Charles Hamilton (female husband)

Charles Hamilton was an English 18th-century female husband. Named Mary Hamilton at birth, and initially brought up a girl, they took the name Charles and started presenting as male at age 14. In 1746, while living as a man, they married Mary Price. After Price reported she was suspicious of Hamilton's manhood to local authorities, Hamilton was prosecuted for vagrancy, and was sentenced in 1746 to a public whipping in four towns and to six months imprisonment with hard labour.

While the surviving records of the case indicate that Hamilton was prosecuted for vagrancy, the fact that there had been penetrative sex and sexual intimacy with Mary Price prompted public opinion to ask for a severe punishment of what was considered as deceitful sexuality.

Newspaper reports at the time claimed that there had been 14 marriages in all. A 1746 account in the Newgate calendar gave other details.

In the same year, Henry Fielding published a fictionalised account of the case under the title The Female Husband. The term 'Female Husband' became common in the US and British press to document behaviour which would later be stigmatised by sexologists.

Hamilton was not the first documented female husband, but this was the first use of the term to refer to – in the language of the time – a woman who had married another woman whilst purporting to be male.