Edward de Lacy Evans (born Ellen Tremaye) was not the first gender transgressor to be exposed in the colonial press, but his name became a convenient shorthand for journalists covering gender transgression. Later cases were often referred to as ‘another De Lacy Evans’ or ‘a second De Lacy Evans’.  

Although Evans was referred to as an ‘extraordinary case’, he had led an ordinary life as a miner in regional Victoria. In 1879, after an injury at work, he was institutionalised by his brother-in-law JB Loridan, ostensibly for ‘softening of the brain’. Loridan was the chairman of the board of Bendigo Hospital, a major shareholder in the mine where Evans worked, and — according to Evans’s wife, Julia Marquand — the biological father of Evans and Marquand’s daughter.  

While Evans was still a patient at Bendigo Hospital, his co-workers began the first miners’ strike in Bendigo. At the same time, Marquand sued Loridan for child support. Evans was called as a witness, and his striking co-workers came to the trial to express their support for him.  

Evans was discharged and deemed cured not long after he was forced to detransition. He worked briefly as a sideshow act, and then left the public eye. He died in 1901.