Dr. James Barry : an enigmatic army medical doctor

Abstract

In spite of marked eccentricity, Dr. Barry became notorious only after dying on 25th July 1865. The Irish newspaper Saunders’s News Letter on 14th August 1865 reported Dr. Barry’s death and revealed that the doctor was in fact a female who had masqueraded as a male throughout her life. Dr. Barry had served as a principal medical officer with the British Military in Malta for about four and a half years. An eccentric but very professionally able person, Dr. Barry joined the Army Medical Department as a hospital assistant on 5th July 1813 and subsequently practiced for the benefit of soldiers in Plymouth, South Africa, Jamaica, St. Helena and Barbados before being posted to Malta on 2nd November 1846. Through her subterfuge, Dr. James Barry had made history by being the first woman in Britain to graduate as a medical doctor and to fulfil an active army career dedicated to Medicine and the amelioration of human suffering. Whatever the reasons for the subterfuge, Barry, during her forty-six years service showed herself to be a successful doctor and administrator.