Harriet Stokes

Harriet Stokes (????- 26 October 1859) was an English woman who took a role of a male bricklayer in the nineteenth century.

She first appeared in Whitby, near Doncaster as a girl of about eight years old and said that she had run away from her parents. She went to see the local bricklayer and asked for employment. The bricklayer mistook her for a boy, and she went along with this, giving her name as Harry.

Thereafter she continued to live as Harry Stokes for the rest of her life. She even married but her first wife left 'him' after the wedding night with a comment that "he was not a man". Sometime after this Harriet took up with a woman who ran a public house.

Subsequently Harriet became a master bricksetter and built chimneys and fire grates. During the Chartist riots she became a special constable and was made the captain of her company.

Towards the end of her life - perhaps through drink - Harriet's business failed. In October 1859 a body - seemingly a man - was found dead by a passer-by in the River Irwell, standing bolt upright in the water, 'his' top hat still jammed firmly on his head. The corpse was taken to a nearby pub where it was officially identified as Harry Stokes. At the somewhat perfunctory inquest the Coroner was ready to declare the death a simple suicide and release the body for a paupers burial when one of the jurors remembered the words of Stoke's first wife which seemed to cast a doubt on 'his' sex. Two women were sent to inspect the body and in due course confirmed the fact that 'Harry' Stokes was physically female.

The case was recorded in half a column in the Manchester Weekly Advertiser, and appears in the book Imposters by Sarah Burton.