they said it was just day work, but three years later they moved it onto shift work, which meant that I didn’t see my father so much, you see, when that happened, and... as I say, we moved to Twickenham. He bought a bigger house… he got another mortgage, and… and during the war he was on short time because there was a shortage of news print, and they gave… he augmented his money by being a spot on the roof of… [inaudible] Press, you see… he had a.. buzzer to press, and also some binoculars, so he…’

`What was he spotting?’
 
`He was looking for enemy aircraft you see, so if he saw any aircraft, like… [inaudible]… doing the bullets… he’d just press the button and they’d be… and we’d run… go down to the shelter…’

`And is that how you got to work at Melody Maker?’
 
`Well, that was before the war… I got… I left school… at the age of fifteen and a half, I… wasn’t satisfied with my… education. And… so I said goodbye to the staff who I… and I… and the… the Science Master was… was digging a vegetable… spot, and I was leaving… I said, `I’m leaving today’, and so he shook my hand, and said, `Good Luck’. I said I’d got a black spot… ‘cause if you done something naughty you got a black spot you see… [laughs]… on… on your chart, you… [laughs]… I said, `Would you… as I’m leaving school, would you mind removing it?’ and he said, `No, I won’t’, so I… so there we are… so I went to see the Headmaster and said, `I’m leaving today, Sir’, and he wrote me out a good reference, and my father got me this job, you see… which was quite enjoyable, going round Tin Pan Alley while people were rehearsing… you know… and…’

`What was your job at Melody Maker?’
 
`I was Office Boy. Bit like the Archbishop of Canterbury, he started out as a… as an Office Boy…and now he’s the Archbishop of Canterbury, so… but I never became the Archbishop of Canterbury… but my ancestors did. My ancestors did… Archbishop Cranmer [ph]…’

`Your ancestor?’
 
`Well… yeah… on the maternal side was Archbishop Cranmer [ph], yes…’

`Did you have a religious upbringing when you were a child?’
 
`Well my… parents weren’t particularly religious because my father had it drummed into him as a child. Yes he… he… he said, `I… I don’t say my prayers… but I…’, he said, `I believe I will see my mother again’. I think my father had got it really drummed into him far too much… like… church three times a day on a Sunday… Choir practice, and all that… and… like my… [pause]… but I mean I was sent to Sunday School and things like that, so I… I quite liked that. It was a bit confusing because my mother… my grandmother had converted to being a Baptist, you see, so I some… sometimes went to Baptist Sunday School, sometimes the C of E, you know… so... it was… it was quite pleasant.’

`Does your mum go to church as well… or your dad?’
 
`No… they… they really would only go to church if there was something special. My… my father didn’t approve of… of registry office marriages, he said it’s like buying a pound of meat, you see… and… [pause]… but… anyway, I was basically happy in the Air Force you know…’

`Sorry, when did you join the… so you’d worked at Melody Maker…?’
 
`Yeah… and then I left… [both talking together]’

`And then you left…?’
 
`I left… I’d left… I left… and there was a pause… after I got the sack… wrotten… there was a pause, and… and war was in the air you see… and… the old men were rushing about shouting `There… the… the balloon’s going up, the balloon’s [laughs]… going up’, and there’s tanks rolling over the bridge at Christchurch, and men marching to the Channel part… ports… and… it was a very emotional time… so… my grandfather was on holiday in Africa, on a relative’s farm, and my father sent him to… a telegram, to come… back to London… and that he’d meet him off the coach… at Victoria coach station, he’d be there at six o’clock… and that’s how they… they were emergency… state of emergency, had been ordered… and a black out, and the… the barrage balloons were gently rising into a beautiful sky. Anyway, they were looking around…’

`What…?’
 
`…they were searching each… for each other… in the black out… and he didn’t find my father until nine o’clock at night, so by the time they… they both got home it was ten o’clock and my father was fed up. So, the next day, we… we listened to Neville Chamberlain, saying that we were now at war with Germany… and… we a dug a… made an air raid shelter and… we stuck… we taped the windows so the glass wouldn’t fly so much… and put buckets out for… incendiary bombs and sand… that sort of thing, and… that was the… that was the start of… the war. The second war for… my parents… and possibly the third for my grandparents… who might possibly have been involved in the Boar War, for all I know, but…’

`Were you very frightened… when war broke out?’
 
`Well, I was very emotional and a bit frightened. The Air Raid sirens… went but nothing happened. Well they killed a rabbit… they killed a… they dropped a bomb in the Shetland Island and they killed a rabbit… that’s where you get the song, `Run Rabbit Run…’, that The Crazy Gang used to… but… you sort of settled down to it… I… and… and I was… joined the Training Corps by then and… two six seven Squadron, and I was learning all about our aircraft recognition and aerodynamics, you know. We went… we went to camp… we went to camp at Houghton, where… we had big marquees, and the officers used to wait on us, you know… [laughs]… we thought we won’t be getting this when we get in the Air Force… which we didn’t, and we were… under canvas, so that was… that was all right. I had various jobs which I wasn’t much good at really, but… I was just…’

`What sort of jobs were they?’
 
`Well the last job was… quite… I quite liked it… I worked for Dunn’s [ph] the Hatters, you know… and I didn’t get on with the Manager really. But we didn’t just sell hats, we sold coats and all that… sort of thing, and he’d been thrown out of the… he was in the Guards, he was… been thrown out with bad foot, you know… and he said `You would choose that b’oody day to go and join the Royal Air Force…’, I said the… so I said nothing, so I went down, joined up, and they said that… we swore an oath on The Bible, to… to defend King George the fifth… sixth… and his heirs and successors. We got a little silver badge… and we hand… had a hand out for seven and six (7s 6d)… and we said well… and the officer said, `Good Luck Lads… work hard and play hard… you’re in the Royal Air Force now’, so we went home until… we got out call up papers… and… [inaudible]… [laughs]’

`So your ambition to fly… that was beginning to… start then…?’
 
`It was beginning then to come true, yes… it was beginning to come true, and… but… [pause] and I used to go into Edinburgh… because we worked the shift work, and we had two thirty six hours per week. You come off the fourteen hour shift, at night, and you got… you got then thirty six hours off, so that happened twice a week so I used to go into Edinburgh, and put out… a Forces Hostel… [???].’

`Where were you based? This is it…?’
 
`At Hever Castle [ph] was… near Dunfirmlin…’

`And that’s the first place you went with the Air Training Corps is it?’
 
`No, that was in the Royal Air Force itself… in the Royal Air Force itself, yes… I… and… [pause] and… yes, I used to go out… I used to like Edinburgh, it was such a romantic city I thought, really beautiful, you know… and lovely at night, you know… with… with the sunset on the… and… [pause]…’

`We…’
 
`Sorry… and I… put up with… put up in the Air Forces Hostel, and I needed to go to the toilet… so I… I… I had my… I took my money belt off, and I put it over the top of the toilet, and did my business… and I looked up and it’d gone… someone snatched it, so I’d got no money left, but… what happened then…? Oh yes, the group Captain… the group Captain made me go on a Navigator’s course. I didn’t want to go but he made me and… and I failed it.’

`Why did he think that you should go on an air navigator’s course?’
 
`Well, he said, `You’re far too intelligent to be a wireless operator… air gunner…’ he said, and I thought, `No I’m not…’ [laughs]… and that’s right… and… and he… he… well he used to do it… `I’m going to send you on this Navigator’s course’, he said… he said… `There’s lots of promotion’. I thought I don’t want to go on this, I’m going to fail it, because I was hopeless at trigonometry… and I did fail it… you see… and… it was just a waste of… time and they wondered why I failed it… they sent me to see a Psychiatrist, you know… and I just sat in front of the Air Force Psychiatrist and said nothing. He said nothing to me… for about an hour… and then he said, `Do you have a cough?’, so I said, `No Sir…’. He says, `Well…’, he said, `…you can go…’, so…’

`So they thought you’d failed the exam because you were ill in some way?’
 
`Well they… they probably put… because perhaps they thought I… I had… what was called the LMF, Lack of Moral Fibre, you see… that was disgraceful if you were labelled with that…’

`LMF?’
 
`If it was just battle fatigue, well that was all right, but anyway, I… I… I could… I suppose I should have said, `I’m sorry Sir’, but it’s the… trigonometry… can’t cope, so what… anyway, at least I was… they sent me off to Eastchurch, which is near… Sheerness, to be re-mustered [ph], back to… my original trade, and then they packed me back to Scotland to RAF Dice [ph]…’

`Sorry, can you say that again…?’
 
`RAF Dice [ph], which is near Aberdeen… so I was going to Aberdeen. I… I got drunk and I got legless with the Flight Sergeant in Aberdeen… [laughs]…’

`Tell me about that…’
 
`And then I… I hadn’t even meant to and… and I… and… I remember, going to the toilet, and then I… the next thing I remember was being on the top of the bus, and… and then I passed out, and that… and that someone put me to bed. I woke up in my bed, you know… and I thought, `Well… I’m going to be more careful, be… now, because… they tried to slip me…’, you know what `slipping a mickey is?’. It’s putting a… drop of… like whiskey or something like that in your beer. They tried that once with me… when they tried it again I got hold of it and when they weren’t looking, I put it in a flower pot. Anyway, there I was, doing servicing of RAF Kites, you know… and… they would… the air men were rushing around, camouflaging the aircraft, so, one of them said, `Bill, you’re the wireless operator, find out what’s going on’, so I tuned into the BBC, and the Allies had landed in Normandy. The Admin… Admin Corporal sent for me… he said, `You’re… posted to the tactical Air Force, so I said, `Corporal you can’t… post me to the Tactical Air Force, I’m working… waiting for an Air Crew course…’, he said, `Well…’, he said `Can’t I?’, he said, `I’ll read you the part of the Signal that applies…’

`The part of the…?’
 
`The Signal… the posting Signal… it… says here, that the… `…under training Air Crew, not accepted there as an excuse’, so he said, `Now…’, he said, `You and your pals, can get packed up and off, up… and off you go… to the Tactical Air Force RAF Chigwell…’, so there we are, we got on the… [laughs]… we got on the… we got on the train… I said, `Will you chaps help me with my gear?’, and big… I… to help me with my… I put my webbing on, you see and… and they…’

`What was webbing?’
 
`Well… well it’s… it’s a sort of contraption, of… like… a belt… a belt and all…it all builds up so you’ve got your rucksack on your back, and you can balance your kit bag on top of that, so… the kit bag had your name on it… you… I had my signals notes on the bottom, everything else in between, and my… steel helmet on the top of that. So there we are, at RAF Chigwell… and… you had the V1s coming in. They were… they were planes that were pilotless… they had a giro… and when it cut out, they dropped… it would go… go `bang’ you see… kill a few people perhaps or… perhaps it didn’t go off…’

`And they were German…soldiers?’
 
`German things… like they had… a German scientist there… yeah… they used it… you could hear them coming… I never actually saw one, but you could hear them… and once it… once they’d… the engine cut out, they would drop, you see… so not content with that, they started sending V2s over. V2s are rocket. They… I’ve seen one in the war museum, they’re about sixty feet high… but once they were in the air, nothing could stop them you see… and we saw a red flash in the sky, and we wondered what it was. It was… re… refraction actually, and… and… we found out it was the first V2, and they used to kill a… a lot of people, you see, so that was the blitz… and… [pause]. Anyway, I got married in 1945…’

`Just at the end of the war?’
 
`Well… the war was just over… the V… the… the Japanese war was still on… and… I… I had met this girl… [pause]… ‘cause… one of the chaps… I was… I worked with in the Air Force, he said would you like to correspond with a member of the Communist Party, ‘cause he was… so I said, `Yes, alright, yes…’, so I got this dear… dear friend letter… and… [laughs]… which I never answered [laughs]... you know… and said you’d like a… to know something about the Communist Party’, she said she would… in… [inaudible] quality as a Manageress, she had been brought up in the grocery trade… anyway, I… wrote back to her and eventually met her, so… so she’ll… and I’d… she… helped me join the Communist Party… that was another mistake… [laughs]… I was just…’

`Were you politically minded at the time?’
 
`Well yes, I suppose I was, you know… I was all for workers rights, you know, but… any… anyway… [pause]… to… cut a long… long story short… we… I went to see my prospective in-laws and they said, `We don’t marry out normally… marry outside our religion, but if you promise not to interfere, we might… our daughter’s religion, you know, you… you can get married’, you see. So I thought `What religion, she’s an atheist?…’, but… but… of course she told me that I was Jewish, but I thought that’s… that’s not going to go down with my parents… at all… you know…’

`Your parents wouldn’t have wanted you to marry a Jew?’
 
