Recovering Lost Stories From Trans History

The narrative that we are in the midst of the first generation of trans children is so omnipresent as to be ambient. It is repeated ad nauseam in the media, online, by doctors, and by parents. Trans children, these various gatekeepers say in unison, have no history at all. [. . .] What happens if this consensus turns out to be baseless? —Jules Gill-Peterson, 2017

In 1939, the sleepy British town of Great Yarmouth rumbled awake. National media picked up the story of two brothers, Mark and David Ferrow. The trans teens recently returned to their hometown after spending four years transitioning in nearby Maidstone. 

The siblings were far from extraordinary. Mark, the outgoing older brother, loved fine arts and literature. David, the shy younger brother, joined his father’s book-selling business upon his return. The two grew more comfortable with themselves as they received overwhelming love and support from their small community. 

Mark and David found a way to thrive decades before the first trans kids were supposed to exist. 17-year-old Mark and 15-year-old David did not have our modern language to describe themselves in 1939. The term “gender” only came into common usage around 1955. Yet the trans siblings were far from alone. They were only a tiny part of the blossoming community defying gender norms.

Transgender people are nothing new. What is new, however, is the moral panic around gender identity. After opening up about my own trans identity at 8 years old in 2003, I know firsthand that trans people have existed for more than just a few years.

Calling us “new” erases our history. But exactly how much of our transgender past has been lost, forgotten, and destroyed? Who were the first documented children to transition? What means did activists have to resist society’s extreme discomfort in discussing gender before our language developed? How did trans people live their everyday lives before they had terms to describe themselves? Which trans athletes participated in sports before sex testing? 

I started researching lost trans stories and what we can learn from them after a friend asked me the name of the first minor to medically transition. Amid the 2020s panic over trans youth health care, I realized there was no historical documentation to answer their question. Even historical experts argue that trans teens did not begin medically transitioning until the 1950s. However, what I found was an entirely new history of transgender people.

I located Mark and David’s full story after digging through British news and government archives. The teens are not only among the first known minors to transition, but they also invented creative and whimsical ways to label themselves.

Mark told the Daily Mirror in 1939, “I feel I have worn these clothes all my life. I have always been a man at heart, and I am glad to be in trouser.” He used remarkably modern phrases to tell the public about his transition. “I am glad to be through with it all. I don’t think I could have faced up to it if there had not been some of the woman’s power of endurance in me, though really, I suppose, I have always been a man.”

Testosterone was rarely prescribed before 1939. With a mixture of surprise and excitement, I realized Mark’s story represents the earliest known case of a minor transitioning with hormones.

After I shared Mark and David’s narrative online, millions of people read their history, saw their photos, and heard their story for the first time in more than 80 years. I began sharing more stories of forgotten figures from trans history: a Black trans church leader whose segregated Florida town came together to mourn her death, an Indian snake charmer who hid her trans identity from the California press in the 1940s, and a trans boy who gained the support of his large family in 1862.

Each of these stories inspired feelings of hope and familiarity for readers. Some showed their parents stories of familial support in the face of backlash and confusion. Others were excited for figures who once lived in the same cities or towns as them. I knew this moment was a rare opportunity to share trans narratives that never made it into the history books.

The period from 1850 to 1950 is a unique era sandwiched between the explosion of mass media (newspapers, radio, and photographs) and the term gender (as opposed to sex) becoming popular in the 1950s. The division between the terms gender, sex, and sexuality represents the turning point when trans people became a related but ultimately separate population from those called “homosexuals” at the time.

Sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld coined the German term transsexualismus (transsexualism) in 1923, although the term did not gain widespread usage until decades later. It was only when David Oliver Cauldwell translated the word into transsexual in 1949 that we had an English name for the category describing the people I have researched and shared.

The terms “transgender” and “trans” did not come into common usage until the 1990s. From 1850 to 1950, there was not a common language to describe trans struggles, yet trans people still existed—everywhere from the largest cities to the most remote villages.

What do we gain from the stories of trans people who have not been sufficiently studied? Trans narratives that were lost, forgotten, or destroyed can still describe breakthroughs, adventures, and influential moments in transgender history.  After years of research, it is clear we need to change our cultural appreciation of queer, trans, and gender history. We can use lost histories to foster this understanding—and change—for future trans generations.

While writing Before Gender, I located what may be the first mass queer and trans uprising, a riot against police in 1930 Berlin involving hundreds of people that was later erased from history by Nazis. Then there’s a formerly enslaved Black trans woman, Sally-Tom, who is possibly the first trans person to have her sex legally changed in the U.S. in the 1860s. One of Europe’s greatest athletes, Stefan Pekar, transitioned in 1936, only for conservative bureaucrats to remove him from the record books. These are just a few of the lost stories that help us grasp the true depth of transgender history..

The archive may not save us, but it will illuminate a path forward. We cannot challenge bad-faith arguments with history and rhetoric. The arguers do not intend to change their minds. However, those who bear witness to the vastness of history may be moved to fight for a better future—and to learn lessons from those who came before us. 

As Martinican author Aimé Césaire writes, “The shortest route to the future is always the one that involves the deepened understanding of the past.”

This excerpt, adapted from Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 by Eli Erlick (Beacon Press, 2025), appears by permission of the publisher.

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