Charlotte Charke

Charlotte Charke (née Cibber, also Charlotte Secheverell, aka Charles Brown) (13 January 1713 – 6 April 1760) was an English actress, playwright, novelist, autobiographer, and noted transvestite. She acted on the stage from the age of 17, mainly in breeches roles , and took to wearing male clothing off the stage. She assumed the name "Charles Brown" and called her daughter "Mrs. Brown." She suffered a series of failures in her business affairs after working in a variety of trades commonly associated with men, from valet, to sausage maker, farmer, pastry chef, and tavern owner, but finally achieved success under her own name as a writer, ending her life as a novelist and memoirist.

Early information of Charlotte Charke can be found in the autobiography called a Narrative of The Life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke by Charlotte Charke herself, she wrote this and published it as a male author. In A narrative of the life of Mrs. Charlotte Charke, they talk to us about her child hood, Charlotte speaks about how she was born when her mother was forty five years of age, and not only was she late coming into the family, but she also felt as though she had been unwanted. She was the twelfth and last child born to actor/playwright poet laureate Colley Cibber and the musician/actress Katherine Shore. Most of her many siblings died before their first birthday. According to her autobiography, her brothers and sisters resented her arrival when she was young and many of them maintained their dislike throughout their lives.Charlotte was bold from a young age., family members and close friends of the family say that Charlotte began to show her “addiction” to manly activities at a young age. She was a great shot, she enjoyed, and was good at dressing horses, and at an early age preferred digging in the Gardens dirt. With the absence of her father due to business endeavours and the lack of a mother figure due to constant illnesses, Charlotte became as independent as a young child her age could be, only to put up with nagging maids that watched over her every once and while.

She was educated in the liberal arts and learned Latin, Italian, and geography at Mrs. Draper's School for girls located in Park Street, Westminster between 1719 and 1721 and then moved to live with her mother in Middlesex. She suggested that her gender identification with men showed up early in her life, as she recalled impersonating her father as a small child, and, when she moved in with her mother, she taught herself shooting, gardening, and horse racing, but this may also be normal dress-up for a child, and especially one with a famous father. In 1724, she and her mother moved to Hertfordshire, and there she continued engaging in country sports and education, focusing on subjects and pursuits usually associated with males. According to her anecdotes, she also "studied medicine" there and, in 1726, tried to set herself up as a doctor (she was thirteen years old). This only lasted several years because when she hit the age of sixteen she moved back home with her father.

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