`No… [pause]… ‘cause… anyway, after I took her home you see… I’d sit in the back on the bus… my mother said, `Your… your father wants you…’, he said… he was in the garden… so I said… he said, `You are not going to marry that woman… there are plenty more fish in the sea’, so I said, `Why don’t you want me to marry her?’. He said, `First of all… she is a full blooded Jewess, and it will come out in the children… but… but worst of all…’, he said, `She doesn’t love you’, and… and I knew she didn’t love me… and… I was just so lonely, you know… but…’

`Did you love her?’
 
`Well I suppose I was just lonely more than loving her… quite possibly, but… and I… but my father sent… a… when we got married, we… my father sent me a telegram to bring her home. He decided to accept her because of the fact that he didn’t… they wouldn’t have seen me again. But… [pause]… but I… I… I personally you should stay… from my experience… you should stay in… it’s best on the whole to stay in your culture… I mean, I hadn’t moved out of my culture, I don’t feel that… that just because I’d become a Catholic I’m particularly different, it’s not a big step from… at least I don’t consider it a big step, to move from the Church of England, where I was happy and anyway… to become a Catholic, you see… but basically it’s more of… the reason I suppose is because… if you’re a transsexual… and you marry, into a different culture, it’s going to be… you’ve got two obstacles instead of one, and it’s going to be worse, which of course it was. I mean, if you can look… leave tolerance… and lack of tolerance alive, if you’re… in a situation… that made the situation worse, because I… I just felt… that… because I had married her, that you know, I’d got to stick by her… I’ve got to hide everything…’

`And she didn’t realise that you felt that you were a woman?’
 
`No… so I had to… eventually I had to… had to explain… and I… [pause]… I… I think that if… [pause]… I think if the psychiatrist just hadn’t made such a mess… of… of my medical history, very… a mess [???]… then possibly, the family would have still wanted me. I think it was more because of what had happened. It was a… really a nightmare for all of us… they kept changing their minds… they kept altering drugs and hormones and… and all that… [pause].’

`I’m very interested in…in… to hear that… but I just need to clarify something. Is it… had you had psychiatric treatment… about your gender issue before you got married, or was it only after you got married that you…?’
 
`Yeah… yeah… yeah..’

`…came in touch with psychiatry?’
 
`Yes you see… after I explained that I’d been wearing her make up and her clothes, you see… I went… she… she went to tell… explain to the doctor and the doctor said, `Well you’ve got sex trouble… would you like to see a Psychiatrist?’. I thought, `I don’t need a Psychiatrist, it’s… it’s in here…’, it was in my… it’s in… in my make up that I felt… [inaudible]… so I got admitted into this… psychiatric hospital…’

`When was that, what…?’
 
`That was in 1958…’

`Before you got married?’
 
`No, I got married in ’45…’

`Right…’ [pause].
`Shall we… can we take a break there…?’
 
`Sure…’

`Thank you…’
 
[End of DVC Pro tape 1]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 2 – VHS tape 1 continues]
 
[Camera: C905/13 Fleur Richards, tape number two’]
 
`’Cause you know, I can’t…’ [ph]
`…I can’t… you know… a mystery, but…’

`[Inaudible]’
 
`I like mystery, yeah…’

`Ok…’
 
`Yeah… do you want us to go where we… do you want to go into psychiatry now?’

`Yeah, I’m very interested to hear of your first experiences and what you thought… about it?’
 
`Well, having discussed what happened in my first one, I had, in Stone, it was called St John’s…’

`That was the name of the hospital?’
 
`Yes… psychiatric hospital.’

`How did… you get to that stage, had you seen a GP before you got to Stone?’
 
`Yeah, I’d… I’d been referred by… I lived in Wing, in Buckinghamshire and… and… we lived all together for thirteen years there. We… I had the Padre come to see us from RAF Horton, and he said, `Now that you…’ [pause]…’

`Do you want to take a break there, sorry…I think we might have a…’
[Break]
`You were just beginning to tell me about the GP, when you lived in Buckinghamshire?’
 
`In Wing, yeah, we… the… Padre had come to see us. We had lodgings in Aylesbury… oh, and I’d been working… in RAF Horton, and he came to see us, and he said, `Now that you two young people have… are leaving the Air Force, have you any ideas planned for your future?’. So I said, `Well I’ve… I’ve seen an advert in a solicitor’s office in Aylesbury, for a business for sale in Wing…’, and I said, `As my wife had… was brought up in the grocery trade… trade, we thought we’d go and look at it’, so… we went down and looked in there and we decided we liked it… and… and she was carrying, so… so we… we went to see the owner, ‘cause he had three shops going, and he’d… I went to see him and his name was Heath, Mr Heath, so he said, I… I want to sell the… the shop, because I want to develop my ice cream business, and he said `I’m not selling it to you’, he said, `You’re far too young to run a… a business’, so I told the Padre… and he wrote a letter telling him off… and he’d given me a reference… put in for a bank reference as well… so we bought it. What we didn’t know… we… what the manageress didn’t tell us, was the fact that there was a cellar below where there were rats, you see, and… [pause]… and we couldn’t stay very long because Jean was heavily pregnant, so we… we didn’t know that a lot of the… of the food, had to be destroyed… so… so anyway, we… we bought it and… we… I lodged… we lodged with an ex-Policeman during the week, and then we went home to… out at the weekend… and… [pause]… we bought it on… in November. They had the Christmas, it was Christmas time, so we did quite well… we were quite happy, but of course you had rationing then. So you had… I had to count all the coupons, including the bread coupons. It took hours and I… you had to take it down to the Ministry of Food. I said, `Can you give me… a bigger registration for my customers?’, so… `No…’. So the next time I tried again, and she said no again, so I thought oh well… is this a waste of time? And… I’d tried one or two Christian religions and I was having to feel my way about religion, and… I was in one of the pubs one day, and… having a drink… talking to my platoon, and I was criticising the church you see. There was this bloke… sitting there… he said, `You’ve got a lot to say for yourself about the church, why don’t you come and see for yourself?’, so… I said, `You know, I think I’ll… I’ll go along to evensong, you know…’, and I decided I liked it, so I started going regularly. The chap who was crit…[ph]… I was… who was… spoke up in the pub was the organist you see… and choir master, so… I got involved with the church… I sang in the choir. It was a lovely church, a thousand years old… a really… a wonderful atmosphere… and… time… time ticked by you… time ticked by, and… and the vicar… himself… said he’d give me… he’d finance me to go through… the ceniary [???] to be an Anglican Priest, you see, but… I thought, I… well I… I don’t think so… I’ll… I’ll go and… I’ll become a Catholic… [laughs]… so… that… that upset a lot of people, you know… but I hadn’t…’

`What age was that?’
 
`I was twenty nine when I used to go out, but… but… that… and really…’

`And you were married by that time or not?’
 
`Yeah, oh yes I was married… I was married and… I’d… she’d become Church of England to please me… and she was cross you see, be… because she said, `Now you’re going to become a Catholic to please… to please yourself…’. Anyway… [pause]… this is very time consuming isn’t it… but… and I realised that I was really in trouble. So I told Jean about my… my other self, and… she didn’t believe me… she said, `You’re so masculine…’, so I explained, and she went downstairs with the doctor and… I went to see him and… he said `You’ve got sex trouble do you want to see a Psychiatrist?’. I thought, `Well, not really’, it’s a physical matter, but I said, `All right…’, so that’s how I got in to St… Stone… Psychiatric Hospital, where they started pouring hormones into me, and then they changed their minds about the surgery…’

`Can… when you first saw that first Pyschiatrist, what… can you remember what sort of conversation you had?’
 
`What, you mean in a mental hospital or in the Royal Air Force?’

`In the hospital?’
 
`Well, I… I said… I said `Do you think… do you… think about my problem?’, and he said, `All the time, I…’ [laughs]… and he used… he was joking really… and… but I said…’

`Did he advise that… did he think that you should become a woman or did he think that you should stay a man, or what…? How did he treat you?’
 
`Well… well… well when I first saw the Physician’s Superintendent… he said, `What do you want us to do for you?’, I said, `Help me become a man… because I’m married with a family…’, and he said, `Supposing we don’t can’t that, do you want to be a woman or do you want to women’s clothes and do a woman’s job?’, so I said, `Well I… want to be a woman in that case…’, so he said, `If we find anything, we’ll encourage it…’, so anyway, they started pouring hormones into me…’

`To keep you male?’
 
`No, to keep me… no, they were female hormones…’

`Right…’
 
`But… and… they gave me far too many. It caused me to thrombose… you see, so I nearly died in hospital… ‘cause he… I mean they were really playing around with me…’

`Did you have any expectations of what the psychiatric hospital would be like?’
 
`Well they kept changing their minds you see… I mean… I… I knew nothing, really nothing about psychiatry, I just… I thought well, I’ve… I’ve gone sick with this problem, and in a year, I’ll be… whatever happens I’ll be back at work, and perhaps I’ll get divorced… but as it happened… they changed their minds about surgery… and… she said… the Psychiatrist said to me, `Do… what are you going to do?’, so he said, `We are… we either want you to get a lot better or a lot worse, and… and also…’

`What did they mean by that?’
 
`I don’t… I… I don’t really know you see, because… he… he asked my wife, `Do you intend to divorce… your husband?’, so she said, `No…’. But… as I say… she was very sympathetic really. She said `Please help my husband, he’s suffering…’ and they said, `We’ve changed our minds about surgery because your husband wants to have a baby and he can’t…’.’

`You wanted to have your own child and bear that child?’
 
`Yeah… [pause]… and… [pause]… then they kept changing the drugs. When I was on... I was on the admission ward, and they kept… they were doing that with a lot of people, but they were desperate to try the best drugs… I started falling all over the place. She started to get… and our… relationship gradually deteriorated. She’d made it plain… to me… that I was no longer wanted at home, and she started divorce proceedings. Going a bit further… in 19… 1962 I was… referred to the West Middlesex Psychiatric Day Hospital as a… day patient… and they were coming round with the tablets you see… and… they… and the Psychiatrist said to this… young lady… what was her name? Oh, her name was Judith… yeah, I remember Jud… `…The… the… trips will… help you make up your mind’, so she said, `Yes…’, and I thought, `Hang on a bit… they just started me on Triptydol [ph]’, so nothing happened for about three days, and then… my colour vision accelerated…’

`Your colour vision?’
 
`My colour vision… got very intense… and I… it made me very emotional, you know… [pause]… and the Occupational Therapist said, `We’re not going to leave you like this… just think of what we’re going to do for you…’, so my star was shining you see, and… I’m then she said, within the limit, so she was saying `You can’t have a baby’, but… then this nurse stood behind me, this male nurse and said, `You may hate me… you’re going to hate me…’ and I though yes, I probably will [laughs]… he said, `You’ve got a female psyche… we can… we can change it by injecting male hormones into you’. So anyway, I was persuaded to have these hormones, but they only made me ill. But in the meantime, once the colour… I had a… a schizoform attack and I heard this voice talking… it was a very masculine voice, and it said, `Now you must make up your mind whether you’re going to be a man or a woman’, so I said `I want to be a… I want to be a woman…’ and then it just all vanished. My… my… my… colour vision became normal, and then I realised I was… I was attracted… to men… you see… which was a terrifying experience… for me… you know, I… it’s… it took a bit of adjustment, that’s why… I needed… you know, more psychiatric help. So I went to see a GP… and I said to her, `They thought I was Adam but I’m… I’m Eve…’ so she said, `You need intensive one to one psychotherapy at the… at the Portman Clinic, now get out of my surgery’, so… I went… I went to see the GP, you see… [inaudible] he was very nice, and… [pause]… ‘cause I… I said to him, `Do you know what a mosaic is?’. He said `Yes, there’s tiles in the church floor…’, so I said, `I’m one…’, for [inaudible]… and he shouted at me, `You’re female, so go and be one… you know, but…’

`Say that again?’
 
`Go… he said `You’re female, so go and be one you see… and… anyway, when I got referred to… I went to the see the doctor at Portman Clinic, and my friend Mavis, who lived in camp, and I said… `We’ve taken Bill to every Psychiatrist in London, do you think… you can help him?’, and he said, `I don’t know… we’ll have to wait and see…’, and… I was sitting in the chair and I said, `What I need is a Psychoanalyst’, so he said, `I am one, then if you don’t mind getting on the couch, we’ll get on with it.’ And what I find… he called me a… effeminate. I said, `You… you say that again, I’ll thump you…’.’

`Because you didn’t think that term applied because…as far as [both talking together]… you were concerned, you were a woman?’
 
