Sir Ewan Forbes, 11th Baronet, (6 September 1912 – 12 September 1991), was a Scottish nobleman, general practitioner and farmer. Forbes was a trans man; he was officially registered as the youngest daughter of John, Lord Sempill. After an uncomfortable upbringing, he began presenting as a man in the 1930s, following a course of medical treatments in Germany. He formally re-registered his birth as male in 1952, changing his name to Ewan, and was married a month later. In 1965, he stood to inherit the baronetcy of his elder brother William, Lord Sempill, together with a large estate. This inheritance was challenged by his cousin, who argued that the re-registration was invalid; under this interpretation, Forbes would legally be considered a woman, and thus unable to inherit the baronetcy. The legal position was unclear, and it took three years before a ruling by the Court of Session, which held him to be intersex, finally led to the Home Secretary recognising his claim to the title. The case was heard in great secrecy, with the effect that it was unable to be considered in other judgments on the legal recognition of gender variance, but has become more widely known since his death in 1991.
Family background The Forbeses were a well-established Aberdeenshire noble family, holders of both a barony and a baronetcy. The baronetcy had been bestowed in 1630, and was restricted to heirs male. In 1884 Sir William Forbes, the eighth baronet, inherited his cousin Maria's title as Lord Sempill and took the surname of Forbes-Sempill. On William's death in 1905, both titles passed to his eldest son, John. John, the new Lord Sempill and Baronet, was a land owner and soldier who had served with the Lovat Scouts and then the Black Watch in the South African War. He would later command the 8th Battalion of the Black Watch during the First World War, in which he was wounded at the Battle of Loos. During the 1880s, he had met Gwendolyn Prodger at the fashionable German resort of Bad Homburg; the couple were married on 22 June 1892. The bride, from a Cornish background, had been brought up in Wales and was an accomplished harpist. The couple had four children. The eldest, William, was born in 1893, shortly after their marriage. William later became an engineer, aviator, and spy for the Japanese. There were then two daughters; Gwendolyn (also known as Gwyneth), who died of appendicitis before Ewan's birth, and Margaret, who later became a decorated member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in the Second World War and a Justice of the Peace, before dying in a car accident in 1966. Finally, on 6 September 1912, a fourth child was born, christened Elizabeth Forbes-Sempill, and known to the family as "Betty".
Early life The issue of Ewan's gender would later prove contentious; the birth registration recorded a female, but Forbes later commented that this was "a ghastly mistake". Ewan was brought up as a girl alongside Margaret, but found childhood to be dominated by a growing gender insecurity. In early childhood, his mother began to call him "Benjie", a name that persisted among family and friends well into his later life. He spent a large amount of time playing with their cousins Patrick and David, and routinely dressed as a boy. In his book The Aul' Days, written many years later, Forbes recalled a hatred of being "made to dress up" for social engagements, and of going to great lengths to avoid them. Lord Sempill insisted on a "strict Scottish" upbringing for his children, which meant that he was taught to speak and write fluently in Doric as well as in European languages. Forbes refused to go away to a girls' school, which meant being educated at home; at fifteen, he pressed to be allowed to go overseas to attend a pre-university course, and eventually settled on a co-educational institution in Dresden. In Dresden, he and his mother first began visiting specialist doctors for a course of hormone therapy. After coming out as a debutante in London in the late 1920s, Forbes studied in Dresden for a year, 1929–1930, before travelling through central Europe, visiting Prague and Vienna. This journey provided the opportunity for a further series of visits to medical specialists for treatment. In the following academic year, he continued his studies in Paris, where he attended lectures at the Sorbonne and studied the harp under the principal harpist of the Paris Opéra. As well as the harp, Forbes was an accomplished public reciter; in the summer of 1930, he won the Scots Verse recital contest at the Aberdeen Music Festival, and was paid by Beltona to make a series of recordings of the poems of Charles Murray. After returning from Paris, he led a troupe of Scottish country dancers, the "Dancers of Don", that he had formed together with Isabella Mitchell. The troupe was largely female, meaning that many male parts were expected to be danced by women, and Forbes embraced the opportunity to be in public in a kilt and jacket. By this time, Forbes's heart was set on studying medicine. However, his father refused to fund his studies, arguing that since there was more than enough work to be done managing the estate, there was no need for him to study further. Ewan resolved to fund his own studies, aiming to put aside £1,000 to cover the costs. In 1933, he studied under the psychologist Leonhard Seif in Munich, living with his cousin, the British novelist Phyllis Bottome. He continued his hormone treatment during this time. Whilst there, he witnessed the German elections which brought the Nazi Party into power, and heard Adolf Hitler speak. On the death of Lord Sempill in 1934, both the barony and the baronetcy passed to William, the eldest child. Forbes inherited an estate at Brux Castle, Aberdeenshire, of about 1,300 acres (5.3 km2), and enthusiastically took to the lifestyle of a laird, adopting a broad Doric accent and taking to wearing a masculine kilt. He avoided upper-class society, where female clothing would be expected, and the last time he publicly appeared in a dress was to escort his mother to a royal garden party in 1935.
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