A Selection of Jewellery, Art & Accessories from the collection of LGBTQ+ icon April Ashley to be offered for auction in Liverpool
A Selection of Jewellery, Art & Accessories from the collection of LGBTQ+ icon April Ashley to be offered for auction in Liverpool.
Adam Partridge Auctioneers & Valuers are delighted to announce that a large selection of Jewellery, Accessories and Art from the collection of one of Liverpool's most famous daughters, model, author and activist April Ashley MBE, is to be sold at their Jordan Street Saleroom on 19th & 20th March 2026. The one-hundred lot collection encompasses eighty lots of jewellery, including a stylish Gay Freres 18ct yellow gold Zodiac Ram wristwatch, alongside April’s vibrant and bold costume jewellery and more personal items, such as the grey jacket that April wore when she collected her honorary Doctorate. A portion of the proceeds is being donated to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital where the bulk of her estate has already been bequeathed, the remainder going towards the maintenance of the April Ashley Archive.
Born George Jamieson, in Wavertree on 29th April 1935, April grew up in a time when there was little to no understanding of her trans gender identity. In a bid to escape her unhappy home life, she joined the Merchant Navy at the age of 14 before being dishonourably discharged following a suicide attempt. Upon her return home, she tried a second time which resulted in her being admitted to Ormskirk District General Hospital psychiatric unit at the age 17, where she was treated with hormones and electric shock therapy.
After leaving hospital, April moved to London and Jersey before settling in Paris in the late 1950s, where she joined the cast of the internationally renowned drag cabaret at Le Carrousel where Hollywood stars, artists and musicians befriended the young ‘Toni April’. She also toured extensively to Rome and the South of France. At the age of 25, April underwent a seven-hour experimental sex reassignment surgery, performed in Casablanca by Dr George Burou. On returning to the UK as April Ashley, she became a successful fashion model, posing for David Bailey, as well as being featured in British Vogue.
No stranger to scandal, April was unceremoniously outed as a trans woman in 1961, when a “friend” sold her story to The Sunday People, for the princely sum of £5, ultimately ruining her career. She moved to Spain, where she ran a successful nightclub, the Jacaranda and mixed with stars such as Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole. In 1963 she married the Hon. Arthur Corbett in Gibraltar and returned to London where she performed briefly on the stage and ran a successful restaurant AD8 in Knightsbridge. Her marriage ended following a long and drawn-out court case when Arthur filed to have it annulled on the basis that April had been born male.
Having faced financial struggles and periods of ill-health, April left London and retired to Hay on Wye to write and publish her first autobiography Odyssey in 1982. She worked for and socialised with Hay Festival founder Richard Booth, earning the title The Duchess of Offa’s Dyke. After seven years she embarked for Hollywood where she worked as an art gallery assistant and for Greenpeace, marrying for a second time aboard the Queen Mary and befriending David Hockney, Harrison Ford, Sally Anne Field and President Gerald Ford amongst others. She celebrated her 60th birthday by sailing a small yacht across the Pacific Ocean with a man she had never met before.
She left Hollywood to live in the South of France where her second autobiography ‘First Lady’ was published in 2006. Throughout her life April corresponded with the thousands of people who wrote to her for advice and in her later years lobbied the British Government for Trans equality, leading to the passing of the Gender Reassignment Act in 2004. She finally returned to Liverpool as part of the Capital of Culture Celebrations in 2008, invited by the Festival for an in conversation at St Georges Hall and appeared at the Southbank Centre in London later that year. In 2012, April was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for her contributions to transgender equality. In the following year April received a Lifetime Achievement Award honour at the European Diversity Awards and an Honorary Doctorates from the University of Liverpool and London. In 2013, over a million people visited an exhibition about her life, mounted by Homotopia at the Museum of Liverpool, the first large scale exhibition relating to a trans person in the country. April died in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on 27 December 2021 following a long illness which despite its severity never dulled her spirit.
Adam Partridge says “It is my absolute privilege to be trusted with an extraordinary collection that had belonged to a remarkable woman. April was an iconic figure amongst the LGBTQ+ community, as well as a true daughter of Liverpool, and to have the opportunity to keep her legacy alive, as well as to support Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, is very special to me.”
The Liverpool Saleroom | Auction 19th and 20th March | Antiques & Interiors with Rock & Pop Memorabilia, Featuring the April Ashley Collection
