CONCEALMENT OF SEX.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2511, 23 January 1877, Page 2

CONCEALMENT OF SEX.

Many instances are on record of women having successfully concealed their sex, while for long years, or a lifetime, they wore the habiliments of men and pursued the rougher, hard vocations that are by common consent abandoned to their brothers. Their story necessarily reads like a romance; indeed, it usually is a romance, deeper, often more tragical than any in fiction, for it has the tremendous reality of truth. The Earl of Albemarlo chronicles in his gossipy autobiography one of these strange histories, of which he had some personal knowledge,' and treafs it as of undoubted authority. It was while at' Cape Town, in 1819, that he met a—person whose eccentricities attracted universal attention—Dr James "Barry, Staff Surgeon to the garrison, and the Governor's medical adviser. Lord Charles described him to me as the most skilful of physicians and the most wayward of men. He had lately been in professional attendance upon the Governor, who was somewhat fanciful about his health, but taking umbrage at something said or done, he had left his patient to prescribe for himself. I had heard so much of this capricious yet privileged gentleman that I had a great curiosity to see him. I shortly afterwards sat next to him at dinner at one of the regimental messes. In this learned pundit I beheld a beardless lad, apparently about my own age, with an unmistakable Scotch type of countenance, reddish hair, high cheekbones. There was a certain effeminancy in his manner, which he always seemed striving to conceal. His style of. conversation was greatly superior to that one usually heard at mess • tables in those days of non-competitive.examination. A mystery attached to Barry's whole professional career, which extended over more than half a century. While at the Cape he fought a duel, and. was considered to be of a most quarrelsome disposition. He was frequently guilty of flagrant breaches of discipline, and on more than one occasion was sent home under arrest; - but somehow or other -his offences were always condoned at headquarters. In Hart's Annual Army List for the year 1865 the name of .James Barry, 'M.D., stands at the head of the list of Inspec-tor-Generals of Hospitals. In the July of that same year the Times one day announced the death of Dr Barry, and tUe next day it was officially reported at the Horse Guards that the doctor was a woman. It is singular that neither the landlady of her lodging nor the black servant who had lived with her for years had the slightest suspicion of her sex. The late Mrs Ward, daughter of Colonel*' Tidy, from whom I had these partic»', lars, told me further that she believed the doctor to,have been the gianddaughter of a Scotch Earl, whose name I do not now give as I am unable to substantiate the correctness of my friend's surmise, and that she adopted the medical profession from attachment to an army surgeon who has not been many years dead.