Maria Teresinha Gomes (1933,

Funchal Funchal () is the largest city, the municipal seat and the capital of Portugal's Autonomous Region of Madeira, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. The city has a population of 105,795, making it the sixth largest city in Portugal. Because of its high ...

– 2007) also known as a generala was a

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

woman notable for spending nearly 20 years successfully pretending to be a male

army general Army general is the highest ranked general officer in many countries that use the French Revolutionary System.　 In countries that adopt the general officer four rank system, it is rank of general commanding an army in the field, but in coun ...

. Gomes was born on the Portuguese island of Madeira and ran away from home at the age of 16. Her parents gave her up for dead while Teresinha made her way to Lisbon. Gomes' general's uniform was a costume made by a Lisbon tailor for the 1974 carnival. She used the name General Tito Aníbal da Paixão Gomes, the name of a brother of hers, who died as a baby. Gomes was revealed to be biologically a woman in 1992. She had used her invented position of authority to persuade neighbours to hand over part of their savings for investment. High returns were promised, but never forthcoming. The resulting trial also revealed that Teresinha had posed to others as a lawyer and an employee at the US embassy. Teresinha was eventually given a suspended three-year sentence. She retreated to a village near Alenquer where she died, too poor to pay for her own funeral, in 2007. A nurse called Joaquina "Quininha" Costa became Gomes' companion, sharing a house with her for 15 years. At Gomes' trial, Costa claimed that they never shared a bedroom, and that she never suspected that Gomes may have been a woman.

References

Article - Portugal's cross-dressing 'general' dies after 20 years as a man
Guardian (UK). *Cross, Donna Woolfolk, Pope Joan: a novel, 1996 - footnote at end of "Author's Note" mentions Teresinha Gomez of Lisbon, page 420. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gomes, Maria Teresinha 1933 births 2007 deaths People from Funchal Portuguese fraudsters Portuguese female criminals Female-to-male cross-dressers 20th-century Portuguese LGBT people