`No… I… I… anyway he was pleased but he said, `You’re showing aggression, and without that you’re half dead…’, and I found my saying… self saying, `I want to seduce the man…’, I thought… ‘cause I was wondering why… how he could get all this out my head, when no one else had been able to get it out, you know. [Pause] But… I… I… I went to him every week for a year and he said, `It’s you that’s having the surgery, ‘cause he told me there’s a… a… I couldn’t think… objectively… but… but his help, you know, he… he said… [pause]… `Now let’s see if you’ve got a woman’s mind…’, I said, `Stop… stop… stop persecuting me…’, I said, so he said, `If you’re… if… if I’m persecuting you, you needn’t bother to come any more…’, so of course he’d… he’d solved it for me, he’d solved the matter, but I just said, `I’m going to have face the future… event… sooner or later as a woman…’, but because I’d had… been messed about so much by a bad… Psychiatrist… umm… [pause]… it took me a while… before I finally decided to go and see Professor Bahari [ph]… in Cairo.’

`How did you hear of him?’
 
`I heard from him… by a girl who had… got a referral from someone who had been to see… oh, it was April Ashley’s [ph] GP.’

`Who was it from?’
Have you heard of April Ash…?’

`No…’
 
`Well she was… she was well… very well known in her divorce case. She’d had the surgery in Casablanca, but… I got… so I thought I’ll try… so I wrote from… Dr Brewer [ph] in Casablanca and he replied in French and he wanted at least six hundred… sixteen hundred pounds plus every visit… clinic… so I… well I said, `Love nor money…’, so I thought… I got… so I went back to… April Ashley’s [ph] GP, and… got the address… got the address of… Professor Bahari, and I wrote asked… if he would see me... and he… wrote back and he said he would, and… great to see me. He told me the cost… and he explained that… if there was the… necessary body parts, he’d help me menstruate, you see… and have a baby, but anyway… he took his time… you know he took it… he didn’t hurry things, and…’

`So, did you fly over to Cairo?’
 
`Pardon?’

`Did you fly over to Cairo?’
 
`Yeah… yeah… and… yeah… by my little self, and… he said, `I’m going to examine you now… to see if you’ve got a hidden vagina… and if you have, I’ll bring on your periods…’, so it was a bit late… I was forty nine. And he said, `You do not… have… a hidden vagina… so I’m going to tell you what I can’t do and what I can do. He said, `I can’t help you menstruate… I can’t help you have a baby. I was on that [inaudible]… the only thing I’d prove to become a normal woman. `Would you like me to do that for you?’, so I said yes, so… he… he wrote out the consent form… and it said on the consent form, that I… understood… that I would not be able to menstruate, I would not be able to have a baby. Anyway, so… he said, `I’m very sorry’, he said, `..but I can’t get you a Catholic Priest’, he said, `…but I’ve got you a Greek Orthodox Priest’, so he gave me… Holy Communion through a… interpreter. I had my surgery. I said, `I’m going to die…’ I said, `I’ll die…’, he said, `No you won’t…’, well he wouldn’t have got his money would he, if I… [laughs]…? And… I… ‘cause after surgery you know, he… he said, `Wake up, Miss Richards, you’re operation has been a complete success…’, and it was… it was an enormous… such intense relief, you know… and matron made a fuss of me, you know, and… she said, `You have got a magnificent vagina… which is… six inches deep… go and make love at The Pyramids, when… the… Professor’s wife isn’t looking…’, she was… she was joking of course… and anyway… I had a day’s tour of… of Cairo, which is a very big city indeed… it was a little bit too much for… to see all the various things… the Pyramids, Tutenkhamen’s… Casket… and all that sort of thing, which really didn’t do me any good. But… and I started crying in front of the Professor and the… and made a loud [???]… and they said… they said, `What’s wrong… aren’t you happy… this way?’, I said, `Yes, I am…’, `So why are you crying?’… `Oh…’, I said, `I don’t want to go back to England, I’m Egyptian now…’, of course I wasn’t an Egyptian, you know, but… they said… `Stay with us…’, said, `Stay with us… and I’ll look… we’ll look after you for the rest of your life…’, but I thought I can’t speak Arabic… it’s not my country. So… [pause]…’

`Were you scared… a bit scared to come back to this country?’
 
`Well, I didn’t know where to come back to. I… I mean I had no family any more… I had a… I had a friend who was a transsexual, but I had no one to… trans… trans… I… I mean I had a boyfriend… but I had nowhere to live… so… anyway, I… [Car horn sounds] I caught the plane back and… they sent me up to see a little Jewish Obstetrician, and he examined me. He said, `Come back tomorrow’, and I came back tomorrow… and I’d dropped a travellers cheque and he’d picked it up and he said `You… be careful with your money… this is money.’ He said, `Where are you all living?’, so I said, `In the Strand Palace Hotel’, because they’d put me in the Strand Palace Hotel, when they… went and did the Aircraft, you see and it didn’t cost us a penny. Naturally, once they’d taken you off a plane…, he said, `Oh…’, he said, `…you can’t keep… stay there…’ but my friends had come to see me and I showed them the surgeon’s diagnosis reply, with the sex quotes under and they thought, `Oh that’s a lovely diagnosis…[???].’

`And what was that diagnosis?’
 
`Yes… I was a mosaic female… XY, XXY, XX… and my friend said, `Ooh, that’s a lovely diagnosis, they got it right…’. Anyway, the Social Worker came round… [laughs]… and she… took me to a ladies hostel in Soho, and… I stayed there for a while…’

`Can I just take you back a bit? What does… in laymen’s terms, what does that mean?’
 
`Both…’

`You listed the chromosomes?’
 
`Yes…’

`What does that mean in… in other words, I… I don’t fully understand?’
 
`Well, a male is normally XY… so there’s… there’s one female chromosome, one male.. and a female is normal… normally has two… XX… you see, but it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re going to be born a female… ‘cause I.. I corresponded with a lady who’d been a hermaphrodite, and she’d been the father of two girls, but… [pause]… but my chromosomes, being XY which is male XXY… which is the syndrome (?), finder on which [???] is abnormal female, and the XX is… is female. I met a lady who… who was a mosaic female, and she’d been born as a female… with the same chromosomes as mine, because mosaics can be born either way, and she had given birth to children. [Pause] But… during and after the divorce, my son… my eldest son gave me some support, he used to come and… see me… you know…’

`Your eldest son, did you say?’
 
`Yeah… for a while… this went on for a year or two until… it just dropped… just dropped off, but that was before I had the surgery you see, ‘cause… ‘cause he eventually knew about the surgery, but…’

`How… how old were your children when they…realised that you wanted to be made into a full woman?’
 
`Well I suppose about forty two… or something… I was… I suppose I was forty two.’

`They didn’t know when you were married… your children?’
 
`Well they did… once… once I started seeing a Psychiatrist, you know… then they knew… and… and of course…’

`But they… they were in their middle age by that time, is that right?’
 
`Well, I suppose my eldest… I’ve forgotten how old my eldest one… I suppose he was about… eighteen I suppose…’

`Uh huh…’
 
`But they… because I’d been given… female hormones, although I was wearing male clothes… I mean my little girl could see my breasts… so she said… [laughs]… `Mummies and daddies have operations, then they get bosoms…’, she said [laughs]… and… [pause]. It’s like the story of my life isn’t it… that song… [sings] `One day I’m going to write… the story of my life…’ [laughs].’

`It is the story of your life. Well, did you find it difficult with your children… was that…relationship with them difficult, or…?’
 
`Well… I mean…’

`Did you feel more like their father or more like their mother…?’
 
`Well, I’ve never felt like their father. I don’t know what it… I’ve never known what it means… I don’t know what on… when I’ve asked them, and if they felt like a father they said yes, but they’ve never been able to explain what it means, by being fatherly. Well that was a… it’s a sort of… a diminished feeling of motherhood, because some people think that the female is the basic sex. I really don’t know what a man feels like being a father. It was one thing for me to take a sort of masculine attitude, but there was nothing really in it. I just felt like a mother towards them… and when I had the baby… in bed with me… I used to put her to my breasts, you see… and… [pause]…’

`Did they call you… what did they call you, your children?’
 
`What when I…?’

`When they were little?’
 
`Well they… they just called dad, me… daddy, didn’t they, you see, because I was their daddy, which I was… until for, but… [???]. Because I… I went… but… I did… I didn’t really have any problem making love my boyfriend, but… but the G… I saw… went to see this GP in… in Battersea and I said, `If I get a boyfriend, would you give me some lactational hormones?’, and she said, `I’ve never been asked for that before… I’d have to ask the Gynaecologist…’, because I was producing a bit of milk, but… [longer pause]…’

`Do you want to stop for a bit?’
 
`Well, you carry on… you ask questions if you like…’

`Can we break here for a sec?’
[Break]
`Going back to the hospital… I think you called it Stone Hospital?’
 
`St John’s, yes…’

`St John’s sorry. What… did you go there voluntary?’
 
`Yeah…’

`Yeah, and what did you think… sorry, I’ll rephrase that… what were your first impressions of the hospital?’
 
`Well it was… I suppose it was a bit over awe-ing, and because it was a new experience going to psychiatric hospital… and being on the… admission ward, there… they were… acute patients, with all sorts of problems. There was one patient… the chap in the bed next to me, well he was… he was… his name was Mr Saxbury [ph]… now that was 1958… I bought him a birthday card. There was… there was this chap… said they’d tried to execute him. I suppose they’d given him a brain operation. He said, `I went for a walk outside of the hospital, and they brought me back in the car’… and the… another chap had been a Wireless Operator like me, and they’d sent him on an Advanced Course in the Merchant Navy, and it was too much for his brain, and he’d had a nervous breakdown, and he said… he told the Psychiatrist that he was being persecuted by a lady on the… the BBC… so… the… Psychiatrist said `Is this possible?’. I said, `Oh yeah… yeah, it’s possible… it’s called… [pause]… trying to think now… cross modulation…’, it means tuning up… a transmitter to the BBC frequency, interjecting and… and speak on it… but I… I’m not saying that that took place… in… in there… he…’

`But that was a possible rational explanation… you think…?’
 
`Yeah… it was part of war, it was quite possible… and… and he was quite a pleasant young man. He… and… they gave a lot of them deep sleep… deep sleep… deep insulin… as a treatment…’

`And what sort of effect did you see that deep sleep had on people?’
 
`Well I… noticed… they were supposed to push a bed up, you know… so they didn’t fall out, but they didn’t always do it… as a result one or two people fell on their head… and there was another person… who was standing rigid all night… [pause]…’

`Did you think that it was going to be able to help you, the hospital? Did you think you were in the right place?’
 
`Well… actually I thought I… my wife brought this… paper, called the Empire News… it wasn’t… it didn’t… it… it didn’t last very long, but it had about Roberta Cole [ph]… who had been… a hermaphrodite, you know… and… she had… been an Army officer… she was a father to girls, and she joined the Royal Air Force and got shot down over Germany… as a prisoner. [Pause] And then… she eventually went to see a… so you see, I ‘phoned them up, I…and I said I’d got her problem, which I said I… only had some of it… and they said, `Well why don’t you make an appointment by...?’, I thought well, the Psychiatrists here must know what they’re doing… but of course they didn’t, they were just… being fool… foolish… they thought it… you mustn’t do that to a patient… you don’t give them lots of hormones… and think they’re going to survive. I very nearly didn’t… you see, I… because I had… far too many. You just… you shouldn’t do this to patients. You have to be very careful, with hormones…’

`And did they give you any other medical treatment?’
 
`Pardon?’

`Did they give you any other medical treatments… psychiatric treatment?’
 
`Well no… as I say, they… I had psychotherapy which was the only thing that done me any good and I used to be in and out of Springfield Hospital, in Tooting Bec, and… and of course when… [laughs]… when I ended up on the Sister Smith’s [ph] ward as a female, I said, `Did you think I’d solved my problems, Sister?’, and she said, `No, I didn’t think you would solve it…’. But… ‘cause there was this nice Jewish doctor I used to see in… in Battersea… Dr Ponson [ph] and he said, `After you had your surgery…’, he said, `…did you feel you had a limb missing, like soldiers who lost an arm or a leg… and think they can… they can still sense it…?’, and I said, `No, I… I didn’t have any sense of loss at all…’, because it’s in… it’s a cerebral… you see. If you’ve got a female brain, which I had, you know… you weren’t going to feel a loss… there was nothing, like that…’

`So it was just… much more was a relief for you?’
 
