Lobzang Jivaka (1915-1962), February 2023

Lobzang Jivaka (better known as Michael Dillon) was born near the museum in Kensington during the First World War into an aristocratic family who held the Dillon Baronetcy of Lismullen in Ireland. His older brother Sir Robert Dillon was the 8th Baronet, a position which Michael (having been assigned female at birth) would not have been eligible to claim under the rules of patrilineal inheritance. However, as one of the first transgender men to have a successfully recognised legal and medical transition, he gained the right to inherit in the event of his brother's death. Anonymously documenting his own case in a paper of 1946 entitled 'A Study of Endocrinology and Ethics', this led to other transgender people seeking him out for advice and he went on to perform the first known male-to-female gender reassignment surgery in Britain in 1951 on Roberta Cowell (1918-2011).

Receiving unwanted scrutiny as a result of his own transition becoming more public, he moved to India and changed his name, becoming devoted to Buddhism and writing various books upon the subject. He died shortly after in Dalhousie in the far north of India at the age of just 47. His brother reportedly tried to destroy an autobiography but it was intercepted by Lobzang's literary agent and saved for posterity, finally seeing the light of day in 2016 under the title 'Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions'.

Risograph postcard with a black and white oval photograph of the British doctor and author, Lawrence Michael Dillon, who later changed his name in the 1960s to Lobzang Sramanera then Lobzang Jivaka as a Buddhist convert. The corners have a floral motif printed in orange and the subject's name and dates are printed in orange above the printer's name and date of creation.