Ashley had once been great friends with Lear but according to Ashley's book The First Lady they had had a major falling out and had not spoken for years. In her book April Ashley's Odyssey she stated that Amanda Lear was assigned male at birth and that they had worked together at Le Carousel where Lear had used the drag name Peki d'Oslo. Later life and death Īfter a heart attack in London, Ashley retired for some years to the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye. This is the case known as Corbett v Corbett. The annulment was granted in 1970 on the grounds that Ashley was male, but Corbett had known about her history when they married. Ashley's lawyers wrote to Corbett in 1966 demanding maintenance payments and in 1967 Corbett responded by filing suit to have the marriage annulled. They married in 1963 but the marriage soon ended. Arthur Corbett (later 3rd Baron Rowallan), the Eton-educated son and heir of Lord Rowallan. She became a centre of attention and some scandal and her film credit was dropped. Ī friend sold her story to the media in 1961 and The Sunday People outed Ashley as a trans woman. Modelling career and public outing Īfter returning to Britain, she began using the name April Ashley and became a successful fashion model, appearing in British Vogue, for which she was photographed by David Bailey, and winning a small role in the 1962 film The Road to Hong Kong, which starred Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. All her hair fell out, and she endured significant pain, but the operation was successful. Īt the age of 25, having saved £3,000, Ashley had a seven-hour-long sex reassignment surgery on, performed in Casablanca, Morocco, by Georges Burou. Having started cross-dressing, she moved to Paris in the late 1950s, began using the name Toni April, and joined the entertainer Coccinelle in the cast of the drag cabaret at the Caroussel Theatre. Gender transition Īfter leaving the hospital, Ashley moved to London, at one point claiming to have shared a boarding house with then ship's steward John Prescott, later deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom. A roommate raped her, and she was severely injured. In her book The First Lady, Ashley tells the story of the rape she endured before transitioning.
Following a suicide attempt, she was given dishonourable discharge, and a second attempt resulted in her being sent to Ormskirk District General Hospital psychiatric unit at age 17. 1950s to 1970s Īshley joined the Merchant Navy in 1951 at the age of 16. During her childhood in Liverpool, Ashley suffered from both calcium deficiency, requiring weekly calcium injections at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital, and bed-wetting, resulting in her being given her own box room, at the age of two, when the family moved house.
Born at 126 Smithdown Road (then Sefton General Hospital) in Liverpool, Ashley was one of six surviving children of a Roman Catholic father, Frederick Jamieson, and Protestant mother, Ada Brown, who had married two years before.
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