I became a woman at 70, says Sheffield ex miner

By Richard Blackledge – Sheffield Telegraph

RACHEL Fleetwood is 75 years old, lives in a Sheffield nursing home – and is most likely Britain’s oldest transsexual.

Rachel was in fact born Roy Colton in Brightside, Sheffield, in 1934 – but made the life-changing decision to change from being a man to a woman aged 70, in 2004.

As a younger man, Roy worked in butch jobs on the railways and as a miner, but hid his desire to live as a female, dressing up secretly in women’s clothes from the age of 21.

Now a resident at Haythorne Place Care Home on Shiregreen Lane in Shiregreen, Rachel wears lipstick, nail varnish, and women’s clothing every day.

“The staff dress me up around the home,” Rachel said. “I’ve got skirts and things in my wardrobe, and they will dress me up and take me down to dinner.”

As Roy, Rachel had three wives who all divorced him because of his transvestism.

For over a decade he took hormone tablets he bought himself in order to change his sex, and in 2004 he changed his name by deed poll.

Speaking exclusively to The Star Rachel said: “I don’t know anybody of the same age as me who’s a transsexual.

“But I wanted to do it all my life, completely. My dad made me be a boxer, a wrestler, a footballer, a cricketer, all the men’s games, and yet I wasn’t that way inclined.

“After my third marriage broke down I thought, ‘Right, this is the opportunity I’ve wanted, I’m going to take it’.

“I changed my name to Rachel and stuck my grandma’s surname on the end, Fleetwood, and that’s how I came to be Rachel Fleetwood.”

Rachel said she kept her cross-dressing private initially, as the moral climate of the 1950s made it impossible for a man to change his sex.
“My first wife took me to court for a divorce and she openly said in the court, ‘My husband is a transvestite’.

“That frightened me to death. Anybody could have been in there, and my life would have been over.

“At that time there were people going around bashing everybody up who didn’t look right, so I had to do my dressing up in the dark at night time where nobody could see me.”

Rachel said she first dressed as a woman by wearing her sister’s clothes.

I wore a Mexican type of hat and one of my sister’s dresses and under-petticoat.

“My mum saw me for the first time dressed up, and she gave me a compliment. She said, ‘I didn’t know I’d got two daughters’, and I thought you can’t get higher praise than that.”

Roy moved from Sheffield to Colne, Lancashire, in the 1950s, but moved back last month after suffering two strokes brought on by taking female hormone tablets.

Rachel, who suffers osteoarthritis and has also been wheelchair-bound for 11 years, said: “I just bought them because I wanted to be a woman. I didn’t ask my doctor – I think that’s where I slipped up and that’s why I’ve had these strokes.

“My first stroke took my arm out, the second took my left leg out. The doctor came to me and told me to stop taking the hormone tablets, otherwise they’d kill me.”

Rachel said she took the tablets for over 10 years, and was bitterly disappointed when she was told to stop.

“I was fuming, because I’d been taking them for a few years. I’m certain I got the same amount of pleasure as women do when they take HRT. I feel there’s a woman inside me trying to get out.”

Rachel said the staff at Haythorne Place are very accepting of their resident’s unconventional lifestyle.

“I’ve had a happy life, no regrets,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed my life, and I’d do it all over again if I could, because I’ve done nothing wrong as far as I can see. It’s virtually like being born again.”