Female husband

A female husband is a person born as a woman, living as a man, who marries a woman. The term was used from the seventeenth century, and was popularised in 1746 by Henry Fielding's fictionalised account of the trial of Mary Hamilton, titled The Female Husband.

Prosecutions involving women living as men and marrying other women were reported in the seventeenth century and eighteenth centuries. In many of these historic instances, the female husband was presented as having deceived the bride and was accused of defrauding her.