Feature

Historical Heroines: The Perfect Gentleman

This is the remarkable story of Margaret Anne Bulkley, the woman who served as an officer in the British Army from 1813 to 1859.

Miss Bulkley was an innovative medical pioneer, a radical humanitarian and the first British woman to become a qualified doctor.

Margaret Ann achieved this unprecedented honour by concealing her true gender her entire adult life.

Adopting the name James Barry, she entered Edinburgh University in 1809 and emerged in 1812 with a medical degree.

Still only 17, Britain’s first ever female doctor joined the Army Medical Department where “he” proved extremely able, but unpopular.

He was a fiery red-head, an obstinate, prickly man - quick on the draw, especially if his masculinity was called into question.

If a (perceived or blatant) quip about his height - only five foot - or his high pitched voice or effeminate frame was made, he'd become enraged, known to even fight duels over this sort of thing.

After climbing the ranks to Inspector-General of Military Hospitals, Barry spent considerable time in the Crimea where he worked, with difficulty, in the Scutari hospital alongside Florence Nightingale to study the alarmingly high death rates.

Despite the encounter resulting in radical reform of battlefield medicine, Nightingale described Barry:

“After he was dead, I was told that [he] was a woman... I should say that [she] was the most hardened creature I ever met.”

His secret was revealed when Sophia Bishop, the maid attached to his lodgings, ignored his wish to be buried in the nightshirt he was wearing and proceeded to lay out the eminent physician.

Barry now lays buried in Kensal Green Cemetary in London, his gravestone marked as "Dr James Barry Inspector General of Hospitals, Died 26 July 1865, Aged 70 years".

In order to avoid a very public scandal in the highly prudish Victorian era, the then-rather embarrassed British Army placed an embargo and sealed all records pertaining to Dr James Barry for a hundred years.

They must have been wondering how many other women had snuck into ‘male’ roles over the centuries, if Margaret Ann Bulkley could have fooled so many people around the world for 46 years.