`Yeah, oh yes… it was… was a complete relief, yes…’

`When we… were talking before this interview, you were telling me that… that one of the hospital’s I think, gave you LSD? Is that right?’
 
`Yeah, I was sent up to… the Royal Victoria… Infirmary… I was referred there, for surgery, you see… and… and there was… there… a paediatric… Consultant Paediatrician there. `Oh, well…’, he said, `..we think it’s hormones…’, he said, `Make… make up your mind what you want…’. Anyway, the Endocrinologist came on the ward, who does sex re-assignment… and he said to me, `How would you like to have a male mind Richards…?’, so I thought `You’re a right idiot…’, and he got… he said, `I’ll get a Psychiatrist…’, so he sent me to a Psychiatrist, and he said, `We’d prefer… changing the mind to changing the body… would you agree to have some LSD?’, so I suppose I was a coward and frightened, so I said yes, so…’

`Did you know what it was?’
 
`Err… possibly, but then… I don’t know whether I’d read any books about LSD at the time… but… [pause]… the first doctor was a female, you see, and they gave me this LSD, and I thought that looked… that looks… it looked sinister, doesn’t it? I was…’

`What did it look like? Can you describe it for me?’
 
`Well, it’s… it was clear… it looked like water… but perhaps they were men [???] but it looked sinister… so they… the… the Psychiatric Sister said `I believe that… transsexuals are basically female, but you’re wishing for the moon…’. She said, `Drink this…’ she said… `This… this is going to give you something to think about…’. I was a bit like Alice in Wonderland… [laughs]…’

`The experience of taking it you mean?’
 
`I knew I… if I drank it… and then, my whole body seemed to vibrate, you know… and… and I was… was hallucinating… and this… this Psychiatrist, woman Psychiatrist, she gave me two lots of that… and she used to shout at me.’

`What sort of things did she shout at you?’
 
`Oh, just say, what a wonderful person I was… and all that sort of business… but I didn’t… and if I didn’t stop it, no one would want to know me, you know, and… and I couldn’t stand up. There was a place where there were some… a bed… you know, a… and… and I ended up lying down… I couldn’t stand any more you see… so I had a two lot from her… two lots from her shouting and balling and she was playing the record player. Two lots of that…’

`Why was she shouting at you? I still don’t understand.’
 
`She was trying to say what I’m like… and that’s… what a good person I was and all that, and I… I… I’d be a peep show…’

`And she was saying all that to you whilst you were under the influence of LSD?’
 
`Yeah…yeah…’

`That she’d given to treat you?’
 
`Yeah… and she used to threaten me with long term mental hospital…’

`She sent you there?’
 
`No, she threatened me with it’

`Threatened you…yeah…’
 
`Err… anyway, she went away [???] and… and then… of course Professor Ross, the.. the Psychiatrist, he… had white staring wide eyes… I think he must have been at the LSD him…self. I… I said `There’s surgery…’, he said, `You don’t want to be like, they’re… they’re monstrosities…’, he said, `You can cook [???] dear boy, it’s sublimation, there’s sub… [???]. Anyway, he got… this male doc… Psychiatrist. He gave me four… I had four lots with him… four…’

`Four lots of…?’
 
`LSD… so it was six lots all… in all… and of course you had to drink a lot of fluid, while you’re having LSD, it’s dangerous, and… I…’

`Was it given to you all in one dose then, or… did you have a bit at a time?’
 
`[Both talking together] Well no, at in… at intervals, but… they… they put me in the Psychiatric Unit in Claremont [ph] House you see, and…’

`Which was where?’
 
`That was… they put me in a Psychiatric Unit, in Newcastle, called Claremont [ph] House… it was on a five day week… basis… at weekends you went back onto a ward, and… you let… he said `Let’s find out what caused you to be a transsexual… sexual… Billy’, and he injected me in my arm. I’d had down… he put… he injected into my vein, you see… and I started screaming… and [inaudible]… my head, my… and… but…’

`What was he injecting you with?’
 
`I don’t know… I’ve no idea… perhaps he thought it was going to… he said, `Your… your parents done this to you… they brought you up as a girl.’ I said, `I don’t believe you.’ Anyway, after four lots he did… he… he threw in… he threw in the towel, and he came to see me. He said, `You have more… more in common with us than them… [inaudible]… I thought he meant women… I said, `No I haven’t…’, so he said, `Do you want to go home today?’, so I said, `No, tomorrow.’ So that was the end of the LSD experience [laughs].’

`When you said you would rather go home than…?’
 
`Pardon?’

`It ended when you said you would rather go home? Is that right?’
 
`No, after he’d said, `You’ve more in common with us than them…’ meaning women… I said, `No I haven’t…’, then he said `Do you want to go home today?’, so I said, `No, tomorrow’, so that was the end of… of the insane… insane Psychiatrists… if… [laughs].’

`So you did go home did you, the next day…?’
 
`Yeah, yeah I mean… I mean no… I went home to my mum. My… my father had died in the meantime, so I had a break at home, because I had to go home… to my father’s funeral… [pause]. But… ‘cause my father had said to me… he said, `I don’t want you to be a woman’, he said, `But… but if you do, I’ll… I’ll still love you...’, so… [pause] so that was the… [pause]…’

`And did he know that you… did he… he said that to you all along did he? Did he know that you became a woman?’
 
`Well no because he died before that had happened… but… but I mean he’d been to see doctors about… he was complaining about… about me being feminine, to doctors, and they kept saying `Well, he’ll grow out of it…’ [Laughs]… ‘

`They thought you’d grow out of it?’
 
`No… ‘course I… I… I… I never did… and…’

`Did it worry him?’
 
`Well yeah, I mean he… he… all he wanted was me to be happy. But, to me… it… it was a big burden on… him… be… I… I mean because he… still I had to go to work… and actually he… well he… would visit me in hospital and help me home at times, and… [???]… I think it shortened his life, but… well what… what with my problem and his problem during World War One, and his anti-social hours, so… that didn’t help, so… so he died at sixty three, but… and… but it was very sad… but in the meantime I’d made friends with a… a lady who… she was the only one who understood my problems. She said if I hadn’t had… been psychoanalyzed by Dr Pose [ph], I wouldn’t have been able to say… understand you. She used to take me home to her parents, and tried to explain to her mother… my problem, but her mother thought I was the `catch’ [ph] for the family… [laughs]… she thought we were going to get…’

`She thought you were a what, sorry?’
 
`She… her mother thought I was the `catch’ [ph] for the family… that we were going to get married but of course we… we didn’t… but… which was… but we were… well I mean, although I don’t see her now, because of the problem with… with… getting to see her… I still love her very much, she was a very kind person, and she’s had a… lot of suffering. I mean she’s had psychoanalysis… deep insulin… modified leucotomy, and all that sort of thing. You know, I ‘phone her up every day… you know… ‘cause she’s a wonderful person.’

`So she’s very important person to you. Did you ever fear that you might… be given a leucotomy, or any… was any treatment like that ever suggested for you?’
 
`Well… actually when I was… when I went to see the Physician… Superintendent in 19...58, he wrote to my GP and he said in the letter, and the doctor told me what was in… `What have you been doing all these years? Not… noticing this patient’ tension… we are thinking of performing a brain operation…’, you see… but they mostly pulled me clear of it with Barbiturates…’

`So… you had… they thought they’d give you Barbiturates rather than a brain operation?'
 
`Well yeah… well yeah… yes… then that pulled me clear… of the tension… [pause].’

`I think I… I think I understand…[Pause]. Were you… where you concerned about the treatments that you might get? Did you feel you had any say in what… what treatment was given to you?’
 
`[Pause] [Sighs] Well I… I just thought… I… I just felt they were playing with me. Perhaps they didn’t really know what to do for the best… [pause]. I don’t think I would have agreed to sublimation. I had a word with my GP about sublimation… recently, and he said, `It only works if… if the patient is willing’, and I… and I… and I don’t… I doubt if it would have worked with me, but I don’t know. I mean supposing I had it and I… I wouldn’t know what sort of person I… you know, had become… because I was… when I was on the ward one evening… the Psychiatrist talked to the Night Nurse about me and said… `This patient has the female instinct alive in him’, and… well that’s… [pause]… that’s it, isn’t it?’

`And what would sublimation have involved?’
 
`I’m not really sure.’

`What did you think it meant?’
 
`Well, I think it meant, what Professor… I think Professor Ross [ph] was probably a… a Freudian, because he believed in sublimation. When he said,`You can cook, dear…’, and you’re doing something else instead of having… surgery… but whether any transsexuals have managed to sublimate… I don’t know…’

`And what would the aim of sublimation have been?’
 
`Well I suppose it would take away the… your… instincts I suppose. I’m not sure because I don’t know… I’ve never met a… a transsexual that sublim… managed to sublimate, I don’t…’

`So it was a main… a sort of way of trying to bury peoples’ feelings?’
 
`Well… well I don’t think it’s that… I think it’s… it’s transfer… you know, transfer your feelings… into something else. I mean I don’t know… I mean, Catholic Priests are celibate, but whether that… whether they have sublimated… or non sublimated… I… I don’t know. I mean I’ve never asked a Catholic Priest that, I do know that some… sometimes they have part sexual problems… of various sorts… like… homosexuality or wanting a woman… and… umm… ‘cause the church isn’t very keen on them getting married. You see after… because there’s a shortage of Priests, and you know, they’re reluctant to let a Priest get married, really… because… and you’re not supposed to say Mass, once you’ve been… married, to a woman. But… I… I… but I… I mean I’m not… I don’t bother… it doesn’t bother me whether the Priest is married or… or not… all that I know… that they’re bringing me happiness through the sacrament, you know… but I know that sometimes they do get… you know… it’s not easy for them… [inaudible]’

`Did you find the church was accepting of you as both a man an as a woman?’
 
`Well, when it came to… when I lived in Westgate on Sea I served the Priest the documents, and… and he said, `The Catholic church doesn’t marry [???] to men, so I lapsed you see. So when I came to live where I am at present, I showed one of the Catholic ladies my documents from the surgeon, and she said, `Would you like…’, I said, `Oh, I’ve lapsed, because of this… Priest in Westgate on Sea…’, and she said, `Would you like the Priest to come and see you?’, so I said, `Yes’, so… so… there was a knock on the door, so I said, `Oh, it’s… ‘, and he, `Oh, it’s me… it’s Father John…’, so… and… I… he said, `Oh, I had a cry with it… your problem…’, so I said, `Do you want to see the documents from the church or from the surgeon?’, I said… he said, `The documents from the surgeon’. So he said `That’s alright, Fleur’…’

`So you didn’t find any problem really with the church there?’
 
`Not… not there, no. I said, `If… if I find a Catholic man, will you… would you marry me?’, and he said, `Of course…’, and… [pause]… and… but… [pause]. I…’

`Shall we take a… do you want to take a little break now?’
 
`Yeah…’

`Yeah…’
 
`I… you know, I… I… I mean I’m not a religious fanatical… I gave that up, I… [laughs]… I used to be able to entertain my friends… but I gave it up, about our mental health, but… yeah, I… [???]’

`Have you stopped? Yeah… other than your family, did you have any aunts or uncles or… [voice on tannoy in background]… cousins?’
[Camera: `We’ll hold it there…[inaudible]…’]
`Sorry…’
 
`…all that…[Inaudible]…’

`…start yet…?’
 
`I… [laughs]…’

`Ok…Shall we try and start again?’
 
`Yeah, ok… [pause].’

`What family did you have, other than your parents… aunts and uncles or cousins? Did you have any wider family?’
 
`Well… what do you mean? Well, I had children…’

`Did you have… did you yourself have any aunts or uncles or cousins?’
 
`Yeah… oh yeah… there were… well, my grandfather was married three times you see so there was quite a bit… all… there was cousins in various parts of Britain…’

`Did you keep in touch with them?’
 
`Well I kept in touch with them… until… [pause]… I [inaudible]… when I was sort of… getting feelings that something was going to be done, I had cousins in Watford, and they’d moved to Berkhampstead and so forth, but… gradually the… the family just dropped away… because the last time my… my relatives saw me, was at my… mother’s funeral… and they just stared at me, because they’d never seen me before… [laughs], you see… they just… I… but after that…’

`When…?’
 
`Shortly after… the… the whole thing collapsed, from a family point of… from my… you know, my point of view. There was no longer any… relation forming, it just… just dropped away…’

`And how did you feel about that?’
 
`Well I was unhappy about it, but… I suppose I was more unhappy about losing my children… more than anyone else… but that… if you ask any transsexual what is going to happen… to them… they basically… the answer is that you can forget your family, because you’re not going to see them again. And that basically… for most transsexuals, that is it… really. It’s very hard… it’s hard on me… but… no one wants to lose… your child… no… no one wants to lose their child, and it’s just something that you’ve got to live with… because… your need for your child is never going to go away… but you see you can’t force yourself on to people.’

