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This practice goes back at least as far as the 1950s. We know, for example, from the case of Corbett v Corbett, that in 1961, at the request of Arthur Corbett, the 3rd Baron Rowallan, the Passport Office provided a female passport to a young man who had changed his name to April Ashley and was seeking to live as a woman. Changes to these official government records were done without legislation as a humanitarian accommodation to address the difficulty for someone who wanted to live and travel with documentation that did not appear to match their sex or way of life. It was done informally for what at the time was thought to be a tiny number of people.