April Ashley April Ashley April Ashley, MBE (born 29 April 1935) is an English model and restaurant hostess. She was outed as a transgender woman by the "Sunday People" newspaper in 1961 and is one of the earliest British people known to have had sex reassignment surgery. Born George Jamieson in Sefton General Hospital, Liverpool, she was one of six surviving children of a Roman Catholic father, Frederick Jamieson, and a Protestant mother, Ada Brown Jamieson. In 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
George Auldjo Jamieson Melvin. He then studied at Marischal College in Aberdeen where he graduated MA. In 1846 he went into the employ of Chalmers & Fotheringham, accountants in Aberdeen. In 1848 he moved to Edinburgh on the advice of his cousin, George Auldjo Esson. Jamieson attended classes to study Law at Edinburgh University and in 1851 officially joined his cousin's firm of Lindsay & Esson at 59 George Street in Edinburgh's New Town. At this time he was living at 16 Inverleith Row in the north of Edinburgh. In 1856 Esson left to specialise in bankruptcy cases and the firm renamed as