`Could you tell me a bit about your daughter and your son?’
 
`Well, I mean they… well they… they were unhappy about it because I… went… well… I was still going to visit them, you know, where we lived in… Buckinghamshire, ‘cause my son said… to his mother… you’re a wicked woman, divorcing… poor woman divorcing my father when he’s so ill… and they were… you know, they were loyal at first… for a time, I mean, my eldest son would come and visit me but… my daughter had nightmares and she went sleepwalking… ‘cause it affected her badly, but… and they had… the Social Worker had my… ex-wife by then, up to see her, and… and she said the message from the family is that they still love me but they never want to see me again. So why they actually traced me…it didn’t really help me unless they were going to… want reconciliation, because the long letter that my son wrote me… ended with the words, `’Till we meet again…’, and that I suppose was the goodbye letter, and they’d see me, us all in Heaven, but I… one day if it was a challenge, because of the fact… as I wrote to him, that if you didn’t want me to land on your doorstep, you should leave the bolt… but I… I had just felt that I… decided not to because it… my children aren’t violent, but it might cause them to be violent…’

`Towards you you mean?’
 
`Yeah… but you never know how people are going to react… and I… and I couldn’t stand that if they were being violent towards me…’

`What age… what age would they have been when you last saw your children?’
 
`It’s difficult to say, but my son must be fifty now… easily…’

`And how old do you think he was when you last saw him or met him?’
 
`Well he thought he saw me last in 1969… at my mother’s place…’

`And how old would he have been then? Was he a young boy or…?’
 
`Well, he wasn’t… he was in… he was a young man then, he was in the Air Force, so...’ [pause].

`And your daughter, is she older or younger than…? She’s younger than your son isn’t she?’
 
`Yeah… well there was Billy, then there was Peter, then was my… my daughter, Janice… she was the last baby.’

`What’s her name, sorry?’
 
`Janice…’

`Janice?’
 
`Janice… and her second name is Mary, so… ‘

`And was she just a… a young girl when you last saw her?’
 
`Yeah…’

`Or a young woman?’
 
`A… when we… when… when we had this Christmas mime, she came to see that, and… [pause]…’

`Where was the mime?’
 
`Oh it was Middlesex… Psychiatric Day Hospital. I was the Archangel Gabrielle…’

`So…that was a play that you took part in when you were in the hospital?’
 
`Yeah… yeah…’

`And your daughter came to visit you there?’
 
`Yeah…’

`And would…?’
 
`She came to see it, yes…’

`And was… was she a child then or was she an adult?’
 
`Pardon?’

`Was your daughter a child then?’
 
`She was just a child, yes, just… about this big. I… I took her into… a big shop on… not… not C & A, it’s a… it’s another… I can’t think of the name of the clothing shop… in… in Kingston. I said `You can have any dress you like, Janice…’, so she chose a beautiful dress in green with a raised collar… and… I took her home, and… Jean said, `How dare you buy that… for her… she’ll want this sort of thing all the time.’ And then she said, `I’d… I’d like a pony tail…’, I said, `Well you can have a pony tail’, and she said `No, she can’t…’, so she was really getting into… a state to… make it plain I wasn’t welcome.’

`Your wife?’
 
`Yeah… any more… [pause]. A… a Social Worker called… Worker called it constructive… desertion… umm…’

`Is that how you saw it?’
 
`Well that’s what it was… and… [pause]… but I… I mean I don’t blame her so much… as the Psychiatrist… they hurt me because… and then… many families have had this problem and reconciled it, and… and they’re often happier afterwards, because they can see the real person… know their a lot happier… Jane Morris [ph] was a case like this… she… she was a journalist who worked for The Times, and… when you… he’s been… he… he told the… his fiancee that he… he was feminine… he said that, and… after surgery he… he… he said on the television, he said, `This is my partner for life…’ and that’s nice, you know… it… it’s nice that people can stay together and be happy together. I don’t… personally it doesn’t bother… bother me whether the person’s a man or a woman… at all…’

`Would you like to have carried on your… relationship with your wife, or would you rather have found a man once you’d had the operation?’
 
`Well… [pause] I would have liked…. I would have liked a sisterly relationship, but I think… I would be fair to let her have a divorce, and be fine… and that’s that.’

`And did… did you go on to have relationships with men since you had the operation?’
 
`Well I had a boyfriend… but he’s been dead for a long time now, and… and we… [pause] and we used to have… make love [inaudible] and… [inaudible]… that wasn’t a problem, the only problem was that after four years he felt it was too much, ‘cause he was… older than me and my… I had a very strong libido, I wanted it three times a day… year in year out… and after four years it was too much for…’

`Was it a good relationship… whilst it lasted?’
 
`Yeah, it was a bit difficult from a point of view that his life had been… had it’s ups and downs… but… [talking in background]… so he broke it off after four years, but… but then I had a relationship with… with Victor… but he… he was a nice person, but he… he couldn’t get an erection and he didn’t want an erection so… so that was… that was difficult. But I… I… I couldn’t cope without a man, who came… I wouldn’t go into a re… I wouldn’t go in any… in any more relationships unless… someone who was… who was capable… to be honest, that’s… that’s… that’s my need, you know. It’s one thing to go without it for the sake of being decent… because I… I’m not going to bed with a man, unless I can have a long term relationship. I need somebody, preferably who’s been more stable than the men in my life previously… and… umm…’

`Ok… we’ll take a short break there…’
 
`Yeah… [whispers]…’

[End of DVC Pro tape 2]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 3 – VHS tape 1 continues]
 
[Camera: C905/13 tape number three, Fleur Richards.]
 
`…our age you know, I thought… they’ve probably been… nice companions if they had survived, you know…’

`You’d like to have had some sisters?’
 
`Mmm’

[Camera: `Ok’]
`Are you filming?’
[Camera: `Yeah’]
`[Pause] So… did you ever get back into work after you’d…gone through having all the operations and so on, did you return to work after that?’
 
`I done voluntary work, but… I… I was told in Springfield Hospital that I’d never work again. [Pause] And that I… I’ve never seriously tried… apart from doing some voluntary work. I mean I sometimes say… think `Oh, you know, I… I ought to just try…’, but my history at work, you know, hasn’t been a happy one, really, and I… because… if I was back… put myself back in the position where I could be sacked, then I think that would be pretty traumatic. It’s very tempting. I think… I know… I read of one transsexual, who become a woman… in Canada I think. She was ninety two, and she got a job as a buyer in a department store…’

`At ninety two?’
 
`Yeah… I… I think the best option really for a transsexual is… unless he can… he or she can cope well is to… but… was… is to have their own business really. But you need capital for that…’

`Do you think that’s partly because of other peoples’ attitudes towards you?’
 
`No I don’t think it’s… no, I don’t think it’s that… at all… don’t… be… because things have changed an awful lot, and I think its’… if you’ve had a bad history in the past it doesn’t mean to say you’re going to have a bad history… work history in the future, but it is putting you back in that situation where you can be sacked again.’

`And did you ever feel any stigma from having been in a psychiatric hospital? Or did that not really bother you?’
 
`No… I mean… I know often people… who have been patients in mental hospital, they’ve gone and they’ve got a job, and then their employer has found out and they’ve got the sack. I mean I’m not saying it happens to you in every case… you know… and I suppose if it… if… I suppose if you’ve got your family around you… then possibly you’d be more stable in a job. I mean, not all jobs I’ve had… I’ve worked… I had a job, I had before… I went sick… I didn’t used to got… lose the sack for every job, or even… afterwards, it was… [pause]… it was a laughing matter, you know, that… the Air Force wasn’t going to sack me, because I sacked the Air Force because I was happy… in my job, I was wanted in my job… they wanted me to stay, and it was just like coming out the womb, but I… I had no choice. That’s what I felt like… I… because… I’d had one broke… breakdown, nervous breakdown in the Air Force… and you do… you feel you’ve had a nervous breakdown do you? At all?’

`I did… but I’m not really here to talk about that at the moment…’
 
`No… that’s alright…’

`But yes, I did…’
 
`Oh, that’s ok… ok… [pause].’

`Have you ever found the experience of being in hospital difficult because of the way that the public perceive… people that have been in hospital?’
 
`[Pause] Well I… I think it varies a lot really… you… I don’t think… I… I think possibly some people… might be prejudiced because they’d be worried if a patient is possibly violent. So it’s some schizophrenics that are violent… you see… and… while… the hostel I was in, they… had been, they… they… it was in the local paper, and the Social Worker knew this male patient… of who a schizophrenic… and… she had come to cover (?) him, but he was having to go into hospital… kill… and he killed her.’

`And that was very recently wasn’t it? The last couple of years or so?’
 
`It was in South London Press… did you read it?’

`Uh huh…’
 
`Yeah, well I’d been in that hostel.’

`Did you find that violence was quite a common feature… in hospital, amongst other patients?’
 
`Well… usually people were alright if… if they had… had their tablets, or… injections, I… I did have one patient start to attack me and a male nurse grabbed him and… and then put an injection into him and he passed straight out. I know the… some people have got… quite a bad history of… severely [inaudible]… I found… quite frightening, you know because it did frighten me… at times, but.. usually what happened is that… that they segregated people… the quiet people from people who could… who were potentially violent. I mean if a patient comes out of his… of hospital with… a history of violence… if they stop taking their tablets, that’s when they will become violent again.’ [Pause]

`Were you at all frightened by other patients that you met?’
 
`Well if they were in that…’

`Or not… not generally?’
 
`If they were like that I was, you know, because you… I mean no one wants to be attacked… at least…’

`So, were there other people equally that you might have got on well with… that you…? Did you find friends amongst the patients or…?’
 
`Yes, yes, yes… err… I met Mavis Case [???]… we’re still friends, even though I don’t see her now. I mean we’ve been friends since 1962, and we used to sleep together at home. At… at my mother’s place, she was a very kind person and the… the Psychiatrist said, `You… you and Mavis are going out together like a couple of lesbians…’, I said… I said, `Just because we sleep together… that doesn’t make us lesbians’.’ [Pause]

`So she was… a very… just a very close friend?’
 
`Yes… yes…’

`That you’d met originally in hospital?’
 
`Yeah… and… yeah, we… yeah we… I was…’

`But that was before you’d had the operation then, in 1967?’
 
`Yeah, I had the operation in 1973, but…’

`So why did he say that that was like lesbians if you were a man… then and she was a woman?’
 
`I don’t know… I don’t know… I’ve no idea… anyway, I don’t see that particularly matters one… one way or… or the other, because… I mean we had considered getting married, but… but I…I mean I… I couldn’t look at him [???] in a her sex… and he actually had sexual feelings so… but… [pause]… What… I… I used to call her `Noddy’, because she was always dropping off to sleep, through the… especially in the… [laughs] in the… in the cinema or at home, she’d nod off, and… she used to call me `Silly Billy’, because I used to wear feminine underwear under my male clothes, and my wife used to call me `Madam Mate’, but… but I… I was… I used to spend a lot of time crying. [Pause] And I used to do a lot of embroidery and all that sort of thing, and… [pause] anyway… I wish I had been born normal…’

`You wish that…?’
 
`I wish I had been born normal… I do… it doesn’t really matter, man or woman, but it’s… it’s been a big burden. Whether it’s made me a better… better person I don’t really know. It’s not for me to say, but…’

`And if you had been, what… how do you think your life might have been?’
 
`If I’d been…’

`Or how would you have liked it to have been?’
 
`But I… I mean I wish I’d been norm… born a normal girl, so I… hadn’t had all these problems.’

`And… and say you had been born, what you saying a `normal’ girl, what would you have liked to have done in life that you haven’t done perhaps?’
 
`Well, I don’t know, perhaps… may have got married, had babies… become a Nun… though I tried to become a Nun twice… but…’

`I know it’s a difficult question, but…’
 
`Yeah… err…’

`Just imagining but…?’ [Pause]
`You were mentioning embroidery?’
 
`Yeah…’

`What other things have…do you find pleasure in, in life…? What sort of things have you enjoyed doing?’
 
`Well… studying. [Pause].’

`What do you like to study?’
 
`Well I mean in the past I’ve studied English… Poetry… History… [pause]… `Happy’ Yoga [ph]… [pause]. Yeah, our first dog… our first dog lived to be nineteen… we got a car… we got a caravan, my parents and I, in 1938, near Pagham [ph], which is near Bognor, and it’s lovely… lots of butterflies, I… and… and he… he loved swimming in Bob… lived… loved swimming in the sea… he loved water… before I had a Cocker Spaniel, but he died very early of German Distemper… and Bob lived to be nineteen.’

