Sir Ewan Forbes, 11th Baronet

The Forbeses were a well-established Aberdeenshire noble family, holders of both a barony and a baronetcy. The baronetcy had been bestowed in 1630, and was restricted to heirs male. In 1884 Sir William Forbes, the eighth baronet, inherited his cousin Maria's title as Lord Sempill and took the surname of Forbes-Sempill. On William's death in 1905, both titles passed to his eldest son, John. During the 1880s, he had met Gwendolyn Prodger at the fashionable German resort of Bad Homburg; the couple were married on 22 June 1892. The bride, from a Cornish background, had been brought up in Wales and was an accomplished harpist. , principal seat of the Forbes family. ==Early life==

The issue of Ewan's gender would later prove contentious; the birth registration recorded a female, but Forbes later commented that this was "a ghastly mistake". Ewan was brought up as a girl alongside Margaret, but found childhood to be dominated by a growing gender insecurity. He spent a large amount of time playing with their cousins Patrick and David, and routinely dressed as a boy. In his book ''The Aul' Days'', written many years later, Forbes recalled a hatred of being "made to dress up" for social engagements, and of going to great lengths to avoid them. Forbes refused to go away to a girls' school, which meant being educated at home; In Dresden, he and his mother first began visiting specialist doctors for a course of hormone therapy. This journey provided the opportunity for a further series of visits to medical specialists for treatment. As well as the harp, Forbes was an accomplished public reciter; in the summer of 1930, he won the Scots Verse recital contest at the Aberdeen Music Festival, and was paid by Beltona to make a series of recordings of the poems of Charles Murray. By this time, Forbes's heart was set on studying medicine. However, his father refused to fund his studies, arguing that since there was more than enough work to be done managing the estate, there was no need for him to study further. Ewan resolved to fund his own studies, aiming to put aside £1,000 to cover the costs. In 1933, he studied under the psychologist Leonhard Seif in Munich, living with his cousin, the British novelist Phyllis Bottome. He continued his hormone treatment during this time. of about , and enthusiastically took to the lifestyle of a laird, adopting a broad Doric accent and taking to wearing a masculine kilt. He avoided upper-class society, where female clothing would be expected, and the last time he publicly appeared in a dress was to escort his mother to a royal garden party in 1935. ==Medical career==

In 1939, Forbes was accepted as a medical student at the University of Aberdeen. He graduated in 1944 and took up the post of Junior Casualty Officer at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. After a swift progression to Senior Casualty Officer, he began to work as a general practitioner in Alford, Aberdeenshire in 1945. In addition to the normal work of a rural doctor, in 1946 Forbes was called upon to act as a medical officer for German prisoners of war who were held in the area, due to his command of the language. The Alford area was one of the largest medical practices in Great Britain, and in the winter months Forbes often had to travel through ten-foot snowdrifts in a converted Universal Carrier. On moving to Alford, Forbes had continued to present himself publicly as a man. In 1952, he formally became male by the simple process of requesting a warrant for birth re-registration from the Sheriff of Aberdeen, registering himself as male, and changing his name to Ewan Forbes-Sempill. The marriage took place at the kirk in Kildrummy, which he had recently joined. ==Inheritance and lawsuit==

The re-registration passed without much public comment, and the issue of his gender would remain a private one until 1965. That December, his elder brother died, leaving daughters but no sons, and thus posing a problem of inheritance. The barony could be inherited by heirs male or female, and so passed directly to Sempill's eldest daughter Ann, but the baronetcy – along with the bulk of the land – would have to pass to the first male heir. The family had assumed that Ewan would inherit, as the younger brother. Following the death of the Lord Sempill in December 1965, The Times cited ''Debrett's'' in reporting that the heir to the baronetcy was the Hon. Ewan Forbes-Sempill, "formerly registered as Elizabeth". However, this was challenged by his cousin John Forbes-Sempill, who argued that the 1952 re-registration was invalid. This would mean that Forbes was still legally considered a woman, unable to inherit the title, and so it would pass to John Forbes-Sempill. A total of twelve medical experts were called to give evidence. Professor Louis Gooren returned to his records of the case in 1999 and "concluded, with hindsight, that Forbes-Sempill was almost certainly a female-to-male transsexual"; the details that have since emerged of his treatment make it clear that he was a trans man. The judge's ruling was that "as a matter of probability, the second petitioner [Ewan Forbes-Sempill] is a ... hermaphrodite", according with the legal requirement of "indeterminate at birth". It has been suggested that the judge desired to ensure the estate and the title was inherited by the "right" candidate, and was flexible with his judgement to obtain this result. The ruling continued to be challenged by John Forbes-Sempill, who caused it to be referred to the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, as the person responsible for the Roll of the Baronetage. Callaghan consulted the Lord Advocate, and finally declared in December 1968 that Ewan should be entered on the Roll as the rightful holder of the title. The level of secrecy of the case, which was criticised by some contemporary observers, meant that it was not properly recorded or published, and the exact facts of the argument were not known for some time. As a result, whilst it sharply differs from later rulings such as Corbett v Corbett (1970), it was not able to be considered as precedent in later judgments on the legal recognition of gender variance. However, further release of records was limited, with the Lord Advocate's office stating that disclosing the files "would not be appropriate", and the case would not be fully publicly documented until 2021. ==Later life==

On taking up the baronetcy, Forbes dropped Sempill from his surname; this had been adopted by the family in the 1880s when it inherited the barony, and there was no reason to persist once the titles were separated. Forbes died in 1991, leaving no children, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his cousin John, the relative who had made the legal challenge in the 1960s. His widow, Isabella, died in 2002. ==Legacy==

In 2021, Zoë Playdon published a book about Forbes, The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes: And the Unwritten History of the Trans Experience. The book is set to be adapted into a television miniseries. ==Coat of arms==