Charles Hamilton (female husband)

Charles Hamilton
An 1813 fanciful illustration of Hamilton being whipped, wearing male boots and breeches, but naked from the waist up
Born
Mary Hamilton

c.1721–24
Somerset, England
Diedunknown
NationalityBritish
OccupationQuack doctor
Years active1746

Charles Hamilton (born Mary Hamilton) was an English 18th-century female husband. In 1746, Hamilton – while living as a man – married Mary Price.[1][2] After Price reported she was suspicious of Hamilton's manhood to local authorities, Hamilton was prosecuted for vagrancy, and sentenced in 1746 to a public whipping in four towns and to six months imprisonment with hard labour.[1]

While the surviving records of the case indicate that Hamilton was actually prosecuted for vagrancy, the fact that she had penetrative sex and sexual intimacy with Mary Price prompted public opinion to ask for a severe punishment of what was considered as deceitful sexuality.[3]

Newspaper reports at the time claimed that there had been 14 marriages in all. A 1746 account in the Newgate calendar gives other details.[4]

In the same year, Henry Fielding published a fictionalised account[5] of the case under the title The Female Husband. The term Female Husband became common in the US and British press to document behaviour which would later be stigmatised by sexologists.[3][6]

Hamilton was not the first documented female husband, but it was the first use of the term to describe a woman who had married another woman whilst purporting to be male.

  1. ^ a b Manion, Jen (1 February 2021). "'Female husbands': the secret lives of 18th-century transgender pioneers". HistoryExtra. Retrieved 12 September 2021. ['Female husband'] was used to describe someone who was assigned female at birth, transed genders, lived as a man and married a woman. The phrase was used first in the UK in 1746, circulating throughout the UK and the US during the 19th century, then fading from prominent usage in the early years of the 20th century.
  2. ^ Baker, Sheridan, 'Henry Fielding's the Female Husband: Fact and Fiction', Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Jun., 1959), pp. 213-224
  3. ^ a b Jen, Manion (2020). Female Husbands: A Trans History. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. pp. 17–43. ISBN 9781108483803.
  4. ^ Newgate Calendar A Woman who was imprisoned and whipped for marrying Fourteen Women, 1746
  5. ^ Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA., 2003, p.476.
  6. ^ Emily, Skidmore (2017). True Sex. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-7063-9.