Down Memory Lane to Charing Cross

 

Charing Cross Hospital, bathed in winter sun.  (Photo: N_Marie [Redacted] 

I would bet that if you did a straw poll of a random group of people, and if you asked them what word(s) or names they associate with the name ‘Charing Cross’, you would get many replies like ‘Station’ or ‘Road’ or ‘Eleanor Cross‘ or even ‘police station.’ 

Other people, Londoners and transgender people in particular, would say ‘Hospital.’  Many of the trans people would add the word ‘gatekeeping’ to the list.  I was particularly reminded of that while I was listening to the latest episode of Episode 11 of the T Elders’ podcast this afternoon – thank you, Lou and Lauren, it was a fascinating episode.

Like many other transgender people in England, I have deep and abiding memories of that particular hospital. I 'happened’ to walk past it again a couple of years ago — actually, I was nearby for work and I took a few minutes ‘down time’ on arriving at Hammersmith Tube station specifically to go and take a photograph of it. It awoke a fair cascade of memories.  I had not been anywhere near CXH since my final appointment in January 1994.

I travelled my transition journey long before we all carried phones, let alone phones with cameras, and I don’t think we’d ever imagined that we would be taking photographs with a telephone!  I wanted to take a couple of pictures of the hospital for old time's sake; I found that the only difference between when I had last been there and this time was the picket line outside on the pavement, and passing cars tooting in support of the strikers.

The first time I saw Charing Cross was in the autumn of 1987, for my very first appointment at the Gender Identity Clinic. I had travelled down to London with a friend on a National Express coach and we’d got the tube from Victoria. I was more than a little bit nervous because I knew that that appointment would either change my life completely or return me to thinking that it would have been better to have been stillborn than to live my then-current life.

Trust me on this: The latter isn’t a mindset you want.

The appointment went well, and the Specialist agreed that I could change my name and start living full-time as a woman from the New Year. We didn’t call it social reassignment then; the term hadn’t been invented — or if it had, I wasn’t aware of it. There was a lot of language that we take for granted now in living our lives; words like transgender (the term then was transsexual, sometimes spelled with only one ‘s’), gender reassignment surgery (GRS), because the term then was sex-change surgery, transitioning (then ‘change of role’)…

This appointment was also the first time that I (knowingly) saw someone else who was trans; she was called in not long after my friend and I arrived.

The next appointment, a month later, was a flying visit to have blood tests done. This included a compulsory AIDS test — this was the 1980s, after all. This was the first time I had ever seen anyone mask up and double-glove. I don’t think the phlebotomist also wore a visor, but I could be wrong about that.  The AIDS test, even though it was negative, meant that I could not get any life insurance after that, and after a couple of refusals no-one at all will insure you.  I asked some trans friends recently whether they still do that test — they don’t. Mind you, HIV infection is now a manageable illness rather than a death sentence.

I’ll spare you the details of the assessment questions and discussions over repeated appointments in the next years, save to say that there was a lot of gatekeeping involved and that to start with, the standard assessments included a lot of questions about patients’ sex lives (either solo or with a partner), their sexual orientation, whether wearing women’s clothes was a turn-on etc. It wasn’t, and isn’t; it just felt so right, so natural, and it was the first time I could remember that I felt at peace with myself and that I wasn’t wearing a costume or disguise.

Trans patients were back and forth to Charing Cross during the Life Test — the two-year period you spent living in your affirmed gender before you are referred for surgery. Our lives were truly centred on, and ruled by, the GIC.  They gathered information to confirm that you were living continuously and successfully en femme and I remember taking in letters from the college where I was doing some vocational training (and my certificates after my exams), and later taking in one from my then-employer. They had a fairly narrow view of womanhood and femininity and of what job you had or the career path you had planned, and they used to note what you were wearing for your appointments — dresses or skirts were expected. One really nasty, raw, sleety, wintery day I rocked up in jeans tucked into boots and I was wearing a nice warm jumper under my coat. I was asked why I was wearing trousers, and I explained that it was for warmth — I’d had to wait in the open for a bus to the railway station, wait on an exposed platform for a train to London, and then walk from Hammersmith tube to the hospital. That was grudgingly(!) accepted, and my notes for that appointment said “en femme - trousers.”  It was not unknown for the Clinic to decline to refer people for surgery, or to pull them from the surgical waiting list.  It is impossible to overstate the power they had over our lives!!  I remember seeing some patients, i.e. other trans people, utterly devastated if an appointment or opinion hadn't gone the way they so desperately hoped.

Even after your life test was completed, and you’d had your surgical referral and assessment and been placed on the waiting list for GRS, the Gender Identity Clinic still had power over your life; you still saw them regularly and it wasn’t unknown for them to pull someone from the surgical list if they were concerned about someone’s progress.

Mind you, standout memories for me are the prescription of Androcur some appointments in and the start of oestrogen pills with the magic words “Your sex change starts here” the following month. I also have one rather surreal memory of the GIC:  I used to see Dr Alfred Hohberger, a neuropsychiatrist with a strong Dutch, almost Germanic, accent. We used to sit there in the consultation room with a cup of vending machine coffee apiece and an ashtray between us, smoking for our respective countries(!) and putting the world to rights as well as reviewing my progress. Charing Cross is on the Heathrow flight path and I commented one day that my mother would love to be watching the aircraft (I’m from an RAF family). Dr H looked at me with his head on one side, and asked in his inimitable, strongly accented, way “Does she not know that the Blitz is over??!!” Reader, I nearly spat my coffee across the room.

I'm planning to to write a separate post about my surgery, so all I will say here is that when you’re bedbound and lying flat on your back for a week, watching the aircraft fly over is the only thing you can really do. I even saw and heard Concorde coming overhead early one morning!  I didn’t have the concentration to read the paper and I turned down the opportunity to move to a room with a television because I was sure there’d be someone who’d appreciate it more than me. I never have been a big telly-watcher, and I was quite happy with the radio stations that were piped in.

Sadly, the last time I saw Dr Hohberger, a few weeks before my surgery, he was recovering from a heart attack and he was clearly still very unwell. More sadly still, on my final and post-operative GIC visit I saw a new doctor who told me that Dr Hohberger had passed away since I had last seen him. He was and is greatly missed, and I will never forget him.

Fast forward to 2023. I walked through the Broadway shopping centre and across Talgarth Road, and set off down Fulham Palace Road. There are a couple of huge new buildings on the way along, but I was soon outside the hospital saying a silent prayer of thanks for the gender specialists and the surgeon, the receptionists and the non-medical staff. Without them, I would literally not be who I am today. After several minutes and a few photos, I walked back past Hammersmith tube station to book into my hotel, dragging my mind back to the then-present day and to meeting my colleagues.