On 25 July 1865, charwoman Sophia Bishop was asked to lay out the body of James Barry. During 46 years as a British Army doctor, Barry had served in garrisons across the empire, making a name as a zealous reformer who improved the health of soldiers and civilians alike. What Bishop now claimed to have discovered made Barry one of the most talked-about doctors in history. Dr Barry, Bishop pronounced, was 鈥渁 perfect female鈥�. But was he hiding a female body? And if so, how had he kept his secret for so long? Despite 140 years of speculation, the truth about Barry has proved elusive. After years of dogged detective work, retired urologist Michael du Preez has finally put the record straight.
MYSTERY, intrigue, romance鈥� the story of Dr Barry has them all. The tale is so compelling it鈥檚 been told countless times, yet no one has ever solved the central mystery: who was Barry, the pint-sized physician with the sandy curls and squeaky voice? The doctor was both caring and quarrelsome, dainty yet dashing. He fought for better conditions for the troops, shot a man in a duel and faced a court martial, yet still made it to the top of his profession.
Barry had sprung from nowhere to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1809, and might have returned to obscurity if he hadn鈥檛 fallen victim to the epidemic of dysentery that swept London in the summer of 1865. He had no known relatives, so the job of preparing his body for burial fell to Sophia Bishop, the charwoman at Barry鈥檚 lodgings. When the funeral was over, Bishop dropped a bombshell: the distinguished army doctor was a woman.
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If Bishop was telling the truth, then a girl had posed as a young man long enough to complete medical training (making her the first medically qualified woman in the UK), fooled the army into hiring her and then kept her sex secret for almost half a century. Appalled by the idea, army officials locked away Barry鈥檚 service records for a hundred years and hoped the story would go away.
It hasn鈥檛 yet. Without a post-mortem, there was only Bishop鈥檚 word to go on, but that was enough to trigger endless speculation. Some contemporaries claimed to have known all along. Others reckoned it was impossible to keep such a secret for so long: Barry must have been a man or possibly a hermaphrodite.
In the 1950s, historian Isobel Rae persuaded the army to open up Barry鈥檚 records. From those and other documents, she pieced together a detailed picture of the doctor鈥檚 career. What Rae found also led her to believe that Barry was a woman and probably a niece of James Barry, the celebrated Irish artist. But without proof of the girl鈥檚 identity, the question of Barry鈥檚 sex refused to go away. One recent notion is that Barry was born with androgen insensitivity syndrome, genetically male but lacking male hormone receptors, although her small stature and physique suggest otherwise.
Michael du Preez first heard the story as a boy in Cape Town, South Africa, where Barry is a well-known character. As assistant surgeon to the garrison there, Barry introduced sweeping health reforms. He fought for better food, sanitation and proper medical care for prisoners and lepers, as well as soldiers and their families. Most famously, he was the first British surgeon to perform a successful Caesarean section, saving the lives of mother and baby. Du Preez became a doctor himself and, when he retired in 2001, he set out to solve the mystery of Dr Barry once and for all.
Earlier investigators had searched the obvious archives and drawn a blank, so du Preez tried a new tack: if Barry was a close relative of James Barry the artist, then papers linked to the artist鈥檚 family might provide some leads. Hidden among a large collection of letters, accounts and legal documents, and new information that helped him reconstruct much of the doctor鈥檚 early life.
His discoveries leave no doubt that Barry started life in Ireland as Margaret Ann Bulkley, the daughter of Jeremiah, a grocer in Cork, and Mary-Ann, sister of James Barry, professor of painting at London鈥檚 Royal Academy. They also reveal a conspiracy between Margaret鈥檚 mother and some of her uncle鈥檚 influential and liberal-minded friends to get her through medical school.
The key evidence comes from some two dozen letters, some penned by the teenaged Margaret and some by Barry the student doctor. According to Alison Reboul, an expert on document analysis with the UK鈥檚 Forensic Science Service, they were all written by the same person. Most exciting of all was the discovery of a letter the budding doctor had written to the family solicitor Daniel Reardon on arrival in Edinburgh in 1809. 鈥淩eardon was a meticulous man,鈥� says du Preez. 鈥淥n the outside of all the letters he received he wrote the date and the name of the sender.鈥� This letter was signed 鈥淛ames Barry鈥� but on the outside Reardon had written 鈥淢iss Bulkley, 14th December鈥�. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 get much more conclusive than that,鈥� says du Preez.
So what was the story? In 1803, Margaret鈥檚 father was jailed for debt, leaving his wife and daughter destitute. They appealed to their famous relative, Barry the artist, hoping he might help Margaret finish her education so she could earn a respectable living teaching. Barry and his circle were prominent advocates of women鈥檚 education, and he seems to have discussed the Margaret problem with two friends: physician Edward Fryer and General Francisco Miranda, Venezuelan revolutionary and sometime resident of London. Barry died suddenly in February 1806, but some of his money ended up in a fund for Margaret and within months she and her mother were living in London (South African Medical Journal, vol 98, p 52).
For the next three years Margaret studied, taking lessons from Fryer and making good use of Miranda鈥檚 鈥渆xtensive and elegant鈥� library. The records don鈥檛 reveal when the plan to educate Margaret became a plot to make a doctor of her, but they do show who was in on the conspiracy: Fryer, Miranda, Reardon and Margaret鈥檚 mother. Miranda may have been the prime mover: he promised Margaret a job in Venezuela once he had liberated it from the Spanish. 鈥淢iranda was an enlightened man and probably had no problem with the idea of a woman doctor,鈥� says du Preez.
The flaw in the scheme 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 three whole years.
The disappearance of Margaret Bulkley and the appearance of a young medical student called James Barry was carefully orchestrated. The Bulkleys were unknown in Scotland, so they planned to establish themselves there as aunt and nephew. Du Preez discovered that they travelled to Edinburgh by sea, rather than stagecoach. Newly enrolled at university, the freshly minted 鈥淛ames Barry鈥� wrote to Reardon: 鈥淚t was very usefull for Mrs Bulkley (my aunt) to have a Gentleman to take care of her on Board Ship and to have one in a strange country.鈥� This indicates precisely when the metamorphosis of Margaret took place, says du Preez. She must have had to board the ship already dressed as a boy, or risk shipboard rumours following them to Edinburgh.
To protect Margaret鈥檚 secret, the pair cut themselves off from friends and family. Only the conspirators knew who they were and where they were. From now on, Margaret kept herself to herself, always wore an overcoat and lied about her age to avoid questions about her smooth chin and high voice.
鈥淪he lied about her age to avoid questions about her smooth chin鈥�
Barry graduated in 1812 and after six months as a pupil at St Thomas鈥� Hospital in London, joined the army 鈥� surely a strange choice for someone with such a secret to hide. But Barry鈥檚 options were limited: General Miranda had just been betrayed by fellow revolutionaries and thrown into a Spanish jail. There was no longer a job for Margaret in Venezuela. 鈥淧ut yourself in her position,鈥� says du Preez. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e spent all that time maintaining this deception, so what do you do now? If she had come clean and said she was a woman she couldn鈥檛 have done anything in Britain. The army was actively seeking doctors, so she chose the army.鈥�
Will du Preez鈥檚 discoveries put an end to the speculation? He thinks not. 鈥淧eople will probably still argue about this until someone eventually exhumes her remains, tests her chromosomes and settles the matter for good.鈥