Meet the Transcestors - Celebrating Jenny Gray, Edwardian Trans Activist - Pride 2026 Lunchtime Talk

Before other 20th Century pioneers such as Roberta Cowell, April Ashley, and Michael Dillon; Jenny Gray was a working class trans activist.

Jenny made her home a safe space for other trans and non-binary people, she refused to be fetishised or shamed by a trans-phobic medical system, and she challenged the legal system in a way that would seem exceptional even today.In this talk Richard Bliss will introduce the aspects of Jennys life that have been gathered from Tyne and Wear and other archives around the UK, and imagine what life might have been like for Jenny, her husband James and other trans-people living at the start of the 20th Century.