Charley Wilson (née Catherine Coombes, born 1834) lived as a man for over 40 years.
Charley Wilson (née Catherine Coombes, born 1834) lived as a man for over 40 years.
Born in Axbridge, Somerset, in 1834, Charley Wilson was a transgender man living in the Victorian era. Through interviews that he gave between late 1890 and 1910, Wilson became a well-known figure, as he shared how he experienced the world.
He worked at various trades, but in 1887 fell on hard times and was obliged to live as a man in a London workhouse.[1][2] But another source claims that Wilson went to America and became an outlaw: "Charley Wilson, better known as 'Little Britches', born in 1834 in Britain, was a cattle thief from the Indian Nation of Oklahoma. ... he lived as a man for over 40 years till he had to move into a facility for the elderly at age 63, where authorities forced him to dress as a woman. Charley is listed as 'one of the most famous female outlaws ever to strap on a six gun' despite his masculine dress and choice of male name."[3]
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