The most hardened creature I ever met.

Our investigations into the real woman behind Disney’s cartoon account of the adventures of Chinese heroine, Mulan, reminded me of some of the heroines suggested as role models in the Girl’s World Annual I used to be given each Christmas.

Alongside Violet Szabo and Nurse Edith Cavell was featured a Dr. Barry, who served a long and distinguished career as James Barry, a male doctor in the British army who was discovered on death to have been a woman.

Dr. Barry died in 1865, after a 40 year career that would bring credit to anyone, regardless of gender. Posted across the globe with the British army, Dr. Barry performed what is regarded as the first ever Caesarean Section in Africa in 1826, and is credited with saving countless lives with innovative public health initiatives from South Africa and Mauritius to Jamaica, the Crimea and Canada.

Dr. Barry wasn’t popular though, with an instinct for rubbing authority up the wrong way. He suffered ridicule and scandal in personal life, as well as professional demotion and side-lining. Florence Nightingale certainly didn’t warm to Dr. Barry, nor recognise a kindred spirit when they met for the first time:

“I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – than from this Barry sitting on his horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square with only my cap on in the sun. He kept me standing in the midst ofquite a crowd of soldiers, Commissariat, servants, camp followers, etc., etc., every one of whom behaved like a gentleman during the scolding I received while he behaved like a brute . . . After he was dead, I was told that (he) was a woman . . . I should say that (she) was the most hardened creature I ever met.

At the time of his death, Dr. Barry was certainly regarded as male by all who knew him, although many felt that he exhibited what they described as effeminate traits. His voice as high-pitched as an old lady’s, and some colleagues report being asked to leave the room while Dr. Barry dressed.

Dr. Barry died in 1865 and the story that Dr. Barry was in fact not a man at all, but a woman, and moreover, a woman who had had a child, began with Sophia Bishop, who laid out the corpse. She told Dr. Barry’s own doctor of her discovery, hoping apparently to trade her silence on the matter for financial reward.

But Barry’s doctor, McKinnon, who’d known Barry for many years, seems to have been remarkably incurious, not to mention rather off-hand about the matter.

“I informed her that it was none of my business whether or not Dr Barry was a male or a female, and that I thought that he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man.”

The Manchester Guardian of 21^st August 1865 commented.

He died about a month ago, and upon his death was

discovered to be a woman. The motives that occasioned,

and the time when commenced this singular deception

are both shrouded in mystery. But thus it stands as an

indisputable fact, that a woman was for 40 years an

officer in the British service, and fought one duel and

sought many more, had pursued a legitimate medical

education, and received a regular diploma, and had

acquired almost a celebrity for skill as a surgical operator.

It was a supreme deception. How could it happen?

The notion that Dr. James Barry was indeed a woman gained currency over the decades, perhaps fuelled by the less than fond recollections of those who’d known the doctor, and sadly, obscuring the achievements of a talented and visionary person of whichever gender.

Modern scholarship has looked again at the story, and the summary I’ve given here is by A.K. Kubba, Specialist Registrar in General Surgery, Professional Unit of Surgery at the University of Nottingham and M. Young, Senior Librarian with the University of Glasgow Library. In their very readable paper, they conclude that Dr. James Barry was in fact a hermaphrodite, defining the term as “an individual where both ovarian and testicular tissue is present. Male genitalia, feminine breasts, testicular feminisation syndrome, absence of body hair and considerable variations between individuals exist among hermaphrodites.”

I went back to the story of Dr. Barry expecting to read a quite different account; one of a woman’s fight against all the odds for professional success and satisfaction at any personal cost. The revised story wouldn’t make it into the Girls World Annual, but what a remarkable and painful life.

With thanks to the authors of A.K. Kubba and M. Young

THE LIFE, WORK AND GENDER OF DR JAMES BARRY MD.

www.rcpe.ac.uk/publications/articles/vol31_no4/R_The_Life.pdf