The surgeon Harold Gillies, who designed this instrument, is often known for his pioneering work using skin grafts in facial reconstructions for soldiers during the First World War. However, he is also a key figure in the development of medical transitions for transgender people. Gillies was responsible for Britain's first surgically created vagina, after performing gender reassignment surgery on Roberta Cowell in 1951. Cowell was a flamboyant character who studied engineering at University College London and served as a Spitfire pilot during WWII. During this time, she was even imprisoned at Stalag Luft I, a German POW camp, after crashing a plane near the Rhine River. Cowell married her former UCL classmate after the war but felt deeply unhappy, a realisation which led her to seek therapy and begin to transition. She became a successful race car driver, as well as one of the first out transgender women in UK history, after selling her story to tabloids. She died in destitution, despite working variously as a clothing designer and mechanic.
Gillies also performed the first ever gender-affirming phalloplasty (surgery to create a penis) on Laurence Michael Dillon, normally known as Michael Dillon, an introspective and accomplished Oxford rower who later trained as a doctor at Trinity College Dublin. Multiple surgeries occurred from 1945-1949, with Dillon and Gillies devising the procedures together. Dillon is also regarded as a key figure in the history of transgender medical research thanks to his influential book Self, a philosophical-medical text detailing a progressive view of sexual difference. Cowell reached out to Dillon for help in her transition after reading this book, which led to her connection with Gillies. Dillon even performed a surgery known as inguinal orchiectomy on Cowell, which enabled her to present to a gynaecologist as intersex. This then allowed her to change the gender listed on her birth certificate to female. Dillon had romantic feelings for Roberta Cowell, for whom he wrote poetry. It is unclear whether she returned his passion. Dillon later moved to India, where he became a Buddhist monk and lived under the name Lobzang Jivaka.
When asked about his surgeries for Cowell and Dillon, Gillies remarked: “If it gives real happiness, that is the most that any surgeon or medicine can give.”
