Rose - The Perfect Gentleman: The remarkable life of Dr. James Miranda Barry (Biographies Book 2)

THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN

The remarkable life of Dr. James Barry,

the woman who served as an officer in the British Army

from 1813 to 1859

June Rose

June Rose 1977

June Rose has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in 1977 by Hutchinson & Co (Publishers) Ltd.

This edition published in 2018 by Lume Books.

That an Habit of Secrecie is both Politicke and Morall.

Of Simulation and Dissimulation.

Bacons Essays

Table of Contents

Prologue

War office: Selected Personal Files: WO:138:1830

This class at present consists of one file relating to Dr James Barry, M.D.

25 Duke Street,

Westminster

July 25, 1865

Inspector General

Dr James Barry

Address

14 Margaret Street

Cavendish Square

AM this morning

Disease Diarrhoea

Sir,

I have the honor to report that the Officer, named in the margin died at 4 oclock

I have the honor to be,

Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant

D. R. McKinnon M.B.,

S. Surgeon Major

There was nothing remarkable about the death certificate.

The following day, Dr Barrys death was duly registered in the District of All Souls in the County of Middlesex. A senior Inspector General of Hospitals in Victorias Army was dead and the correct procedure had been adopted. On this form Dr Barrys age (about seventy) and sex (male) were entered.

It was witnessed with the mark of an X by Sophia Bishop, the Irish charwoman who laid out the body.

If Sophia Bishop had kept silent about what she discovered on the death-bed, the scandal would never have spread. But she was outraged, stunned. The devil, a General, she said, in words that echo down the years. Its a woman. And a woman that has had a child.

It was 1865 the year the first woman doctor in Great Britain, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, graduated. And yet another woman James Barry had already served with distinction as physician and surgeon for forty-six years in the British Army. She had risen from Hospital Assistant to Inspector General, second only to the Director General in the Medical Department, and she had died as an officer and a gentleman.

On the face of it, it was scandalous unbelievable. For two weeks no word of the story reached the public. But in the new London clubs on St Jamess and Pall Mall, in the pot houses and the gin shops, tongues wagged and the gossip grew.

By the 14th of August Saunders News Letter , a Dublin paper, broke the story of A female army combatant. The Manchester Guardian reprinted the article a week later, and the Whitehaven News , a Cumberland paper, picked up the scandal on the 24th of August. Rumour had flown so far that the authorities could no longer afford to ignore it. The Registrar General of Somerset House felt bound to ask Staff Surgeon Major McKinnon a delicate question:

It has been stated to me that Inspector-General Dr James Barry who died at 14, Margaret Street on the 25th July, 1865 was, after his death found to be a Female.

As you furnished the Certificate as to the cause of his death, I take the liberty of asking you whether what I have heard is true, and whether you yourself ascertained that he was a woman and apparently had been a mother?

Perhaps you may decline answering these questions: but I ask them not for publication but for my own information.

I have the honor to be Sir

Your faithful Servant

George Graham

Registrar General

It was an astonishing question to put to a Staff Surgeon in the Recruiting Department of the British Army. The penny post of those days was rapid and reliable and the following morning Staff Surgeon McKinnon penned his reply.

I had been intimately acquainted with that gentleman for a good many years both in the West Indies and in England and I never had any suspicion that Dr Barry was a female.

I attended him during his last illness and for months previously for bronchitis and the affection causing his death was diarrhoea, produced apparently by errors in diet.

On one occasion after Dr Barrys death, I was sent for to the office of Sir Charles McGregor (Army Agents) and there the woman who performed the last offices for Dr Barry was waiting to speak to me.

She wished to obtain some perquisites of her employment which the Lady who kept the lodging house in which Dr Barry had died had refused to give her.

Amongst other things she said Dr Barry was a female and that I was a pretty doctor not to know this and that she would not like to be attended by me. I informed her that it was none of my business whether Dr Barry was a male or a female and that I thought that he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man.

She then said that she had examined the body and it was a perfect female and that there were marks of her having had a child when very young. I enquired: how have you formed that conclusion? The woman, pointing to the lower part of her stomach said From marks here (striae gravidarum the stretch marks). I am a married woman and the mother of nine children and I ought to know.

The woman seemed to think that she had become acquainted with a great secret and wished to be paid for keeping it.

I informed her that all Dr Barrys relatives were dead, and that it was no secret of mine, and that my own impression was that Dr Barry was a hermaphrodite.

But whether Dr Barry was male, female or hermaphrodite I do not know...

Staff Surgeon McKinnon added that as he could swear to the identity of the body as being a person whom he had known for eight or nine years, he himself had no purpose in making the discovery... An amazing admission, explicable only in terms of McKinnons loyalty to a fellow officer who had shown a profound distaste for physical examination throughout a long career.

For the Army, the aristocratic Army, it was a highly embarrassing and contentious story. Despite the persistent rumours and the gossip, the staff at the Horse Guards did not see fit to order a post-mortem.

Not only Dr Barry but many other victims succumbed to the outbreak of diarrhoea during that hot summer of 1865. In the wealthy parish of Marylebone 300 people died in the first week of July. Open cesspools and streets with houses so dirty and dilapidated that the heart sickens at the sight of them spread the outbreak, which proved unusually fatal. No doubt the Army fervently hoped that the talk, like the heat, would soon subside.

But a few days later the Medical Times and Gazette (medicines most respectable journal) took up the story. From Saunders News Letter , the Medical Times reprinted information about the incident so extraordinary that were not its truth capable of being vouched for by official authority, the narration would certainly be deemed absolutely incredible...

To the Saunders story, the Medical Times added its own, somewhat sanctimonious, rider.

The above has been the subject of not a little club tattle. There need be no hesitation... in our stating what we have heard. The author has fallen into many inaccuracies but he is correct in the main point the sex of the deceased. The deceased was very well known and many were the stories and surmises circulated during his (?) lifetime... the physique, the absence of hair, the voice, all pointed one way and the petulance of temper, the unreasoning impulsiveness, the fondness for pets were in the same direction.

Their concluding remarks were significant. They referred to Sophia Bishop and her discovery of Dr Barrys sex. About this point she [Sophia] was very positive indeed... Moreover she asserted, with equal assurance and decision, that there were undoubted signs of maternity. In these conclusions the woman was supported and corroborated by others.