Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, my back hurts because we just helped
Speaker 1: your brother move into his house unloading that moving truck.
Speaker 1: I know, but it didn't take very long. Fortunate it didn't.
Speaker 1: There was a bunch of people. They're a bunch of
Speaker 1: wrapping folks, um, including yourself, And that's what people how
Speaker 1: people describe me constantly. No, but you you can haul,
Speaker 1: you can hauld. I mean you spent your day's bringing
Speaker 1: dragon buckets of ice up and downstairs in that restaurant
Speaker 1: a long time ago. But yeah, no, it was. It
Speaker 1: was great. We got it done really quickly. It was
Speaker 1: just a lot of heavy crap right. Happy they're here though,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my niece is going to be nearby. So exciting,
Speaker 1: so adorable. I would say. The biggest thing I learned
Speaker 1: from that move is something I've long known to be true.
Speaker 1: I learned the last time we moved is that if
Speaker 1: I can't fit that stuff in a tied up handkerchief
Speaker 1: on the back of a stick, I'm not bringing it
Speaker 1: with medals only. Yeah, Bendel's only for the next move.
Speaker 1: Happy New Year, everybody, Happy New Year. Look at that.
Speaker 1: Welcomed in the year with the song very weird song
Speaker 1: tone really, I'm so excited for twenty three. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say that because I said I was so excited for
Speaker 1: another year, regular all year, stupid year. It's like bullet train.
Speaker 1: My expectations are so low. Be shockingly good. I hope
Speaker 1: you're right. Yeah, fingers crossed. But hey, we got a
Speaker 1: big story to day, so I don't want to sit
Speaker 1: around here and banter too much. I say, we get
Speaker 1: right into it. Yeah. I think so too, because this
Speaker 1: is a really good one, A little complicated, awesome, interesting, crazy,
Speaker 1: really great suggestion also from our listener Milo Ira at
Speaker 1: bon Mott milo Um on Twitter. I think that he
Speaker 1: actually suggested this like way back in the day. But
Speaker 1: I'm so excited at finally beginning to this story because
Speaker 1: it was awesome. So today we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: James Barry, who is distinguished military doctor and surgeon who
Speaker 1: served in Cape Town, South Africa, and was the first
Speaker 1: European doctor to perform a successful C section where both
Speaker 1: the mother and the baby survived. Barry was really well
Speaker 1: respected despite the fact that he was frequently tactless and
Speaker 1: he had a very confrontational and personality, but he still
Speaker 1: had great bedside manner and he instigated a lot of
Speaker 1: health care policies like better sanitation and hygiene, which improved
Speaker 1: lives everywhere he went. But after he died, a woman
Speaker 1: went to the press with a shocking story. Dr James
Speaker 1: Barry was a woman. So let's talk about Dr James
Speaker 1: Berry's life, what people today think about his gender, identity
Speaker 1: and sexuality, the ironic public accusations of homosexuality with his
Speaker 1: good friend Charles Somerset, and the run in with Florence
Speaker 1: Nightingale that cost him a knighthood. I'm very excited. Let's go. Hey,
Speaker 1: their French com well, Eli and I and I got
Speaker 1: some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips.
Speaker 1: It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love there might be
Speaker 1: any type of person at all, and abstract cons that
Speaker 1: don't a concrete wall. But if there's a story, were
Speaker 1: the second clinch, ridiculous roles, the production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1: And before we jump in, just want to quickly say
Speaker 1: that most of our information about James Barry comes from
Speaker 1: Michael Dupries and Jeremy drawn Fields seen biography. Dr James
Speaker 1: Berry a woman ahead of her time. So Dr James
Speaker 1: Berry was born Margaret Anne Bulkeley in Cork, Ireland around
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine, and it wasn't an easy childhood. Margaret's father,
Speaker 1: Jeremiah ran away house, but he was dismissed because of
Speaker 1: anti Catholic sentiments classic way house problems horrible, so he
Speaker 1: ended up spending time in debtors prison and Margaret and
Speaker 1: her mother Mary Anne had no support. Even worse, in
Speaker 1: eighteen o four, another he was born, named Julianna, and
Speaker 1: Jeremiah kicked Julianna, the fifteen year old Margaret, and his
Speaker 1: wife Mary Anne, out of the house. Many biographers believed
Speaker 1: that Juliana was actually Margaret's child, born as the result
Speaker 1: of a childhood's sexual assault, because after Dr Barry died,
Speaker 1: stretch marks were discovered on his stomach, so people thought
Speaker 1: at some point he'd had a kid. Interesting, so they
Speaker 1: think it was Jeremiah. No, actually they think it was
Speaker 1: his no count uncle Raymond Barry. Raymond Barry, that bastard.
Speaker 1: So if that's true, shame on you, Raymond. If it's
Speaker 1: not true, what a what a an indictment of Raymond Well.
Speaker 1: Mary Anne wrote to her brother, who was a noted
Speaker 1: Irish painter and Royal academician Professor James Barry for help.
Speaker 1: She was hoping that he would fund Margaret's education so
Speaker 1: that Margaret could become a teacher. Initially the guy refused,
Speaker 1: but in February of eighteen oh six he died suddenly
Speaker 1: after an illness and left a big inheritance to mary Anne,
Speaker 1: and that allowed her and Margaret to kind of live
Speaker 1: pretty reasonably comfortable. And then in eighteen o nine, mary
Speaker 1: Anne received a letter from Jeremiah, her old husband, telling
Speaker 1: her that he had quote made up his mind to
Speaker 1: forgive now and for steal in me lucky child. Look,
Speaker 1: I got one Irish accented Its hilarious. I'm sorry, um,
Speaker 1: but see this letter making up his mind to forgive.
