As a keen genealogist I have many family photographs that I regard
as “special”, but this one is particularly so because I wasn’t supposed to see
it. Nor were any other descendants of the bride and groom.
The couple were my great aunt, Florence “Florrie” Cox, and the
Rev. Frank E. Paice, on the day they were married in the Circular Road Baptist
Chapel in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in December 1914. Both were Baptist missionaries
from Melbourne, Australia, and went on to be stationed in East Bengal (now Bangladesh).
The marriage, which began with high hopes in both families, fell
apart in scandal. This was partly because Frank had developed a fondness for a
fellow Australian missionary, Olga Johnson, but the greatest contributing
factor was the discovery on the honeymoon that Florrie had no vagina.
Florrie had what was identified after her death in 1950 as
Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). She looked and felt that she was a woman,
but had male chromosomes and no internal female organs.
The marriage took place in an age when sex was a taboo
subject in strict Christian families. It was quite common for females never to
be told in advance about menstruation. In Florrie’s case, she was never aware
that mature women should be having periods. Nor did Frank know this until much
later.
In my years of research into why the marriage ended in a
covered-up annulment divorce, I found few photographs of Florrie and no
photographs of the wedding. That is, until I met a distant cousin who had been
researching a different branch of the Cox family.
The cousin showed me a postcard copy of the photo
accompanying this article, but had no clue who was in it, other than the words
“Florence and Frank 1914” written on the back. We came to the conclusion that
this was probably the only copy in existence because all the others had been
destroyed by the more immediate family members of Florrie and Frank.
After the divorce went through in a secret session in the
Supreme Court in Melbourne, Florrie led a quiet life, often battling
depression, and regarded by her family as an embarrassment. Frank went back to
India, married Olga, became a pillar of the engineering world in Calcutta, then
returned to Melbourne years later to be prominent in local government. Both he
and Olga died in the 1960s with very few people – not even their only child – knowing
about the scandal or that they had ever been missionaries.
One question that is frequently raised
by those who see the wedding photograph: “Why is Frank sitting while Florrie
stands?” One answer was that he didn’t want it to be obvious that he was
shorter than his bride. But there are also suggestions that the photographer wanted the focus be on the bride, allowing her to display her wedding dress and her bouquet to their best advantage.
The investigation by Ian Richardson into what happened to
Florrie Cox and Frank Paice is available here:
