Wearing sweeping gowns, fluttering delicate fans and showing off their era's finest boned corsets, the figures in a collection of 19th century photographs appear, at first glance, to be a series of society matrons.

However, the pictures, which were posted by littlethings.com provide a rare glimpse of some of the most laughed at, and often reviled, members of Victorian society - female impersonators and transgender women.

The article's author notes: 'We can’t tell you how most of the subjects in the following photos identify, but we can say with certainty that these people took a major risk by dressing this way during less tolerant times.'

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Lili Elbe, was one of the first transgender women whose remarkable story features in Eddie Redmayne's upcoming film The Danish Girl

Brigham Morris Young, also known as Madam Pattirini, fooled his audience into thinking he was a woman during his years on the stage between 1885 and 1900

More than a century before Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox made huge strides for transgender rights and awareness, some men made a career out of performing as drag queens while others attempted to live as women in a world where even being gay was illegal.

The website also says: 'The etymology of the phrase “drag queen” is debatable, but many scholars believe that the phrase was coined in the 1800s as a reference to the hoop skirt. As seen in this photo, hoop skirts would “drag” along the ground.'

While many of the subjects featured in the studio shots, set against elegant backdrops featuring foliage or Italianate gardens, haven't been identified, one woman stands out.

Lili Elbe posed in an off-the-shoulder gown, her hair curled around her face, while fluttering a fan in front of her heavily made-up features.

And while, to the outside world Lili was a beautiful female muse, to her closest confidantes, she was one of the first people to be born a man and undergo gender reassignment surgery.

Her story has been immortalised in a new film, The Danish Girl, starring Eddie Redmayne, which is due out next year.

Actor Julian Eltinge (right in 1915) became famous as a female impersonator on stage and on screen (left)

An unknown man poses in Spanish-inspired outfit complete with matador's cape and hat

Lili was born Einar Mogens Wegener in Denmark in 1882 and in his late teens attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where he met fellow artist Gerda Gottlieb.

The couple bonded over their love of illustration and dated for a few years, before going on to marry in 1904, when he was 22.

Gerda went on to support her husband's need to live as a woman through his successive surgeries to feminise his body, which finally proved fatal after an highly experimental procedure to transplant a uterus went wrong.

Amid the cache, two other pictures identify William Julian Dalton, better known to his audience as Julian Eltinge, and Brigham Morris Young, who went by the stage name Madam Pattirini.

Having short hair and mannish spectacles are no bar to posing in a romantic white dress in this studio shot

Unlike Lili Elbe, the two men played the parts of women in their profession as actors and entertainers, on stage and on the big screen.

Brigham, who died in 1931 at the age of 77, was notable for being the son of Brigham Young one of the early Mormon leaders who has a Utah university named after him.

He became a cross-dressing singer under his Italian pseudonym from 1885 to 1900 after returning from Mormon missions in Hawaii.

Young’s falsetto singing voice was so convincing that many didn’t realise he wasn’t a woman.

The vintage photo sees Young dressed as Pattirini in a wig, hoisting up a skirt covered in fringe, and wearing a floral choker and a floral bracelet.

Wearing women's clothing in public was deeply frowned upon and could often result in arrest in Victorian society

Yale students strike a pose in theatrical women's outfits in an 1883 picture

Back then, the definition of what constituted as transgender, cross-dresser and even homosexuality were very blurred.

In the 1930s there was a crackdown on cross-dressing in public, in an attempt to curb homosexual activity, which prevented the likes of Eltinge from performing in costume and subsequently killed off their careers.

Massachussets-born Julian Eltinge forged a successful film career after his debut as a female impersonator on stage at the age of ten.

He went on to tour the world, even performing for Edward VII, who presented him with bulldog, before becoming a silent film star, even starring with Rudolf Valentino in 1920's An Adventuress.

Two men dressed in women's attire look less than impressed to be having their photo taken

A group of young men look po-faced in their dour black attire, despite the jaunty hats

But off stage he over-compensated by behaving in an overly macho fashion, smoking cigars and initiating fights with stage-hands.

He died in 1941 aged 59 still touring, although his success was a fraction of what it had been at its height, but he's still regarded as one of the most famous female impersonators of the 20th century.

And it's clear that men performing in women's clothing was a popular pastime on stage, but on the street it was a different matter.

The site notes that in the 1800s, because no law specifically forbade 'cross-dressing', men found in women's clothing were usually arrested for 'the abominable crime of buggery' or for prostitution.

Frederick Park and Earnest Boulton shocked Victorian London when they appeared as Fanny and Stella

A transgender woman cuts a chic figure in a figure-hugging dress, which is slashed to the thigh

Which makes the behaviour of Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton even more daring. The couple shocked Victorian London by leaving their home dressed as Fanny and Stella.

They were the first men to openly walk through the streets in women’s clothing and were eventually part of a notorious court case, 20 years before Oscar Wilde's trial scandalised 19th century Britain.

Other subjects include a pair of young men in black corsets over white frilly dresses with plaited hairpieces added to their hair.

One man poses in a gown that's accessorised with a Spanish matador's cape and hat.

However many of the images just depict transgender women or cross-dressers looking elegant in clinging gowns, with one woman showing off a narrow waist, a dashing hat and a dress that is slashed to the thigh.

This cross-dressing couple swapped clothes for the shoot, but the man's moustache is a dead giveaway

A beard is no bar to looking glamorous in an embellished black dress in this 19th century photograph

Posing up against a pillar, a cross-dresser or transgender exudes elegance is this ruffled gown

But in other shots, men pose in full women's clothing while maintaining their short, clipped hair and full facial hair.

In one picture, a short-haired man wears a full high-necked white gown with a gathered skirt, along with a large floral corsage.

In another a husband and wife pose in a picture that depicts their gender role reversal. While she has donned a jacket and trousers for the snap, he wears a black blouse and voluminous silk skirt - but maintains his clipped short hair and moustache.

As playwright Glenn Chandler, who brought the story of Fanny and Stella to the stage in May this year, told the Guardian: 'We’re taking people back to 1871 and reminding them that back then you could go to prison for being gay.

But he noted, 'The sad thing is that they really thought their case would change things, they thought a change in the law was coming, but then in two decades we have the Oscar Wilde trial and it takes another two centuries for change to come.'