"A woman, under the name of Edward de Lacy Evans, has for 20 years passed for a man in various parts of the colony of Victoria," the Bendigo Advertiser breathlessly reported on September 4, 1879.

Within days, pictures of de Lacy Evans and his family were being sold to the public by local photography firms, journalists were combing his life for new exposés and the public was clamouring for even more information.

Now, 143 years after we published sensationalised stories about de Lacy Evans, it is time to acknowledge the damage the Advertiser and other newspapers did.

We helped make his name a household one and, along with newspapers across the world, fractured multiple lives because we cared more about a story that interested the public, not what was in the public's interest.

It was wrong of this paper, and many others, to describe de Lacy Evans as an "imposter", a "fraud" and a "criminal".

There was no evidence to suggest he was taking advantage of others for his own gain, just a bunch of journalists who did not understand their subject matter.

It was also wrong, technically and morally, of this paper to declare that de Lacy Evans was "evidently insane, and had been for many years".

Evidently, he was facing some mental health challenges. Evidently, they had only become obvious in the last few months.

And evidently, those challenges were separate to de Lacy Evans affirming his gender identity, half a lifetime earlier.

No-one called us out 143 years ago for our conduct. But we cannot be part of efforts to revive de Lacy Evans' good name until we call ourselves out.

The Advertiser did not break the de Lacy Evans story but it piled on with gusto in 1879, sharing as many details of who knew what, and when, in a story that would soon spread around the English-speaking world.

It was Melbourne's now defunct newspaper The Argus that first reported what it described as "a curious incident at the Kew Lunatic Asylum on Monday".

It related the story of a "lunatic" that police had brought from Bendigo and admitted to one of the male wards.

"The patient was tolerably quiet until preparations were made for the usual bath," the paper reported, referring to a mandatory bath that all patients were required to take when they entered the asylum.

"On the attendants, however, attempting to carry out the programme a violent resistance was made, the reason being, it transpired, that the supposed man was a woman."

The next day, the Advertiser ran the first story in what would become relentless coverage.

"Evans is about 40 years of age, and has all the appearances of a man in the face, except that he is quite beardless," an Advertiser journalist reported after meeting the miner, who had been sent back to the Sandhurst Hospital as authorities tried to work out what to do next.

"He stands about 5 feet 4 inches high, is of slight but wiry build, with strong muscular arms and hands which show evident signs of the arduous toil in which he has been engaged for 20 years past.

"He is possessed of rather handsome features, clear cut, but seams with the marks of anxiety; fair complexion, nose aquiline, eyes grey and piercing, hair originally brown and curly, but now thickly streaked with grey, and worn rather long for a man."

The Advertiser's story came complete with an interview with de Lacy Evans' wife, Julia, recounting details of their marriage, and their 18-month-old child, that were none of the public's business to know.

In the days that followed, we kept printing the stories in supplements that sold out hours after going to print.

We were particularly proud of that, at the time.

de Lacy Evans was certainly not the first person to be outed in the 19^th century, nor the only one in the Bendigo region.

Fourteen years later, doctors preparing to perform an autopsy discovered that a soft-spoken German miner living in Elmore and identifying as male, had been assigned female at birth.

Many people sailed to the colonies hoping for a better life and a new identity. de Lacy Evans was just one who left a past gender behind when he stepped off a ship from the old world.

But he was unusual in that he had been married three times, including to a woman who had died in childbirth.

As the media feeding frenzy died down, de Lacy was released from institutional care.

More stories from our history series:

A promoter convinced de Lacy Evans to star in side-show style appearances in Melbourne.

They were not successful, according to a 2002 article by Mimi Colligan, which appears on the State Library of Victoria website.

de Lacy Evans was evidently still struggling with mental health problems.

By 1881 he was admitted to a St Kilda institution, where he remained until his death in 1901.

de Lacy Evans' trashed name remained in tabloids, newspapers and books for decades.

Then Bendigo forgot about it.

It is only now that biased media, perpetuating stigma and misrepresentation of transgender community is finally beginning to improve.

The trans community is welcoming the positive visibility. It has also become more vocal about sharing its history, including de Lacy Evans' significance as the first well-known trans person in Australia.

Local LGBTIQA+ community members led the push to install a new mural of de Lacy Evans in Chancery Lane.

The Advertiser could have been part of their attempts to right historic wrongs without acknowledging our past. Trans people did not ask us to do this.

We think they should not have to.

And we believe many other newspapers in this country, and around the world, ought to do the same.

For help if this story has raised issues for you: Lifeline - 13 11 14, Switchboard Victoria - 1800 017 246, QLife 1800 184 527

We would like to thank Zara Jones for her valued advice on this story. It is part of the Bendigo Weekly's regular history series, entitled WHAT HAPPENED?

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