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Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time review – an exquisite story of scandalous subterfuge

Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield shed fresh light on how a woman in Victorian society adopted a male persona and became the UK’s first female doctor

Thursday 10 November 2016 07.00 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 2 May 2017 18.34 BST


Some people only become famous after they die. When Dr James Barry died in 1865 he became infamous. By all accounts, he had led a colourful life. A renowned military surgeon, he rose to become inspector general of hospitals – one of the highest army medical posts – and served throughout the British empire. Notoriously irascible, Barry fought a duel with a fellow officer, ticked off Florence Nightingale and survived several army inquiries into his conduct. He was a humane doctor, fervent public health reformer and famous for his peculiarities: a teetotaller and vegetarian, he travelled with a menagerie of small animals.

Yet all these eccentricities were as nothing compared with the revelations that emerged on Barry’s death. For the brilliant Dr Barry was, in fact, a woman. The charwoman who washed the body discovered “he” was “a perfect female” and furthermore surmised – from stretch marks on the abdomen – that she had once given birth. More than 50 years before women were allowed to practise medicine, Barry had hoodwinked Edinburgh University, the Royal College of Surgeons and the British Army to become the first female doctor in the UK. At a time when women were barred from most formal education and most professions, she had masqueraded as a man in a life-long deception of breathtaking proportions.

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go and read here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/10/dr-james-barry-a-woman-ahead-of-her-time-review