Mystery surrounded James Barry: as the Dictionary of National Biography says, she ‘was probably born Margaret’, and though commonly regarded (in public) as a male by her contemporaries, is now regarded as female by birth. She trained in medicine and became an experienced army surgeon and medical officer, eventually becoming a deputy inspector of hospitals, and like Mary Seacole (see 1855: Mary Seacole gets a Bed for the Night from Florence Nightingale) was discouraged from travelling to the Crimea (on the grounds of being too senior, in Barry’s case).
Barry had influential friends, an influence possibly related to her shadowy paternity: paternal candidates include the Earl of Buchan and the Venezuelan revolutionary Francisco de Miranda; and when she put her case to the British commander Lord Raglan, he agreed she should be allowed to help. Barry was based on Corfu, and Raglan arranged for over 400 casualties to be sent to her for treatment. The recovery rates Barry achieved were high.
In 1855 Barry spent a few months leave (at her own expense) in Sevastopol where she met Florence Nightingale. Barry was described at this time as an ‘intolerable bore’ who expected colleagues ‘to listen to every quarrel he has had since coming into the service’, and there were many such quarrels. Florence later recollected their encounter (Barry was annoyed with her about some trivial matter) with a fair degree of fume: ‘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 of quite 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.
What Happened Next
Barry is now seen as transgendered: she was very likely a woman by biology, became a man by choice, and the choice benefitted both medical science and her future patients. Barry was a very fine doctor, though argumentative and uncommonly uncivil; indeed she had fought a duel in 1818 (in which she and her opponent were unharmed). She died in 1865, aged about 66. The Manchester Guardian obituary said – in a smug and distant tone that still survives in British obituary writing – ‘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’. Indeed it was.