`That was the family dog…?’
 
`Pardon?’

`The family dog?’
 
`Yeah… he was an old mongrel but he…he could run very fast and… yeah, I’ve had dogs and cats, but I prefer dogs, I… I want… I… I want my own dog, that’s what I… and…’

`That holiday, was your brother on that holiday too?’
 
`Oh, I expect so yeah, because… because a… a friend of my father’s who was a Chemist, Scot… he graduated in Scotland. He… had been one of the `Ladies from Hell’, do you know what a `Ladies from Hell’?… a Scotsman wearing kilts, the Germans called them `Ladies from Hell’, you see… [laughs]… and… he let me draw his… his sword out. It was ever so heavy, a two hundred sword. He brought down Nana… brought Nana down…’

`Who was that?’
 
`My grandmother… my… my paternal gran… brought Nana for the day…, but…’

`Your… brother…he, that you said, you’d… when he was born you… wished you could sort of get rid of him…?’
 
`Yeah…’

`Did that… friendship with your brother ever improve or…?’
 
`Well, it was sort of… it was a sort of… well I suppose I was fond of him, you know, I was fond of him, but I… I just… felt… as we got older, I felt embarrassed.’

`About…?’
 
`Well I was really… embarrassed because he was a boy… and I felt, you know, just that… well embarrassed by it all…’

`And so did you eventually lose touch with that brother?’
 
`Yeah…’

`Do you know if he’s still alive?’
 
`No, I don’t…’

`You don’t know?’
 
`I… I think he sensed that we were different… and I know of course that when he realised it, it made him hostile… and…’

`And how did he show that hostility to you?’
 
`Well he hadn’t… he had a slight… nervous breakdown, but he… I presume he thought that he was… could be… like genetically the same… and he ended on… up on the psychiatric ward for a week, and… [pause]…’

`And did he have the same thing? No…he didn’t have any problems with his gender? He…?’
 
`No… no he was a… became… he was… married… he became married. He… [pause]… it… I mean the probabilities is that… some of my descendants will be transsexuals and… but I mean, possibly, someone, some of my ancestors, may have… had this problem but if they had, I don’t know… oh I… I saw a film once called `The Fight to be Male’, and it was about these girls… they all changed into boys at… puberty… and they became fathers… and… you know, the doctors were… wondering why this had… had happened, and the grandmother… one of the grandmother’s had a recessive gene… [pause]…’

`So that was why that had happened to them in puberty?’
 
`Yeah…’

`You mentioned your… nanna, your grandmother… did she die when you were quite young or…did she…did she know about how you felt?’
 
`I don’t… I don’t know, but she… quite possibly… my mother might have said something but… yes, she said… grandmother said nothing to me about the matter. If she was aware, she never said anything. Quite possibly, I mean she prob… possibly was aware, and quite possibly they… they… she may have discussed it, I don’t know… with my mother… because as far as I knew, only my mother and father were concerned about my gender… but who knows?… [pause].’

`And your parents at the… tried to turn to doctors? Is there anywhere else that they would have been able to…talk over the difficulties that you were having?’
 
`Well I mean that… I mean at first they never… they never consulted a Psychiatrist, but who they consulted, or who my father consulted, I don’t know…’

`And… and you didn’t feel able to confide in anyone at school? Any friend or a teacher?’
 
`Well no…’

`How you felt…?’
 
`No, I… only the boys just realised… ‘cause it was so obvious, I mean they…’

`How was it obvious to…other people do you think?’
 
`Well, the way I behaved… the way I looked, you see… I…’

`How did you look?’
 
`I… no… no amount of hair cuts or wearing boys clothes is going to make me look like a boy when I looked like a girl.’

`Oh right, you mean… so your face, and physique, generally looked like a…?’
 
`Except I didn’t have a… a bust… at the time… that’s why they were so polite… like opening doors and all that, they didn’t open doors for one another… they just rushed straight ahead like boys do… or girls for that matter…’

`But they knew that you… they didn’t think that you literally were a girl? Presumably if you were in a boy’s outfit?’
 
`Yeah, well I can’t…’ [both talking together]

`Or have I misunderstood…?’
 
`…say particularly… exactly what they thought…’

`Right, no…but you had…you just had the feeling that they knew?’
 
`Well yeah, I knew that… I knew they knew… and they… they were… and they were polite… a… a lot more polite than they were to one another… but… but in some ways it was a happy school.’

`What did you like about it?’
 
`I used to like metalwork… especially with the forge… when the… the forge [ph], bang… banging… things… making things in the forge… you know, I… the metalwork master had been… a flight mechanic in World War One, and he said the… planes were stuck together with chew gum… it was a bit exaggerated, but the… the woodwork master, I quiet enjoyed that… I think his name was… I’ve forgotten name now, but… he had a habit of boxing boys’ ears, you see… [laughs] I thought `I wonder when it’s my turn?’, but he said `Oh I’m not going to… can’t box a girl’s ears…’ [laughs]. But I… I mean when they started to walk up the drive I just used to look at the girls, you know, I just told them about it all… now… which I… with them… you know, with sort of… ‘cause what I didn’t know then, I suppose… it took a while to realise that… girls can be just as horrid as boys… boys can. It… [pause]…’

`And at the school, were things quite separate, that the boys did one thing and girls did another?’
 
`Yeah, well… they… they were physically separated, you had your own… had your own assembly hall, and classes… so you never… you were never invited into the girls, and the boys were never invited into… never had gone to… You could only meet girls outside of school… or if it was Sports Day… something like that. There… there was a boy who was sort of quite forward, he… he was more advanced than some boys, like he was into… into sex… he told me that he… this girl wouldn’t have sex with him and… and… and he said, no. She said… she said, no way, so… she said he’d be right in trouble and would be like… anyway, he’d got this… he entered this… [laughs]… who did they say that… who’s the girl… girl and… in red… and I thought… `oh, I’m beginning to think’… I think… what he wants… he said… `Go…go with this girl… go with this girl… ‘ [laughs] so… and I thought… so he encouraged me to, `Go for a walk with this girl… and [whispers]…’ [pause]. So we walked along the river. I thought he said… I thought he said he’d brought me out here for one reason, to get to the bottom of me you see… so I… [laughs]… so we got to… got along this river bank and we sat down together… I thought `What…?’, and I’m going to tell her I’m like she is, you know, so… I just lacked the courage you know… but it would have been all over the school, wouldn’t it, if I’d… but… [laughs]… but…’

`So what did you say to her?’
 
`I didn’t say anything… nothing like that… I just…’

`So you just had to pretend to be in… like an ordinary boy and…?’
 
`Yeah, but… I’d…’

`…do the done thing or…?’
 
`Yeah, I suppose it was funny in a way… I was very disappointed. It must have been… I was sure she was up… in [inaudible]… `Mummy, I’ve let a girl in… into…’, [laughs] something like that, you know and… but they did… I mean they… I found they were starting to talk about me in the Air Force as well. [Pause].’

`What sort of things were they saying?’
 
`Well they were sensing things, you know… a few girls were realising that I was feminine… they didn’t say so. I think they considered me as… a challenge, that’s why they wanted to seduce me, but… I… ‘

`The other men in the Air Force, you mean?’
 
`No, the girls…’

`Oh, the girls in the…women’s Air Force?’
 
`Yeah… yeah… they… they were sex mad… absolutely sex mad… except one. I tried to have a conversation with her… I remember having… and I realised she didn’t want to talk to anyone. I used to talk… I used to think of her as the ghost from Edinburgh, ‘cause she came from Edinburgh, and she looked a serious one [???]. All I could get out of her was to say, `Well do you want tea or coffee, and cakes?’, that’s about all I could get out of her. But I… they sent me to Air Sea Rescue one day, you know… and… I was there and… there was this very masculine chap, Tony Fraskell [ph]… [in Scottish accent/voice] `Oh, they haven’t sent Bill [inaudible], it’s her… [laughs] it’s not a job for a woman on a boat…’ [laughs]… but…’

`So he didn’t want you, did he… there?’
 
`Well he got… it really wasn’t a lady like job, you see… that… and… so… I didn’t last… I only lasted twenty four hours there, ‘cause this Sergeant said… `Put the transmitter on the boat’, you see. He didn’t offer to help me, I’d never… I never had the experience I was… this was in Aberdeen Harbour, so I put… had one foot on the boat, one foot on the harbour… I picked it up… the boat was… rocking… [laughs] the boat was going like that… he said, `Get it back, get it back… back you get to RAF Dyson…’, that was my experience of… of Air Sea Rescue, so…’

`And that was just the short… that was just short lived?’
 
`Yeah… it was short…’

`What did you do after that…?’
 
`Yeah… yeah… short lived it was I’m afraid, but… but it was very interesting to learn about… well… it was… you know very… very interesting indeed I found it.’

`And have you maintained that interest in… sort of communications and… [inaudible] [both talking together]?’
 
`Well up… up to a point, I mean I… [pause]. You sometimes you’d go there… sometimes the… you… the Germans would try and jam your… the… the transmitter, but… you know… which was annoying, and… I got invited up to the transmitting bay, where these great beautiful gleaming transmitters were…’

`Where was that?’
 
`A transmitting bay, what they called the transmitting bay at… but… you…’

`Where would that have been then? Is that part of base or is that…?’
 
`Well… well, yeah…’

`A place?’
 
`When you… when you keyed your… keyed your… your transmitter, it had magnetic relays to the transmitting place, and you… if you were tuned, you could hear the magnetic relays, clicking, so they.. there were… wireless mechanics invited me up there to have a look… I said, `The cat hasn’t got any fur’… and they said, `Well you wouldn’t have it… have it if you’d gone down that hole, it…’, they said, `It’s got twenty thousand volts through that…’, so… yeah, we… I was invited into the plotting room, all that sort of thing…’

`The plotting room?’
 
`Yeah… they…’

`And what… what happened there?’
 
`Well they used to push little… little… little wooden aeroplanes you see… and that… that would tell them… they ‘phoned up and say look, what they call, `We’ve got some trade for you…’, [???] like some ME109’s off scarper flow [ph] or something like that, or German bombers… coming to London… and all that sort of… thing.’

`So that was them planning out what they were going to… do? Is that right? The plotting?’
 
`Well yes… do something quick… yeah… and…’

`So it was like little models of the aeroplanes and so on? Is that right?’
 
`Yeah they used… they used billiard cues. They got the… they had this idea… got billiard cues and just pushed any… any boats or aeroplanes along… other German or… RAF or…’

`To give them a picture of what was where and…?’
 
`Yeah, and they were just picked up… just used their transmitter or… to pick up the ‘phone, and say… you know the… `We… we’ve got… hos… hostile 105’, or something like that, you know, a hund… hundred aeroplanes heading for London, whatever… like that, and… bombs come down, `bang bang’…’

`Bombs came down…?’
 
`Well they come down `bang bang’ don’t they? [Laughs]

`Bang bang’… yes…’
 
`And… [pause].’

`Do you remember the celebrations when the war was over?’
 
`Yeah… yeah and… also… I’m just trying to think VJ Day then… that come later, ‘cause that was the celebrations after… dropping the bombs on Hiroshima… and Nagasaki… you know…’ [Pause].’

`Do you want to take a break? Do you want a break?’
 
`Yeah, ok…’
[Break]

`Is that how you heard about it?’
 
`[Pause] [Rustling] Do you want one?’

`Mmm… I wouldn’t mind a bit… thanks…’
`[Rustling] Ok…?’
[Camera: `Yeah…’ [inaudible]’
`[Rustling] Ok… Do you want them back, or…?’
 
`Yeah…’

`I’ll put them on the chair’
 
`What… I’ve forgotten your friend’s name?’

`That’s Faye and I’m Judith…’
 
`Faye, I’m awfully sorry…’

[Camera: `That’s alright [???]’]
 
`There you are…’

`Fleur, you were saying that you’d been to Lourdes… when was that?’
 
`In 1960. My father paid for me to go there.’

`And why did you want to go there?’
 
`Well, I thought it might help me solve my problem [siren in background]… in… in a way you’re… we got to the… the… the tunnel in… I think it was Kensington, and… and the Priest… who was leading the pilgrimage, introduced himself and also there was and old Irish Priest as well, and he said, `We’ve got a charter plane… to Lourdes and… we’ll… we’ll say a rosary on the coach going to…’ I think it was Gatwick… and…’

`Say that again, what… what week?’
 
