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
Robert Jamieson (merchant) Robert Jamieson (merchant) Robert Jamieson (died 1861) was a London merchant and promoter of commerce with West Africa. Described also as a palm oil merchant of Liverpool, and as of Glasgow, Jamieson sought to open up major African rivers to navigation and commerce. His schooner, the "Warree", went to the River Niger in 1838. In 1839 he equipped the "Ethiope", and its commander, Captain John Beecroft, explored several West African rivers, to higher points in some instances than had then been reached by Europeans. In 1840 Jamieson was offered, but declined, a vice-presidency of the Institut d'Afrique of France. When