straight from the wiki:
Hailing from England, Bridget was born to a wealthy aristocrat,[2] soon after her twin brother, in a town convinced that male twins brought misfortune. The townspeople were so embedded in this superstition[6] that they insisted the younger of any set of male twins be put to death or given up for adoption. Bridget's parents were unwilling to lose one of their children, and so they chose to raise Bridget as a daughter instead of a son, hiding her sex from the public eye.[7]
edit: of course the pronoun is now changed by someone