`Gatwick Airport…’

`Gatwick… uh huh…’
 
`Anyway, we got on the plane… we got on the plane, it was an old DC3… had to go down (?) the… [pause]… and it took four hours, it was so slow, it took four hours, and we hit a… an air pocket and it dropped like a stone and… and the girl next to me vomited. See she hadn’t time to get to her… sick bag, so… when I got to Lourdes, I bought some travel sickness tablets, and gave one everyone… when we go back you see, so we wouldn’t be sick.’

`And what happened at Lourdes itself?’
 
`Well… we got in… we got in our… hotel… our hotel, and I… said `Is there…’ to the Priest, `Is there any chance of a bath (?)… Father?’, he said, `Not in this hotel…’, I.. I said, `I’ve got a problem… in the room with this man…’. I said, `He’ll see my breasts…’, and… I said, he said, `Have you got a screen to… undress behind?’, and I said, `Yes…’. He said, `I don’t think he’ll realise anything because… he’s a psychiatric patient and he’s had ECT…’, and… [pause]… [aeroplane in background]… anyway, it was… I was very emotional there, you know, but I… I enjoyed it. We done the stations of the cross and… [laughs]… and one of the Priests said, `I’ve come here to do my penance because I’ve… [laughs]… I’ve slept with a woman’. So… and… and we… we had mass at the Grotto where they… Virg… when Bernadette and Our Lady, and it was lovely, and… there were all the… people left their crutches where they’d been cured, you know… and… [pause]…’

`Did you see people cured… of physical disabilities?’
 
`I didn’t, but I knew people had been cured, you know… they had left their crutches there, and things like that. There was one person who had… a problem with his… his head… he’d had a accident, and it split his head open… and he had a plate in his head, and he got cured at Lourdes… it closed… it closed up, because he had been a coal man and he had to give it up because of this you see… and after he’d been healed he… could go back to his job as a coal man. Anyway… I said to the Priest, I said, `What about me going… the waters at Lourdes?’, so he said, `I’ll have a word with the authorities to see if you can wear a white sheet’, and he said, `I’m sorry they won’t let you throw your… I’d either go in naked, or not go in, so I said, `I won’t…’, so I said, `Well I’m not going to do that, not going in naked and…’. He said… he said… `When I get… get back… to London, and the Chaplain to the… to Bartholomew’s Hospital, and I’ll get you an interview with the Endocrinologist there’ you see, so… I got the letter from my doctor you know, went to see him, and there was a nurse standing there, you know, and… he said… [laughs]… He… he said, `You can’t possibly be a fully blooded male… go and see a Psychiatrist… and… and… [inaudible] your hormones and… and have surgery’, and this nurse said, `Ooh… don’t do that for… don’t do that’, she said, `That’s criminal, go to see these people at… they’re… they’re praying for you’, so anyway, I went to see the Psychiatrist, and he was in a state…’

`So the…?’
 
`He was in a worse state than I was, and I was in… [laughs]… and he examined me and… err… and he packed me off to Maudesley. My father was with me you see… so that was… that was hospital number two, and he… the Psychiatrist said to my father, `He wants his own treatment doesn’t he?’

`He wants what?’
 
`Wants his own treatment… [laughs] and… so then he packed me off to Bethlem Royal… and… the Psychiatrist there thought I was a homosexual you see. And the Charge Nurse caught the Duty Psychiatrist… and he said, `You’ve every… every reason to be angry with that doctor’, he said, `…but if you try to leave, he’ll put you on a section’, and the Psychiatrist said, `You’re not fit to live in… in Society…’, he said to me…’

`He said that to you?’
 
`Yeah… he said… `I’m sending you to Springfield Hospital’, so I… packed… that was hospital number three in a day… and the Ambulance man said, `Do you want to go with a woman?’, I said, `No…’, so he’d… perhaps he’d been to… anyway, I… that was my first visit to Springfield Hospital… one of many, but…’

`And how… how many times do you think that you did go?’
 
`[Whispers] I’ve no idea…’

`Five times?’
 
`I… I just don’t…’

`Just don’t know?’
 
`Just don’t remember. If I wasn’t in there… Mavis was… we’d soon take it turns… [???]…’

`But it was a period of years was it, all together?’
 
`Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah… I mean… ‘cause my… after my father died, that… they both came to the house, they… these two Psychiatrists come to the house, and they said to my mother `Your son is very ill… sign this paper, he’s got to go to Springfield Hospital’… [laughs]’

`And what was that paper?’
 
`I don’t know… I don’t know, I don’t know what sort of paper it was… but anyway, I… ended up in Springfield.’

`Was the paper something to do with your parents, giving them permission to take you to hospital?’
 
`Yeah, well my father was dead, but my mother signed it…’

`Your mother?’
 
`Mmm’

`Did you object… to that? To going…?’
 
`Well, I was in a state, I must admit I was in a state.’

`And did you ever get sectioned?’
 
`Yeah, I started as a voluntary patient, and later I got sectioned… that often happened.’

`And would have known how to put an appeal in against a section or…?’
 
`No, I don’t think I would. Err…’

`You didn’t know what rights you had or anything legally?’
 
`Well…’

`In terms of being sectioned?’
 
`Well not… not really. I… you know, after I had… I’d had surgery… after… I’d been with my boyfriend… for four years, when he disapp… done a bunk. I got sectioned.’

`Did you mind going back to the hospital? Or did you… get angry about it…?’
 
`Well I… well no, I… I don’t see how I could object because… I was very isolated. When he’d left me I was very isolated… and I suppose I… needed… to… be in care.’

`How would you like to have been treated…? Because you were saying that you felt… unhappy with the way psychiatry had treated you…’
 
`Well, I…’

`How would you like to have been treated?’
 
`Well, I think, if… if I… well, when I was… in… St John’s, the… the Psychiatric Social Worker, `Have you had any… had pre-association?’, so I said `No…’, I didn’t know what she meant. I didn’t know she meant psychotherapy. I think I should have been referred… to a… an analyst, there and then… really… that’s what… that’s what should have happened. And of course… then… I needed the barbiturates as well, at least for a time…, but… [pause].’

`So you’d like to… if you’d have your time again sort of thing, you’d like to have seen a… Psych… an Analyst… and you would have… presumably you wanted surgery? Would you have felt there was any need for going into a psychiatric hospital?’
 
`Well yeah, yes there was, because the… because of the state of my brain. That… that needed to be dealt with. And… and initially of course, it was…’

`And you did find that it was helpful in some ways?’
 
`What, barbiturates?’

`Any of the treatment that they gave you?’
 
`Yeah, I think it was… well it was, but… but they had a job to… persuade me to go on something else, like… there used to be this Consultant, his name was Dr Anderson, and I… he said, `Do you…’, he said, `Three… three or four were… you need Largactil..’, and I… I… eventually I agreed… agreed to take it.’

`And how did you find Largactil?’
 
`Yeah, I found it helped, except… the fact that during the summer I… I got a burn… because… from like, you get a burn from Largactil, but you… you can take a… there is a medicine to counteract the burns… from Largactil, but a…’

`And did they offer you any non-medical treatment for your mental health difficulties, such as Occupational Therapy…?’
 
`Oh yeah, oh you always get…’

`…or Physiotherapy?’
 
`You always get that in a mental hospital. The first opportunity you get packed off to that, off the… off the ward.’

`And what can you remember about it, can you describe Occupational Therapy… to me?’
 
`Well yeah… I… in the… in St John’s, they… they try… the male nurse tried to get me to do in… Italian embroidery. He said, `Is it true?’, so I said… so I… I said… I said, `Yes…’, `Oh…’, he said, `You’d better manage all the lipsticks then’, and there was a bloke… on another… oh as well… in another ward, called George, and he shouted at me, he said, `Oi you…’ he shouted out… `I… I… I think sex is your big trouble, you’ll get your name in the papers…’ [laughs]… and… but… [pause].’

`And were the women and men separated in the Maudesley and the other hospitals you were in?’
 
`’Cause the Maudesley came a lot later, but…’

`Right…’
 
`Yeah, you… well… for a time, you were… they had… purely male wards and female wards, then they divided the ward up, after a while, so you were… in some cases you had a ward that was partly female and partly for males. But… because there was this girl there, she was a Jewess from… from Manchester… and… [laughs] and they were giving her injections to stop her being a nymphomaniac, but it didn’t work… it didn’t work… [laughs]… and her husband didn’t seem to mind, and she said, `Do you mind if I have a feel?’, she said, `No help yourself’, and she said they were bigger than mine. Well they are smaller… a lot smaller now… perhaps it’s because I lost a lot of weight, but… but… [pause].’

`And how did other patients react to you?’
 
`Err…’

`Did they know why you were there?’
 
`Yeah, I think… I think in the first case they were rather confused by it… but to some extent, you know, it was only later that… that I suppose later on, as the… as the years ticked by, it was… it didn’t… it didn’t seem to bother them. Umm… [pause].’

`On a day to day level in that… in those hospitals, can you remember things like what the meals were like?’
 
`Oh yeah…’

`Yeah…’
 
`Yeah, they varied a lot. On the whole… they weren’t much good. Yeah, they… it’s like any big organisation, you… it’s something you can just accept and it’s not… it’s not something that you would go overboard for, like… a really posh meal out, you know, you don’t get that sort of thing in hospitals, unless it… possibly some private hospital. ‘Cause I mean, when I was in the clinic, the food was alright, but it… it was wholesome, but that’s all you could say. But I’ve… I’ve never been in a hospital where you could go into ecstasy over food… err… ‘cause what… when I was at RAF Dice [ph], they gave me some porridge. I came up… often I did… had some porridge… I spat it at… out… and I took it back. I said `You’ve got to… there’s salt in my porridge’. They said, `That’s the way that you have it in Scotland’. I said, `Well I’m not Scots… so I’ll have some porridge that I can eat please’, so… and then when I came back for… for evening meal, and they said, `What would you like for sweet?’. I said, yeah, `I’ve got a choice?’, they said `Yes…’, so… umm… but I mean I’ve had food… I had food… well one food… I’ve had food that you just throw away, in the Air Force… take back…’

`But in hospital, the… so the food was nothing… special but it was not too bad either?’
 
`No, it… it was usually bearable. We took some… I took some food back… when I was training to be a Wireless Op, I said `Let’s take this back’, so I took it back, and it was green… and I said, `We don’t eat horse meat or whale meat either…’, I said, `You go down the road, to Harris’s… plenty of sausage and pork pie there…’ [laughs]…’

`Who did you say that to?’
 
`I said it to the… to the… the RAF cook… and… and when I was there at Eastchurch, the food was even worse there. It was unbelievable… it really… really stank. And he said… he said, `You… cookhouse…’, so I had to clean the cookhouse. I wouldn’t eat their food because it weren’t, you know… and the next day he said, `You cook our sausage… [inaudible]… it got to a point when the Education Officer hadn’t… but he didn’t know that, so I… [laughs] I went to the Educational… and I said, `But… I’m going back… to my job as a Wireless Operator and… but… did you mind if I… get some notes for me to read from… from your library?’, `Well… no…’, he said, `…that’s alright’, so I got some notes, and in between it I put a novel… novels, so I could read a novel, I thought… I thought, `I’ll be glad when I get out of this place…’, it was terrible, and I… I walked into Shearness. I didn’t like Shearness either because I was glad when I got posted… back to the old Scotland… [laughs]…’

`If I take you back through to the hospital experience again… how… what did you do all day in hospital? How would an average day have been?’
 
`Well it depended how you were. I mean… if… if I was a bed patient, you know, I’d probably been paranoid… by the situation, you know…’

`So, how would you have spent the day… what would have happened first thing in the morning, say?’
 
`Well if they thought you were sick… really were ill, and you needed to be in bed, they’d give you… your meal… [pause]…’

`And just stay in bed all…day?’
 
`But… but well… a Senior… a Senior Male Nurse came on the ward one day, ‘cause I’d got… a pot under the bed… he… and he said to the Charge Nurse, `Is this patient mobile?’, so the… the Charge Nurse said, `Well get him out of bed’, so… but… oh, Occupational Therapy was practically anything… you had like Industrial Therapy, that was boring… you was [inaudible]…’

`What was Industrial Therapy, what happened there?’
 
`Well… putting bits and pieces together… all… but I… I… I packed that up. I know you got a few pennies for it but there were plenty of other things to do like cooking… music…’

`Did you have dances, or cinema, or… anything like that?’
 
