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Edward de Lacy Evans
(1830 - 1911) U.K. - Australia

Edward Evans

Public figure

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In September 1879 during a routine attempt to bathe him, Evans, a male patient at Kew Lunatic Asylum in melbourne, was discovered to be a woman. Investigation quickly revealed that Evans lived more than 23 years as a man, worked throughout as a miner, married three different women and was father to an 18-month-old daughter.

Almost nothing is known with certainty about Evan's life prior to his/her emigration Edward Evansfrom Britain, but is clear that he/she arrived in Victoria as a female passenger, Ellen Tremaye, abroad the Ocean Monarch in 1856. Passenger list show she described herself as 26 years of age, single, a domestic servant, Irish, Roman Catholic and able to read and write.

In Melbourne Evans/Tremaye adopted male attire and married Mary Delahunty. Several years later Delahunty left Evans and in 1862 she remarried, telling all who questioned this apparent act of bigamy that her first husband was a woman. In 1862 Evans also remarried with a young Irishwoman called Sarah Moore. Moore died in 1867, and the following yar Evans met and married his third wife, Julia Marquand who was 25 year of age, French and a dressmaker assistant. In 1877, after nine years of marriage, Julia Evans gave birth to a daughter.

The third wife told the press that she was unaware that her husband was a woman despite 11 years of marriage and the birth of a child, Evans, she said, never undressed or washed in front of her and, as for the child, she could only assume Evans had snuggled a "real man" into the house one night at the time she usually expected him home.

After the court case Evans moved away and gained a meagre living as a "man-woman" exhibit in side shows. Within a year, and with failing health, she was taken in as an inmate of the Immigrants Home in Melbourne. She lived out the remainder of her life in female attire.

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Source: Excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, from Antiquity to WWII, Routledge, London, 2001
and from: Lucy Chesser's article at: http://www.questia.com

Images from: State Library of Victoria

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