Female husband

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.

This recounted the case of an intersex person named Mary Jewit who was abandoned, and who was raised as a girl by a midwife in St Albans.

[5] In 1759, Sarah Paul, going by the name Samuel Bundy, was convicted and sent to Southwark Bridewell for tricking Mary Parlour into marriage and defrauding her of money and apparel.

Parlour failed to appear at trial, resulting in the magistrate discharging Paul, but not before he ordered their masculine clothing to be burned.

[6] James How, born Mary East, was an English tavern owner who lived as a married man from 1732 until 1766, when legal action forced a permanent return to female presentation.

[12] A sensational pamphlet purported to provide the public with "An Authentic Narrative of the Extraordinary Career of James Allen, the Female Husband [...]".

[13] Priscilla Wakefield (1751–1832), a feminist Quaker and writer living in London, ridiculed the idea of a feminine man or a masculine woman, believing in the natural separation of men and women.

[14] For her, a woman becoming a man would be a terrible "citizen, husband and father" and would be burdened by "exquisite feeling, delicacy, gentleness and forbearance of female excellence".