James barry biography

Before retirement, Barry had risen to the rank of Inspector General equivalent to Brigadier in charge of military hospitals , the second-highest medical office in the British Army. Barry not only improved conditions for wounded soldiers, but also the conditions of the native inhabitants, and performed the first recorded caesarean section by a European in Africa in which both the mother and child survived the operation.

Although Barry's entire adult life was lived as a man, Barry was named Margaret Anne at birth and was known as female in childhood. Barry's anatomy became known to the public and to military colleagues only after a post-mortem examination. Other than some personal correspondence, there are few sources of information about the non-military parts of Barry's life.

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The scant available evidence provides a skeleton onto which a great deal of myth and speculation has been added by various commentators. In his detailed research into Barry's early life, [ 5 ] Michael du Preez states that Barry was born in Cork in , a birth date based on Mrs Bulkley's description of her child being fifteen years old in a letter dated 14 January Jeremiah Bulkley ran the weigh house in Merchant's Quay, Cork.

However, anti-Catholic sentiment led to his dismissal from this post. This and subsequent financial mismanagement left Mary Anne and Barry without the support of either Jeremiah Bulkley whose debts led to him spending time in the Marshalsea debtors' prison in Dublin or later the Bulkleys' married son John. A third child appeared in the Bulkley family and was named Juliana.