Stephanie Anne Brooth

 Stephanie Anne Booth (25 May 1946 – 18 September 2016), also known as Stephanie Anne Lloyd, was a British transsexual business owner and hotelier, based in Llangollen.[1] She starred in the reality television series about her businesses Hotel Stephanie for BBC Wales in 2008 and 2009. Booth was born on 25 May 1946,[3] in St Albans, Hertfordshire.[4] Booth had one sister, who was 10 years older than her. Her parents were strict Jehovah Witnesses.[1][5] As a teenager, Booth found she wasn't attracted to either men or women and hid behind her religion to avoid advances from women.[5] In a 1988 interview with Ruby Wax she stated that "I was naturally born with a chromosome disorder, which meant that I was partly female anyway."[6]

Later life

After finishing secondary school, Booth worked as a laboratory technician, cinema manager, costing clerk and retail chain manager. In 1968, she began dating a woman, and proposed to them 10 days after they'd first met. Three months later, they were married and Booth fathered three children. The couple began to have marital issues, leading Booth's wife to take her to the doctor who told her she was transsexual.[5] Booth later divorced her wife in 1981 and began living alone in northwest England. During this time, she began experimenting with wearing women's clothing in the evenings and weekends.[7] She later came out as transgender to her parents, who cut all contact with her. Her Jehovah Witnesses congregation also excommunicated her.[5]

Booth began gender reassignment through a NHS specialist psychologist at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester. This was followed by surgery in September 1983 at the Charing Cross Hospital, London.[1] Booth worked as a sales and marketing director at Hestair Hope in 1983, when she underwent electrolysis, breast augmentation, and a rhinoplasty during the Christmas holiday break. She returned to work on the 5 January 1984 as a woman with the name Stephanie Anne Lloyd.[7] Initially, Booth told employees and the press that she had caught a tropical disease to which the only cure was to have hormone injections and become a woman, or she would die.[7] However, the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London stated "We can't think of a single disease requiring such treatment."[8] Booth's employer offered her £20,000 to resign due to the overwhelming tabloid publicity.[9] She ultimately lost her managerial job and was unable to find a new one.[10]

In 1984, Booth started Transformation, a clothing and lingerie shop in Manchester that catered to the transgender and transvestite community. In 1985, she was arrested and charged for running a bawdy house in the upstairs section of the shop.[11] Booth claimed that she had been told a massage service that offered sexual services was legal. She pleaded guilty and was given a 12-month suspended sentence.[12] In 1985, she moved in with David Booth, her business partner, whom she met through a newspaper advertisement. They married in February 1986 in Sri Lanka, as British law at this time didn't recognise such marriages.[13][5]

Later business ventures included a transgender mail order catalogue, a phone line that played a recording of her life story,[14] and a contact magazine. In 1987 Booth opened her transgender hotel in Manchester, advertising it in the Transformation shop.[15] She later opened a second shop in London.[16] In April 1988 she opened a Transformation shop in Birmingham.[17] Unable to open a shop in Scotland due to Scottish law, the company opened a site in Newcastle upon Tyne. They also expanded their mail order business to cover mainland Europe and the United States.[1]

In 1992, Booth founded the Albany Gender Identity Clinic as a centre for transsexuals to seek specialist medical advice and guidance on their condition.[18] The clinic was located in Manchester and doctors offered counselling and referrals to Charring Cross Hospital for gender reassignment surgery.[5]

Hotel Stephanie

In 2008, Mentorn Cymru began production of reality television series Hotel Stephanie for BBC Wales.[19] The series focused on Booth and her running of her hotel chain, based mainly on activities around Llangollen. The programme was commissioned for a second series in 2009, which focused on the couples' takeover and refurbishment of The Wynnstay Arms hotel in Wrexham.[20]

On 7 July 2011, Booth's hotels went into financial administration.[21] Administrators closed the Wynnstay Arms, The Anchor in Ruthin, and The Bridge Hotel in Chester with immediate effect, set well as the funhouses in Mold, Wrexham, and Oswestry, as these premises were rented and defaulting on rent payment could not be avoided.[22] All four hotels, which had been trading well, were put up for sale.[23]

Wrexham F.C.

In 2011, Booth announced her intention to take over Wrexham A.F.C. with an interest-free loan to save the club from entering financial administration, along with a plan to raise £5 million to purchase the club through a community-based venture.[24][25]

Death

On the evening of 18 September 2016, Booth was killed in a tractor accident at her smallholding farm on the outskirts of Corwen, Denbighshire. She was aged 70 and survived by her husband, David,[2] along with his children Lisa and Dawn and her grandchildren: Andrew, Mathew, Grace, Rachel and Joseph.

Autobiographies

Booth's first short autobiography, The official autobiography of Sex-Change Stephanie Anne Lloyd, was published in 1990 by TMC Publishing Ltd.[26]

Her second autobiography, Stephanie: A Girl in a Million, co-written with Sandra Sedgbeer, was published in 1991 by Ebury Press.[27] The Dutch translation was released in 1993,[28] and the Czech translation followed in 1994