Digital Transgender Archive

Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquis of Anglesey, seated in drag by a tree. Photograph, 1905.

Part of James Gardiner Collection: photograph album labelled ‘Drag’.

Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey (1875-1905), dubbed by the writer H. Mongomery Hyde as 'The most notorious homosexual of this period'. However there is no proof that he had ever had sexual relations with anyone of either sex; he was divorced by his wife for non-consummation of their marriage, but there were no sexual scandals involving anyone else. As all his private papers were destroyed by his heirs, it is now unlikely that his actual sexual orientation will ever be ascertained. What we can be sure of is that he squandered his entire enormous family fortune (in 1898 he inherited an income of £110,00 per annum, equivalent to over £11 miliion in 2014) on clothes, furs and jewels in a very short period of time. Amateur theatricals were his great passion. He turned the ballroom of the family home Plas Newydd into a theatre, where he performed a wide variety of roles, both in and out of drag. The catalogued item shows him reclining in a garden, possibly at Plas Newydd, wearing a dress and robes with much applied decoration, an astonishing array of jewellery including a high crown-like tiara and pearl choker (James Gardiner)