yonmei

06:05 pm: Is that you, Doctor Barry?
Two or three weeks ago, someone contacted me to ask if I could recommend any LGBT historical novels set in Scotland/around Scots. So I pointed him at Iona McGregor's Death Wore a Diadem, and a novel that (I conscientiously admitted) I hadn't read, but looked interesting: James Miranda Barry, by Patricia Duncker, about the famous Doctor Barry who may have been the first woman to qualify as a doctor at a British medical school: we don't know. Neither do we know if she was a lesbian, or he was a trans man, or even if ke was intersexed.

James Barry seems to have come into existence in 1809: that was the year the student James Barry matriculated at Edinburgh University as a "literary and medical student". Barry qualified as an M.D. in 1812, nine years before Elizabeth Blackwell was born, fifty-three years before Elizabeth Garrett Anderson had her name entered on the medical register as qualified to practice medicine in Great Britain, and it was fifty-seven years later that Sophia Jex-Blake finally persuaded Edinburgh University to let her register as a medical student.

Barry then went to London and qualified as a surgeon, evidently with a view to an army career, receiving a commission in 1813. In 1817, Barry became the army Medical Inspector for Cape Town in South Africa, until 1828, during which time the surgeon performed one of the first known successful Caesarean sections: the baby and the mother both survived. After Cape Town, Doctor Barry's career included the West Indies - where John and Doctor Barry met - and Corfu, the Crimea, and Canada. (History of Medicine article - VERY BIG PDF)

Who was John? Described as a "black manservant", John is the only human life companion Barry had. (The film Heaven and Earth, apparently planned for this year, is set in Cape Town in 1825 and invents a heterosexual relationship for Doctor Barry with an English milord, the governor of the colony: Barry is blurbed as "the first woman doctor, who had to masquerade as a man".)

Though known in the army as a "ladies' man", who fought several duels, it's not known - and if we could call James Barry back from the grave to ask and get an answer, I doubt if we'd be any better informed - how we may identify this person in modern categories. James Barry was probably born Margaret Ann Bulkley - a letter from young James Barry to the family solicitor exists, with "Miss Bulkey" written on the reverse of the paper by the solicitor - and Margaret Ann Bulkey probably was allowed by her guardian to dress as a boy in order to take a medical degree - but when and why did Margaret Ann Bulkey decide that James Barry was how she would live and die?

Lesbian? Trans man? Should we even impose these ideas on a person who lived and died before the modern concepts of heterosexuality/homosexuality and transgender were thought of? How would James Barry have identified, if asked - aside from as "Doctor James Barry"? (Well, technically: Doctor Barry died just as these concepts were being thought of.)

Doctor Barry died in London, in 1865, after a successful military and medical career: was buried in Kensal Green with full rank: and then the woman who laid out the body after Barry's death revealed that the corpse had not been a man. (I find from wikipedia that the British Army, with its usual strong feelings about freedom of information, promptly sealed all records for 100 years - normally only practiced with matters affecting the personal embarrassments of the Royal Family or the safety of the realm. Oddly and interestingly, the first historian to look at the sealed records in the 1950s was a woman, Isobel Rae.) There was no autopsy, but apparently the layer-out claimed not only was the body of a woman, there were stretch marks indicating pregnancy.

Doctor Barry was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery: John went home to Jamaica, and no one ever seems to have asked him what he knew. I don't even know if anyone knows or would be able to find a family name for John. Four years later, Sophia Jex-Blake entered Edinburgh University's medical school, under no disguise.

Anyway. And the reason why all this is on my mind: I got a copy of James Miranda Barry in the mail this morning, because the person who'd asked for advice had evidently looked it up on abebooks, found two copies (mine cost a £1) and got one for me, too.




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Tags: angry queer, books are what i read, gender, sometimes i love my job