`Yeah, but… I… thought… yeah, they had the Social Club, they… they had quite a few… alcoholics and drug addicts there, and I… ‘cause they had this blind man there and they… they had… in the Charge Nurse’s office, a big bottle of some… things like whiskey brandy… and he was given one of these anti-blues tablets…’

`Anti…?’
 
`Anti-blues tablets. Have you heard of them?’

`I’ve heard of Heminevarin…’
 
`I don’t know what it is, but anyway… he was given… he swallowed it… [inaudible]… and then of course it affected his brain… and they said, `You’ve got to take this always, for ever and a life… so if you don’t stay off booze, you’ll be back to square one.’ I… yeah…’

`And what happened to him in the end?’
 
`Pardon?’

`And what happened to him in the end?’
 
`Well I don’t know. He used to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, things like that, but what happened to him in the end, I… I’ve no idea, but…’

`And were there ever any groups for transsexuals that you know of? Voluntary groups… or support groups?’
 
`No, there… there was nothing in hospital for transsexuals… at all.’

`Anything outside of hospital that you knew about or… any alternatives offered to you?’
 
`Well I… I started to go to the Samaritans, you see, and… St Stephen’s, Wallbrook [ph] in the City and… and this clergyman said to me… `Would you like to join the Beaumont Society?’, so… I said, `What’s that?’. He said `Its’ for transvestites and transsexuals’, so I said `I… yeah, ok… ok… yeah…’, and so I joined that… [voices in background]…’

`And what did the Beaumont Society actually do?’
 
`Well most of them were… transvest… transvestites, but I corresponded with one who had been in the RAF, who was a transsexual… and we were friends for a very long time. She had her surgery at Charing Cross. She was asexual… she didn’t want a vagina, she… she wasn’t into sex, but the thing that we had in common was… that we both suffered the Royal Air Force, because you’ve got to have something common with another transsexual otherwise you’re not going to get all that far with them, really. ‘Cause I thumped… I thumped the table and said, `Wake up Denise, you’re not living’, and she said, `You don’t need a cold fish like me’… ‘cause she was the first asexual person I… I had met you see, but she… she gave me a lot of support.’

`And were you always aware that there were other transsexuals, or was there a time when you used to think you were the only person in the world who felt that way?’
 
`Well yeah… I… I suppose, yeah… I mean I… [pause] I was coming out of Richmond Station with my family and children and there was a big poster up… I was a man. I thought, `My God… Oh My God, it’s true..’. And that was Christine Yorganson [ph]. She’s dead now, but she was a… very beautiful… she was… Christine Yorganson [ph], but…’

`And she became a man did she?’
 
`She became a woman. She’s dead now…’

`Yeah, sorry… she… yeah…’
 
`She died of… cancer but she’d been a GI and… I read the book about her. It was in July, she used to come… come over here, doing photography and things like that and… she wrote a book… yeah…’

`And was that helpful to you to find other people who’d been through something similar?’
 
`Yeah… yeah it’s… it’s… it’s sort of gradually filtered down, you know… over the years… and… [pause]…’

`You just mentioned your children… so you had two sons, is that right, and one daughter? I think you told me about one son… what… what was the other son’s name?’
 
`He was… his name… he was Peter.’

`And was he the eldest or the youngest?’
 
`No, he was the second son.’

`Second one and then you had the daughter?’
 
`Yeah… yeah the two boys were… first went into the Royal Air Force for a while.’

`But you have no contact with either of those?’
 
`No…’

`Do you know what… have you got any idea what they’re doing in life?’
 
`Well my other… my eldest son works for the BBC.’

`And do you know what the other one does?’
 
`No… but I know my daughter was a Clerk for a while, but…’
[Long pause]

`You said that also you… might have like to have had your own… to have born your own child. Have you ever come to terms with the fact that that’s not going to happen?’
 
`Well you can’t… you don’t… you can’t come to terms with it, because it’s your need and you just… have to… put up with it because I said to a doctor when I lived in Royal Hampstead [ph]… `How is I get period pains, when I don’t have a womb?’,and she said, `That’s because you have got… female muscles, and they contract’. When I first saw this Jewish doctor, he said, `Oh… you… you’re almost there, you… would you like a cycle for her?’, so I said, `Yes…’, so he sent me to… an Endocrinologist to get a cycle, then I got sent to an Obstetrician, and he… he decided to give me a different cycle… called a month cycle… and… and he gave me a prescription, and the guy… nurse came with me to the… the pharmacy in the hospital and she said, `You’ve… if you think you’re going to get a baby out of that you’ve got another thing coming’, so I burst into tears and anyway, it was… a cycle that bought… that sort of cycle would abort a baby.’

`I see…’
 
`But… and then I… the doctor and… doc… then my GP put me back on a twenty eight day cycle… and about eighteen months ago, when the GP said `I think it’d best, you’ll feel more comfortable if I take out your cycle…’, so… because I’d been getting the… sweats, you see. And I really needed those hormones…’

`We’ll just have to take a break there, sorry to stop…’
 
[End of DVC Pro tape 3]
[Start of DVC Pro tape 4 – VHS tape 1 continues]
 
[Camera: C905/13 Fleur Richards, tape number four’]
 
`So… well I’ve got no one to take any bets for me, you know, I wish I had someone to take a bet… really, but I’d like to go and see the horses again…’

`But you like playing the lottery?’
 
`Yeah… I… and… ‘cause it…’

`Sorry…are you filming?’
[Camera: `Yeah…’]
`Sorry, I didn’t realise…’
 
`’Cause when… when I was in Blackpool this chap said to me, this Air man said to me, he said, `You see this dog? Come with me… and put… all your pay on… you can’t lose, it’s going to come first’, and it came last.’

`Expensive?’
 
`Yeah… that was. I prefer the horses to the dogs, but… I haven’t been to the… haven’t had a bet for a long time, but I’d like to go and see the horses… and the dogs, and… [aeroplane in background]’

`So what’s your current situation Fleur? Where do you live now?’
 
`Well it’s just very lonely. I… I get suicidal at times. And very depressed.’

`And is that because of the housing situation you’re in, or because you don’t know many people or…?’
 
`They… mostly, yeah, I mean… I… I don’t see anybody. The only time I see anybody… no one comes and knocks on my door. The only time I see someone is… is when I go downstairs for a cup of coffee.’

`And who else lives there then?’
 
`Pardon?’

`Who else lives where you live?’
 
`Well they’re all retired people. It’s… it’s… a house with a… we’ve got a warden you see. There’s nothing wrong with the people it’s just that they… they… I… if they do go out it… it’s… just that… if we have an outing, that’s all. But many people were born in Peckham so they see their grandchildren… or great grandchildren… but I’m… I… the CPN wrote to me and said… that Dr Howard [ph] would be willing to see me in the Maudesley… if I get a letter. So I’ve written to my GP, for a letter to Howard.’

`And where… are you hoping to move to?’
 
`Where am I hoping to move to? Well I’d prefer to move to that place in Sydenham… or if not, there’s Rustington on Sea [ph] with the… Royal Air Force veterans or if not that place… in Cliftonville [ph]… and…’

`And what… what do you hope to do? Because I know you’ve told me that you’re hoping to get your telegram from the Queen?’
 
`Yeah, well we all want that don’t we?’

`But have you got some plans for… the next few years or so?’
 
`Well… that’s…’

`Or hopes, should I say?’
 
`Hopes… I hope to find a nice man. [Laughs]. Yeah… well of course I… yeah, I would like to see my children, but I don’t think that’s… going to happen.’

`So, do you have grandchildren that you know of?’
 
`Yeah… they’re probably great grandchildren now, I should imagine…’

`You mentioned to me that you have quite a number of interests and hobbies… would you like to tell me about some of them again?’
 
`Well as I say, I’ve bought these books from the History Guild. I put a stop on the cheque because… I lost the cheque, so I put a stop on it.’

`At one point you said you’d joined various educational courses?’
 
`Yeah…’

`What were they in… what subjects?’
 
`Well I want to the Adaire [ph] Centre… in Streatham’

`What’s it called again, sorry?’
 
`The Adaire [ph] Centre… Adaire Educational Centre… I don’t know if it’s still operating, I done… Literature there… and they had… Herbal Medicine, that sort of thing… and Nature Trail, and… yeah, various places round the capital… I’ve been to various sort of activities…’

`You told me a bit about poetry, is that right?’
 
`Yeah, I… well I used to belong to New Richmond Poetry Group. We got… I got… we… we… we hadn’t got the money to pay for it to be published, but we got a Charity to do that and we decided to sell them the… the… little books… on railway… stations because people would be looking for something different, you know, and… that went down alright, and… the Psychiatrist said, `Are you the poet who wrote that poem?’, so I said, `Yes’, I’ve forgotten what it was about, perhaps it was… I think it was about the Earth Mother or something like that… I felt like that when I had LSD.’

`And you also wrote a play, is that right?’
 
`Yeah… wrote a play… `Burglar [ph] For Christmas’, had it taped.’

`And what was that about, the play?’
 
`Oh, I’ve forgotten now… forgotten… what it was about…’

`And do you still write at all… these days?’
 
`Well, I sometimes write a poem and then tear them up and… yeah, I… I occasionally come out with… come across… poets… like… Ted Hughes or Sylvia Plath… something like that… but I’ve forgotten the name of the new Poet Laureate but I… I’ve read Robert Frost… Robert Frost… umm… who else? Thomas Hardy… John Betchemin… Dylan Thomas… but when I… when I get a dog I’m going to put it on the stage.’

`Are you?[laughs]’
 
`[Laughs]…’

`What’s it going to do… perform?’
 
`I don’t know… a bit like that dog in… what was that one where the… Oh Peter Pan… isn’t it? With the dog… where the nanny is a dog, yeah, that’s right… I remember seeing that… the big dog is the nanny.’

`So that’s another of your hopes is it? You’ll get a… if you move you may… may be able to have a pet, or a dog?’
 
`Yeah, yeah… but what… if I go to… Sydenham, they… they said, they… I could have a dog… but I’d… I’d have… they’d have to see it first, so that’s alright. But my last dog, Rex… he… he loved wheels… anything on wheels he… he worshipped anything on wheels, yes he was… he was [laughs]… [inaudible]… there like a shot, yeah… he… he loved me having a fuss made… I… I… took him to Blue Cross in Westminster. He wasn’t ill but I thought it was a good idea for him to have a check up. He… we worshipped… [???] but their waiting room… [laughs] the… he… he loved that… one time he got… he got sick, and he… I ‘phoned up Blue Cross and they took him away and… I… I rang them up, I said, `What’s happening to Rex?’, they said, well, we’ve x-rayed him and he’s got bones in his stomach, so we’re keeping, him in… for the night… and they brought him back and home… and… and the Ambulance driver said, `You’re dog has been sick. We have found broken bones in his stomach… you mustn’t give him any more bones, particularly chicken bones’, so… I wasn’t sure what to think in some ways, because… although it was wrong to give chicken bones, it was… to my mind… a dog… must have something to chew and [inaudible]… his… it’s difficult not to give him in a bone. But… I know… I said… some dogs will chew a rubber bone, but not many, you’d need… it’s a very difficult problem. I think you really need to go and talk to a vet about that sort of thing.’

`We’re coming towards finishing up soon… is there anything that you particularly want… would like to talk about that we haven’t already?’
 
`[Long pause] Well… I don’t… I don’t think so. Is there… have you got any questions you want to ask me?’

`I was just wondering, when you… when you look over your life, you’ve done lots and lots of things in your life… what are your… sort of, what were the…the high moments of your life? What your happiest memories were? Where are they?’
 
`[Pause] That’s a very difficult question… I…’

`I understand…’
 
`If I was… if I was a politician, I’d say… I must have… must… that… must have notice of that question… it’s… it’s difficult… to say. I mean, there’s been so many highs and lows in my life, and it’s been very dramatic. I just feel I’d like less of the drama now…’

`But you don’t think of your life as being a… you think of it as being very much up and down, but not all down, and not all up sort of thing, a real mixture?’
 
`Well, you see, when I… when I decided to become a Catholic, I… I saw this Nun’s face, on a… on a pamphlet… that was Saint Theresa, `Little Flower’, so… I got the book and I read her autobiography, and… I thought… she has… had a life with a lot of frustration in it… and I just feel that in some ways, you know, my life has been… similar to hers… and they call her `Little Flower’, so that’s why I decided to be Fleur…’

`Ah, that’s how you picked your name?’
 
`Yeah… I’m Fleur…’

`Well, if you’re happy, we’ll stop there?’
 
`Ok..’

`Thank you very much…it’s been most fascinating…’
 
`Ok… how… how am I getting home?’

[End of DVC Pro tape 4 of 4 - End of VHS tape 1 of 1]