The remarkable story of the pioneering army doctor who told off Florence Nightingale, performed the first successful caesarian, and was secretly a WOMAN in disguise
- Pioneering surgeon Dr James Barry was born Margaret Ann Bulkley
- She successfully disguised her gender and rose through army ranks
- Her secret was discovered after her death in London in 1865
- Dr Barry was known as a 'brute' with a 'fierce' temper and strength of will
He was a pioneer in the world of medicine who was respected for his ability and feared for his bad temper.
But there was another reason why people should be astonished by Dr James Barry - one that shocked 19th Century Britain so much it was immediately hushed up.
For the inspector general of military hospitals who was described by Florence Nightingale as a 'brute' was unmasked on his deathbed, in 1865, as Margaret Ann Bulkley.
It technically made Dr Barry the first woman in British history to practice medicine.
Dr Barry rose from beginning as a hospital assistant to become one of the most highly respected surgeons of her day and the highest ranking doctor in the British Army, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel.
She was known as a zealous reformer who served in garrisons from South Africa to Jamaica.
Among her other accomplishments, Dr Barry performed one of the first successful Caesarean sections in medical history and was even summoned by Napoleon to treat the son of his private secretary.
Dr Barry also instigated a series of reforms, including campaigning against poor sanitation and overcrowding in prisons, and better care for lepers as well as the soldiers that she looked after.
The only clues to her true identity were her 'feminine features' and 'a most peculiar squeaky voice and mincing manner', the latter according to one ambassador's daughter.
But when the undertakers received her body they found 'the genitals, the deflated breasts and the hairless face' of the body were 'unmistakably female', with evidence that she had given birth to a child some years before.
Her fierce temper is likely what cast aside any suspicions as to her true gender - with Nightingale describing Barry as 'the most hardened creature I ever met throughout the Army'.
New research among a cache of letters, accounts and legal documents has helped to make sense of the extraordinary life of Dr Barry and just how she kept her secret so safe.
A range of conditions, including that she was a hermaphrodite, have since been suggested to explain how she began life as a female but still managed to convicne everyone she was a man.
But in reality she was simply a woman, born in Ireland as Margaret Ann Bulkley sometime in the 1790s, the daughter of Mary-Ann and Jeremiah, a greengrocer from Cork.
In 1803, Mr Bulkley was sent to prison over his debts and his wife turned to her brother, famous artist James Barry, to help ease the family's financial burden.
Barry was part of a progressive and liberal who were keen believers in women's rights and education, and when he died in 1806, leaving some money to the Bulkleys, his influential friends took Margaret and her mother under their wing.
The Bulkleys moved first to London, where Margaret began to take lessons from the physician Edward Fryer.
She proved an able pupil and before long hatched an ambitious plan for her future.
At that time, women were not permitted to enter university, so it was decided that she would masquerade as a man and train as a doctor.
In 1809, Margaret - assuming her uncle's name - sailed from London to Edinburgh where she planned to enrol at the university as a medical student, and she and her mother intended to portray their relationship as aunt and nephew.
'It was very useful for Mrs Bulkley to have a gentleman to take care of her on board ship,' Barry wrote to one of her sponsors.
Margaret and her mother isolated themselves from anyone who might not be trusted to keep this darkest of secrets.
The pioneering surgeon and doctor was known for a 'squeaky voice and mincing manner' but managed to keep her secret until her deathbed
She wore an overcoat to disguise her womanly curves, and fibbed about her age as a means of explaining her smooth chin and high voice.
Margaret graduated three years later, moved back to London for a six-month stint as an apprentice surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital and, in 1813, joined the Army.
Standing less than 5ft tall, she wore stacked heels and had to have 3in soles fastened to her boots to make her appear taller.
But luckily for her disguise, the effeminate and flamboyant male fashions styles of the time helped her blend in.
By 1816 Dr Barry was posted to the colony on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, where she took on a black manservant who would stay with her for 50 years and would lay out six small towels each morning which she would used to hide her curves and broaden her shoulders.
She rapidly became known as an eccentric, sleeping every night with a black poodle called Psyche, riding about in dress uniform wearing a cavalry sword and taking a goat everywhere so she could drink its milk.
Dr Barry also acquired a reputation as a ladies' man, believing it would give her a better cover.
Her story was also likely aided by friend Lord Charles Somerset, governor of the colony, who may even have been her lover.
His friendship meant she had a powerful ally who could help quash any rumours that developed about her, with her famed 'strength of will' doing the rest.
Then came 1819 and a year long disappearance for the rising medical star, which is believed by some historians to be a time that she fell pregnant and gave birth to a stillborn baby.
She returned and went on to further establish her reputation, becoming a master surgeon by 1826.
Dr Barry also had a famous run-in with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, with the latter branding her a 'brute'
It was in this year that, despite knowing that no woman in Britain had ever survived the procedure, she conducted an emergency Caesarean on a woman on her kitchen table - and saved both mother and child's lives.
Dr Barry remained in South Africa until 1828, when she embarked on a series of postings to Mauritius, Jamaica and St Helena, among other places.
By 1845 Barry was serving as principal medical officer in the West Indies, where she contracted a terrible bout of yellow fever.
Convinced she was not going to survive, she laid down strict instructions that her unexamined body should be left in a nightshirt and wrapped in a winding sheet.
But she did recover, and when the Crimean War broke out she demanded to be sent to the front line.
Her request was refused and, instead, she was stationed in Corfu to tend to the wounded when they had been shipped out there.
Dr Barry found a way, however, and used her leave to go to the Crimea anyway, which is where she met Nightingale.
But what could have been a firm friendship between two reformers ended up becoming something more like a feud when Dr Barry's outspoken nature prompted a furious row between the pair.
In 1857 Barry was sent to Canada and promoted to the post of inspector-general of hospitals, but failed to adapt to the freezing winters due to her life in the tropics.
She suffered with flu and bronchitis and was forced to retire.
Dr Barry returned to London and eventually succumbed to a diarrhoea epidemic that eventually killed her.
Even in death she fought to keep her secret to the very end, requesting no post-mortem be carried out on her body.
Her life has been immortalised in a new biography, Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time, written by Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield and available for £18.99.
