Partner Thomas Grimstead
Queer Places:
Linden Cottage, Clarence Gate Gardens, 5 Glentworth St, London NW1 6AY, UK
Lavinia Edwards (1809-1833,
also known as Eliza Edwards or Miss Walstein) was a British actress.[1] She was said to have excelled in tragic roles, mainly in Tewkesbury, Norwich and other provincial theatres. She
largely played in tragedies, and shortly into her career, became homeless. In her final years she was reduced to reciting passages of Shakespeare in return for a glass of gin in pubs around the Coburg Theatre. She
died at age 24 of lung inflammation. The body, then unwanted and unclaimed,
was taken up from the streets and dispatched to Guy’s Hospital for dissection.
It was there discovered to be that of a young male and, according to the
subsequent report, ‘the state of the rectum left no doubt of the abominable
practices to which this individual had been addicted’. Eliza had been a
performer in female roles who had toured the country, and was known by
erstwhile friends as a ‘very lady-like woman’. After her theatrical career had
come to an end, she had taken to the streets.
Little is known about Edwards' life, other than the fact that she lived for some time in Dublin, and later in London.[2] While she had at one time had success as an actress—playing primarily figures in tragedy[3]—she eventually became homeless.[4]
She lived with a woman named Maria, who claimed that she was Edwards' sister.[5] During this period of homelessness, Maria said Edwards was supported financially "by different gentlemen".[6] These included Thomas Smith (who offered her protection),[2]
Thomas Grimstead
(born in Leatherhead on 26 March 1803 a son of Joseph Valentine Grimstead and Charlotte Sarah Jane Walsh, supported Edwards, and received an ultimatum by his father to no longer talk to her, which he accepted), and a "Frederick" (who was a client of her prostitution).[7] During the past few years she had been supported by different gentleman. Her most recent protector was a wealthy young gentleman from Leatherhead, who paid her rent on Linden Cottage, Clarence Gardens, Regent’s Park. She had, at times, passed for both a man and a woman,[8] though (according to one newspaper account) her being a woman was never doubted while she acted.[9]
Five minutes after informing Maria that she had trouble breathing,[10] Edwards reportedly said "Maria, I am dying—it has pleased God to call me",[11] and died of lung inflammation.[5]
In 1832, a year before Edwards died, the United Kingdom passed the Anatomy Act 1832, formulated by
Jeremy Bentham, which granted doctors the right to inspect corpses which were not claimed.[5] The act was passed after a series of grave robberies, caused by a low supply of bodies.[5] Because nobody had claimed Edwards' body following her death, her corpse was taken away for dissection, where her sex was ascertained as male.[12] This information was previously unknown: Despite previous medical examinations, only the autopsy indicated her birth sex.[13]
Described as a "perfect man" by a newspaper account at the time, Edwards had no facial hair, an "effeminate appearance" according to one report, and long, feminine hair.[12] Her doctor said her voice was "cracked ... not unlike a female".[2] The coroner's jury was so surprised by the state of her body that they wondered whether she had been substituted with another.[14] The inspection of her corpse showed that her stomach was in perfect condition, dispelling any rumors that she had been poisoned prior to death.[15] Her liver, however, showed significant signs of impairment due to heavy alcohol consumption, and the poor condition of her lungs precipitated her death.[15]
Maria claimed that she was not aware that Edwards had been assigned male at birth when they lived together.[5] After the death of Edwards, Maria was suspected to be carrying her child.[16] Maria insisted her daughter was fathered by a man named George Treherne, but it was generally accepted—despite Maria being a prostitute, and thus having several other men that could have been the father—that the girl was Edwards'.[17]
Alfred Swaine Taylor, the main dissector of Edwards' body, later became one of the leading experts on medicine and the law and wrote extensively of her.[18] He first began writing about Edwards as an example of someone whose sex was concealed, but later wrote that because "the aperture of [her] anus was much wider and larger than natural" and her "male organs had been drawn up and secured", Edwards was addicted to sodomy.[19]
With her case becoming well-known to the public, similarities were drawn between Edwards and others whose gender expression did not align with their sex. For instance, one newspaper compared the case of Edwards to that of
Mary Hamilton (also known as Charles or George) in 1833, who had assumed the identity of a man and married fourteen wives. Hamilton was publicly lashed and imprisoned for a term of six months.[20]
Joseph Valentine Grimstead died towards the end of December 1834. Subsequently Thomas Grimstead led a comfortable and seemingly uneventful life. For the 1841 Census he was enumerated at Church Street, Epsom, as a bachelor living with his unmarried sister Frances. By 1851 they were in Redbourn, Hertfordshire, apparently at The Priory on the High Street. He described himself simply as a ‘Landowner’. His death was registered in 1884 at St Albans, Hertfordshire.
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