Author’s Note

Henriette Faber was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1791, and married an officer in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. Shortly after she was widowed, she decided to dress as a man in order to study medicine at the University of Paris. She served as a military surgeon during the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. Transferred to Spain, she fell prisoner to Wellington’s troops at the battle of Vitoria, and served in that capacity as a physician in the Miranda de Ebro Hospital. After the peace accord of 1814, she decided to settle in the Caribbean, first in Guadeloupe and later in Cuba, where she practiced medicine in the town of Baracoa. There she married another woman, Juana de León, signing the marriage certificate with the name Enrique Faber. In 1823, her true sex was revealed, and she found herself embroiled in a sensational legal trial. After filing an appeal with the Court of Puerto Príncipe (today known as Camagüey), she was sentenced to serve four years in the women’s hospital in Havana. Due to her attempts at escape, she was expelled to New Orleans and prohibited to ever again reside in Spain or any Spanish-held territory. It is not known for certain where she spent the remainder of her life.

Although, in Woman in Battle Dress, I have dramatized certain episodes of this singular woman’s life, both my account as well as the majority of the characters and specific situations are fictitious.

The bibliography about Henriette (Enriqueta) Faber is scarce, given that her life story is practically unknown outside of Cuba. I consulted the following works:

Emilio Bacardí Moreau, Crónicas de Santiago de Cuba, 2nd edition, volume 2, Madrid, Breogán, 1972, pp. 218–219.

Francisco Calcagno, Un casamiento misterioso, 8th edition, Barcelona and Buenos Aires, Editorial Baucol, 1911.

—Diccionario biográfico cubano, New York, Imprenta N. Ponce de León, 1878, pp. 272–273.

María Julia de Laura, “Laura Martínez de Carvajal y del Camino (primera graduada de medicina en Cuba) en el septuagésimo quinto aniversario de su graduación (15 de julio de 1889),” Cuadernos de Historia de la Salud Pública, number 28, Havana, Ministry of Public Health, 1964.

Leví Marrero, “La cirujana suiza que para ejercer como tal debió hacer creer que era hombre,” Cuba: economía y sociedad, volume 11, Madrid, Editorial Playor, 1988.

Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, Médicos y medicina en Cuba: histories, biografía, costumbrismo, Havana, Museo Histórico de la Ciencias Médicas Carlos J. Finlay, 1965.

Inciano D. Toirac Escasena, Baracoa: vicissitudes y florecimiento, 1988, pp. 91–111.

Andrés Clemente Vázquez, Enriqueta Faber, Havana, Imprenta La Universal, 1894.