The Surgeon Who Wasn't
On 25 July 1865 the military surgeon James Barry, who served as a British Army doctor in garrisons across the empire for 46 years, died.The physician made a name in military circles as a passionate reformer who improved the health of soldiers and civilians alike. Soon after his death Dr Barry became the most talked-about doctor in history for a completely different reason. It was discovered that the doctor was ... a true female. But was he really a she? And if so, who was she and how had she kept her secret for so long? Despite 140 years of speculation, the truth about Barry proved unclear for a long time. However recently, a retired urologist Michael du Preez announced he had uncovered the secret.
We know from old photographs and letters written by work colleagues that the short doctor of delicate build, curly fair hair and squeaky voice presented some female features. If he truly was a she, then a girl had posed as a young man long enough to finish medical training, making her the first medically qualified woman in the UK. Moreover, she fooled the army into employing her and kept her sex secret for almost half a century. Horrified by that, army officials locked away Barry's service records for a hundred years and hoped the story would remain secret. And so it did for some time.
However, in the 1950s, historian Isobel Rae persuaded the army to open up Barry's records. From those documents, she created a detailed picture of the doctor's career. Rae found out that Barry was a woman and probably a niece of James Barry, the celebrated Irish artist. But without proof of the girl's identity, the question of Barry's sex was still unclear. One recent theory states that Barry was born genetically male, although the height and body build suggest something else.
Not long ago the amateur researcher, Michale du Preez, deicded to solve the mystery of Dr Barry once and for all. The early investigators had searched medical archives only, while their followers focused on the military ones. Neither of the two offered satisfying information. So du Preez tried a new tactic: if Dr Barry was a close relative of James Barry, the artist, then papers linked to the artist's family might provide some leads. Soon he found among a large collection of letters, accounts and legal documents, conclusive evidence of Dr Barry's identity and new facts that helped him reconstruct much of the doctor's early life.
According to du Preez’s discoveries, Barry started life in Ireland as Margaret Ann Bulkley. The family documents also describe a conspiracy between Margaret's mother and some of her uncle's influential and liberal-minded friends. Its aim was to get the girl through medical school and we learn about that from the artist's diary. Surprisingly, the solid proof of identity is not obvious from the medical school records, as we might think, but from about two dozen letters. Some of them were written by teenaged Margaret and some by Barry the student doctor. Alison Reboul, an expert on document analysis with the UK’s Forensic Science Service confirmed that all letters were written by the same person.
So what was the story? In 1803, Margaret's father was jailed for debt, leaving his wife and daughter in financial problems. They appealed to their famous relative, Barry the artist for help. He and his friends were supporters of women's education and agreed to promote the girl's study. Soon Barry died suddenly, leaving Margaret his money which allowed the girl and her mother to move to London. There Margaret had individual lessons for the next three years. It is unclear when the plan to educate Margaret became a plot to make her a doctor. But the key fact was that she was promised a physician’s job in Venezuela by one of her dead uncle’s enlightened friends - General Miranda. The only difficulty was that no British medical school admitted women. If Margaret was to qualify as a doctor, she would have to masquerade as a boy for some time. This caused the identity change into James Barry.
After three years of university study in Edinburgh Margaret, now known as James Barry, graduated in 1812. It took her another six months to train as a pupil at St Thomas' Hospital in London, after which she joined the army. It was a tough choice for someone with such a secret to hide. But Barry's options were limited: General Miranda, one of Margaret's mentors, was unexpectedly killed in a political conflict in Venezuela. There was no longer a chance of a physician’s job for her there. If Margaret had come clean and said she was a woman, she couldn't have done anything in Britain. The army was actively seeking doctors, so she chose the army where she served successfully for many years to come.