She lived as Ned Davies from 1862 to 1878, primarily working as a sailor, dockworker, and farm labourer, dressing in men's clothing.
[6] According to Craig Sherwood, of the Warrington Museum & Art Gallery, her husband worked as a farm labourer and after a brief time they separated after a dispute.
She frequently visited fairs, traveling with the United All-England Eleven cricket team, and engaged in Cornish wrestling.
[10] When the American Civil War broke out, the Confederate ship CSS Alabama was commissioned to be built at Birkenhead on the River Mersey.
[14] Sherwood stated that Taylor, using the name Ned Davies, signed up as a sailor aboard the Alabama and made several trips on the vessel before it was destroyed in 1864.
[17] An article which appeared widely in newspapers in England, Australia, and the United States, like the Liverpool Journal of Commerce, Texas Galveston Daily News and Georgia Savannah Morning News, and The Sydney Morning Herald in 1875, reported that Navvy Ned had been a sailor, who was based in South Wales and sailed from there to the United States to supply the Alabama and other blockade-runners with coal.
[18] These newspapers reported that when Elizabeth Harriet's husband, who had been a sea captain, died she decided to live solely as a man from 1862.
He broke horses, drove the plough,[20] and assisted in butchering livestock[19] at farms in Penketh, Burtonwood, Winwick and Croft.
[8] Newspapers reported that at one farm Ned carried on a love affair for some time with one of the servants, which caused his gender to become known and he was dismissed.
[1][20] On 31 December 1866, at St Helen's Church in Prescot, Elizabeth Harriet Boydell married Andrew Rennie Ormiston (also given as Ormaston).
[1][9] The couple did not live together after their marriage, as Andrew was a sailor and Elizabeth Harriet continued to work as a male farm labourer.
[22] After a public commotion arose, when it was discovered that Ned was a woman, he was arrested in Widnes in 1873, and charged with breaching the peace and sentenced to a week in prison.
[26] Ned refuted the charges and said that he had lighted a fire to make tea[27] and suggested the culprit might be a man named Travis who was working in a nearby field.
[29][31] In May 1880, Ormiston was accused by her nephew Joseph Young of setting their house on fire by lighting a pile of clothes ablaze with a candle.
When he entered his sisters' bedroom, he found clothing and bed hangings on fire and grabbed the burning pile, carrying it downstairs where he doused it with water, while yelling 'fire' to alert the occupants in the house.
[31][33] Ormiston denied lighting the blaze and said that when the police came to the house, she believed they were there to take her into protective custody because she had been beaten so badly.
[21] In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, gender studies scholars like Elisabeth Krimmer and historian Julie Wheelwright have included brief mention of Elizabeth Taylor in books dealing with women who cross-dressed to serve in the military.
[44] One, in which the first two stanzas were printed in 1887 as: My name was Elizabeth Taylor, but, bless you, I've long been a man; I served in the fleet as a sailor When the war o’ Secession began;
[42] and another, which appeared in newspapers in 1887 and 1888: Peace to the shade of Happy Ned, Who was by trade a sailor; She dressed like a man, but she was a maid, And her name was Betty Taylor.