Community

Inquest for trans teacher Lucy Meadows resumes today

May 28 2013
Written by Corinne Pinfold

An inquest into the death of school teacher Lucy Meadows, a trans woman whose gender transition was the subject of undue media scrutiny, has resumed today in Lancashire.

The 32-year-old was found dead in a house in Lancashire on Tuesday 19 March by her estranged wife, Ruth Smith.

An inquest was originally opened in March at Blackburn Register Office, but was adjourned after a brief hearing. Coroner Michael Singleton asked for various reports to be completed to establish a cause of death before the inquest could be resumed today.

Mr Singleton told the short hearing: “I understand there have been previous attempts to commit suicide. I don’t know if they are relevant or not.”

Around 300 members of the trans community and supporters gathered outside the Daily Mail offices in central London on 26 March to hold a candlelit vigil for the teacher.

Before her death, Meadows had contacted the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in January to complain about the way she had been treated in the press after her gender transition was made public by a local paper and then the wider national media in December of last year.

Last December, Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn wrote disparagingly about Meadows in a column, and has since been the subject of renewed criticism, following her death.

Earlier this week, the PCC said it had received a number of complaints about the article – but none directly from the family of Lucy Meadows.

Meadows’ January complaint to the PCC was not specifically against Littlejohn, but of general press behaviour.

Meanwhile, nearly 200,000 people have signed a petition calling for the sacking of Richard Littlejohn.

A poem in Meadows’ memory by one of her seven-year-old students remembers her as a “Wonderful teacher”.