SHE LIVED AS A MAN.

Motueka Star, Volume I, Issue 8, 6 September 1901, Page 4

SHE LIVED AS A MAN.

The revelation that “Mr Murray Hall, the Tammany politician, was a woman has revived the interest in Dr. “James” Barry, who rose to the rank of inspector-general of the Army Medical Department. In giving “his” extraordinary career, the “Dictionary of National Biography” says: “She is said to have been the daughter of a Scotch earl. She eutei ed the Army as a hospital assistant attii ed as a man on July sth, 1813, aud maintained the assumption of manhood through all the grades to which she rose until the time of hei death.”

She soon secured promotion, being appointed assistant-surgeon in 1815, surgeon-major in 1827, deputy-inspect-or-general in 1851, and inspectorgeneral in 1856, and was placed on halfpay in 1859. Among other stations she was at Malta and the Cape of Good Hope.

In 1819 Lord Albemarle met her at Capetown, where she was attending Lord Charles Somerset, the Governor. At that time she was acting as sta.fi* surgeon to the garrison. She is described as “ the most skilful of surgeons and the most wayward of men ; in appearance a beardless lad, with an unmistakably Scotch type of countenance, reddish hair, and high cheekbones. There was -a certain effeminacy in his manner which he was always striving to overcome. His style of conversation was greatly superior to that usually heard at a mess-table in those days.” She had no small share of personal courage, and often quarrelled.. At the Cape she fought a duel. Her temper made her frequently guilty of breaches of discipline, and more than once she was sent to England under arrest, but she was always pardoned. A correspondent writing to the “Pall Mall Gazette” yesterday says:— “I think you will find that when, some years before his death, Dr Barry was stationed with his detachment of the West India Regiment at Georgetown (B.C), he was ‘bowled out,’ so to say. He had fallen seriously ill that the dorters called in to attend him had to thoroughly overhaul him with the result that his sex was revealed, lie fervently appealed to his brother medicoes to keep his secret, and this was, of course, done till his death occurred some years later.” *"

She died in London in 1865, when an official report of her rex was sent to the "Horse Guards. It is said that neither her land-lady nor her black servant had the slightest suspicion of her true sex. Love for an army surgeon is said to have prompted her extaordinary conduct.