| Discrete Collections | Hall-Carpenter Archives |
| Title | Bob Mellors |
| Ref No | HCA/MELLORS |
| Level | Collection |
| Date | 1968-1995 |
| Extent | 10 boxes |
| Admin Biographical History | Robert (Bob) Mellors was born in 1950. He was a student at the London School of Economics, following which he travelled to New York, where he became involved with the Gay Liberation Front. On his return to London, Mellors co-founded the British Gay Liberation Front in 1970. When the GLF foundered in 1974, Mellors helped in the formation of more specialised lesbian and gay community groups. In the late 1970s he formed a friendship with Charlotte Bach and became one of her close circle of friends and followers. He was killed in Poland in 1996.
Publications: editor of 'An outline of human ethology: extracts from an unpublished work by Charlotte Bach (London, 1981)'; 'We are all androgynous yellow' (Another-Orbit Press, London, 1980); 'Clint Eastwood loves Jeff Bridges - true! 'homosexuality', androgyny & evolution : a simple introduction' (Another Orbit Press, London, 1978). |
| Custodial History | Papers deposited by Mellors's family via Professor Elizabeth Wilson in 1996. |
| Description | The Bob Mellors papers held in the Hall-Carpenter Archives relate exclusively to his research on Dr Charlotte Bach, part of whose library Mellors inherited and about whom he wrote an unpublished biography. Bach was born Karoly Hadju in Budapest in 1920. In 1948 he moved to England and took the name 'Baron' Carl Hadju. He married an English woman, Phyllis, with whom he set up an accommodation agency in Paddington. In 1957 he was found to have profited from a charity he had established to raise funds for Hungarian freedom fighters. The couple were evicted from their flat and Hadju declared himself bankrupt in the same year. Separating from his wife, in 1960 he changed identities to become Michael Karoly, and went on to have some success in London claiming to be a psychiatrist. Eventually this fraud was discovered and he spent time in Pentonville prison in 1967. On his release he became Charlotte M Bach, Ph D, having spent more than a decade experimenting with transvestism and theorising transsexuality. Charlotte Bach developed a number of philosophical theories relating to evolution, gender and sexuality, wrote many lengthy, complex papers based on them and gave regular lectures to popularise her ideas at salon evenings at her home. Upon her death from liver cancer in 1981, the discovery of her biological gender came as a surprise to her close circle of friends and followers, to which Bob Mellors belonged. |
| Access Status | Open |
| Access Conditions | Open |