Our trans convoy’s desperate 400-mile mission to meet the medical angel of the north
DOCUMENTARY TELLS HOW PIONEER BECAME HERO FOR TRANSGENDER PEOPLE Patient recalls road trip to see only doctor willing to treat him
He was known as the kindly Highland doctor who ordered the bars to be removed from his psychiatric hospital and treated patients with respect and compassion.
But Dr Martin Whittet was also the first medic in the country willing to treat patients who believed they had been born into the wrong body.
Now a documentary is being made about a unique road trip 45 years ago where 20 trans people drove from as far away as Manchester and Newcastle to seek the doctor’s help.
One of them, Stephen Whittle, now 65, said : “He told us he would endeavour to help us. He accepted that trans people existed and that all we wanted to do was live our lives as best as possible.
“He said to me, ‘ You’ve been living as Stephen for a year, I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t have hormone treatment – that way you will know whether you do want it or not.’
“Dr Whittet was wonderful. He laid on tea and sandwiches, talked to us all and then saw all of us individually.
“He said it would be very interesting, it would give him an opportunity to do some research as very little had been done before.
“What an incredibly kind, decent human being he was.”
Filmmaker Fox Fisher is making the documentary about the trip to the north of Scotland called Inverness or Bust.
Fox sa id : “At the t ime, transgender people weren’t getting any access to medical or health care. They were considered mentally ill or perverted. Many were even placed into asylums.
“To finally have a doctor that was willing to help was such a huge thing. Dr Whittet was willing to treat them like human beings.
“It was a big step in everyone’s journey and showed that the public consciousness was slowly shifting and some people were starting to realise that transgender people needed that support.
“The stories of transgender people rarely get told, especially from decades past. We really want to be able to preserve this history so that it won’t be forgotten.”
What is even more extraordinary is that
Dr Whittet’s family knew very little of that side of his pioneering work.
His son Gordon, now a business consultant in Inverness, said: “It doesn’t surprise me, he was an exceptional human being. Kindness and humility were the key qualities he upheld in every aspect of life.
“He would go out of his way to help anybody, especially if they faced a challenge in life. He spent his career trying to rid people of stigma. He would be the first to open the door to see if he could help in any way.”
Glasgow-born Dr Whittet took over the former Inverness district lunatic asylum in 1951, when he waswa just 31.
HisH official title was “physician superintendent”sup and he was responsibleres for psychiatric servicesser across the Highlands and islands.
TheT first thing he did in his new job was take the bars off the windowswi of the hospital and becamebec an early advocate of occupationalocc therapy. He also embracedem the new generation of antan idepressants that were comingcom onto the market.
And,And long befobefore the word transsexual was coined, he began seeing people who described being born into the wrong gender. Stephen, now a professor of equalities law at Manchester Metropolitan University, said the trip to Inverness in 1973 changed his life.
He said: “I’d been living as Stephen for a few months, trying to get hormone treatment. It was grim. Nobody would see you or take you seriously.
“In a gay bar in Manchester, I met Carol. She was staying on Nick’s sofa, he was a trans man. He had run away from home at 15 and hadn’t spoken to his family for years.
“Together, we set up the Manchester Transvestite and Transsexual Support
Group. I needed hormones while Nick and Carol needed surgery. When Carol said she’d heard of a psychiatrist in Scotland who might help, we decided to go and see him.
“We set off in Nick’s blue VW Beetle.
Others came from Leeds. In Newcastle, we met a carload from Cumbria and stopped at a village outside Jarrow for afternoon tea at a hotel.
“We were so obviously trans. I was the youngest, a petite blonde girl. Others definitely looked like men in dresses.
“In Edinburgh, we stayed at the youth hostel and met up with carloads from Skye and Dundee. The next day around 20 of us drove up to the big asylum on the hill.”
Dr Whittet lived with his wife Nina and their four children in a tied house in the grounds of the hospital.
Gordon said: “When dad started, most of the
patients in Craig Dunain were sectioned. At that point, there were five a year. He opened up the wards and the grounds of the hospital so that patients had some freedom. He believed they should be treated with respect.
“He introduced a bowling green. There were weekly dances and Burns suppers. He put TVs in the wards and started a shop.”
Dr Whittet believed gardening improved mental health and had patients out growing flowers and vegetables.
Under his leadership, Craig Dunain became a hospital where patients wanted to go. Admissions rose until there could be five a day. Talking shortly after he retired, Dr Whittet said: “The hospital was, in many ways, a splendid place, although the cl inics and the number of staff needed developing.
“The great secret is to treat people as normally as possible, even if they are nervous. The treatments are not always well presented. Some are presented in a terrifying way.”
Dr Whittet died in 2009, aged 91. He had such a long and distinguished career as a doctor and reformer that his work with the trans community didn’t make it into his obituaries.
The family knew very little of the groundbreaking help he gave transgender people in the 70s. Gordon’s sister Jean remembers finding a drawer of photos when she was clearing her father’s things.
She said: “When I had a closer look, I saw they were men who had lived as women.”
Gordon added: “Dad believed doctors had a duty to be kind and humble. His motto was that, in life, two things stand like stone – kindness in another’s trouble and courage in your own.”