Bristol Trans History.qxp_Layout 7 08/07/2020 11:07 Page 1
HISTORY
A remarkable pioneer A garage in central Bristol is probably not the first place you would think of if asked to name a local business involved in LGBT rights, supposes Darryl W. Bullock, yet it is key to one of the most fascinating and important stories in transgender history
B
orn in London in 1915, Laurence Michael Dillon came from Irish nobility. Sadly, Dillon’s mother died of sepsis just 10 days after giving birth and Michael (initially assigned female and christened Laura Maud after his mother), was raised with his older brother Robert by a pair of spinster aunts in Folkestone, Kent. Their father blamed his youngest child for causing the death of his wife, and nine years later he was dead too, having drunk himself into an early grave. The aunts seemed hell-bent on raising their youngest charge for a life of celibacy and piety, but he was having none of that. Michael had little interest in female pursuits and was beginning to question his gender. The word ‘transsexual’ did not exist in those days, and when he confided in another aunt that he thought he might be lesbian, she simply laughed and suggested marriage would cure such foolishness. As his breasts developed he bound them in an attempt to stop them showing, cut his hair short and began to dress in a mix of men’s and
Michael on board the City of Bath, 1958
42 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
women’s clothes. His only friend was the local vicar, who nurtured an interest in sport and a hunger for spiritual awareness, and enabled him to defy his aunts to enrol at Oxford University, studying theology before switching to classics. Michael excelled at sport, became president of the Oxford University Women’s Boat Club, competed in the Women’s Boat Race twice and helped design a new uniform, closely modelled on the clothing worn by the men’s team. He bought a motorbike, and hid any trace of femininity under his increasingly androgynous clothing. Wearing his boating uniform, ‘L M Dillon’ was pictured by newspapers including the Daily Mail, where a photograph accompanied by the caption ‘would you guess this is not a man?’ caused huge embarrassment for the family. After graduating he took a job in a research laboratory at Stoke Park, near Bristol, studying the brain, and for a while coached the women’s rowing club at the University of Bristol. Little remains today
Laura at Oxford, 1937
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SUMMER 2020
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No 191