Speaker 1: This suggests that Juliana was mary Anne's child from maybe
Speaker 1: an affair, and not a secret child of Margaret. Now.
Speaker 1: There's also no evidence at the time of Margaret displaying
Speaker 1: any indications of pregnancy. You know, she didn't. No one
Speaker 1: wrote any journal saying that she had a lot of
Speaker 1: weight gain or illness or she wasn't you know, sent
Speaker 1: away for a period of time, which that was a
Speaker 1: common cover up for pregnancies back then. Oh oh, Margaret, Well,
Speaker 1: poor lamb has a green and yellow melancholy. She's been
Speaker 1: sent to the seaside for her health for randomly about
Speaker 1: eight or nine months were a normal medical length of
Speaker 1: time for a melancholy, of course, eight or nine months,
Speaker 1: it's exactly the recovery period. Oh and I found this
Speaker 1: child while I was away. Oh my gosh, that was
Speaker 1: the goodness of my heart. I have adopted a poor
Speaker 1: farmer's child now. Mary Anne also made friends with a
Speaker 1: number of her brother, Professor James Berry's artist friends, and
Speaker 1: that really came in handy because Margaret was having trouble
Speaker 1: finding work as a tutor, and plus she really just
Speaker 1: wanted to be a doctor. She didn't want to be
Speaker 1: a teacher, but it was illegal for women to go
Speaker 1: to medical school in Britain at the time. So Margaret
Speaker 1: and Mary Anne along with their liberal minded friends Daniel
Speaker 1: Reardon who is the family solicitor, Dr Edward Fryer who
Speaker 1: was Margaret's personal tutor, and General Francisco de Miranda, a
Speaker 1: Venezuelan revolutionary living in London. What a cast of characters,
Speaker 1: I know. I was like James Barry's friends were cool.
Speaker 1: This was some interesting Morgan's board. Well, they put their
Speaker 1: heads together and they came up with an audacious plan.
Speaker 1: If Margaret couldn't be a woman and be a doctor,
Speaker 1: then she would become a he at least for the
Speaker 1: length of medical school. And then General Miranda promised Margaret
Speaker 1: a job in Venezuela as a doctor because he was
Speaker 1: all about women's education, women's suffrage and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So he's like a woman doctor. Sounds great to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the problem is, right, So this
Speaker 1: would be a three year disguise as Margaret went through
Speaker 1: medical school, and it had to be carefully done. This
Speaker 1: is like reverse Bosom Buddies. They had to dress up
Speaker 1: as women to go to that our all girls school.
Speaker 1: That's right. A common plot. I feel like that was
Speaker 1: there was some dumb movie where they were dressed as
Speaker 1: women for no reason. I was like that, that's not
Speaker 1: a thing anymore. Why are you doing it? No bosom Buddies.
Speaker 1: It was. It was apartment complex that they had to
Speaker 1: move into that was women only, so they had to
Speaker 1: dress up as women to pool all their neighbors. I
Speaker 1: guess not a show I watched Tom Hanks. Oh, it
Speaker 1: was like where he started I think take it on
Speaker 1: back Tom Hanks anyway. So they chose the name James
Speaker 1: Berry for Margaret since her uncle was dead and wasn't
Speaker 1: using it anymore. Plus the fact that it was a
Speaker 1: known name would probably open some doors for her. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever heard, but in a lot
Speaker 1: of higher education, who you were born from can really
Speaker 1: help you out. They chose Edinburgh University because they were
Speaker 1: unknown in Scotland. No one was going to be like,
Speaker 1: you're looking an awful lot like Margaret. Then, on November
Speaker 1: eighteen o nine, Mary Anne Bulkeley and her nephew James
Speaker 1: Berry boarded a ship for Edinburgh, and Margaret Bulkeley was
Speaker 1: no more. James even wrote to the solicitor, Daniel Reardon quote,
Speaker 1: it was very useful for miss is Bulkeley, my aunt,
Speaker 1: to have a gentleman to take care of her on
Speaker 1: board the ship, and to have one in a strange country. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is actually the letter that pretty much shed light
Speaker 1: on James Berry's early life, on his life as Margaret
Speaker 1: Ann Bulkeley, because even though it was signed he signed
Speaker 1: at James Berry, Daniel reared in I guess in like
Speaker 1: filing it away. He wrote the name miss Bulkeley on
Speaker 1: the outside of the envelope. So that's the discovery that
Speaker 1: the biographers Michael Duprees and Jeremy Dronfield found in their
Speaker 1: research to be like, oh, the nephew James Barry is
Speaker 1: the same as the daughter Margaret Anne one and the
Speaker 1: same Miss Bokeley is James Berry. So Janie Rearden not
Speaker 1: exactly keeping up appearances by writing Miss Bulkeley on this Oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, Berry's actually you gave it away, Daniel,
Speaker 1: although it turned out to be very useful for us
Speaker 1: historically so well. James Berry at this point also started
Speaker 1: to fudge his birthdate. Different sources say that James's birthdate
Speaker 1: was in seventeen ninety two or seventeen nine five, because
Speaker 1: he had to explain his youthful appearance. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: they're like, why is that man so pretty? He got
Speaker 1: such curly hair and the hairless face. It was, you know.
Speaker 1: Once he got to Edinburgh, the University Senate decided that
Speaker 1: James Barry must be hiding something and they denied his admission.
Speaker 1: He had this short stature and a high pitched voice,
Speaker 1: no facial hair, delicate features. The all points the one
Speaker 1: thing James body is no man, he's actually boy. James
Speaker 1: wipes some sweat away. He's like, yeah, that's me, just
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old prodigy, young boy, that's what's wrong
Speaker 1: with me. Unfortunately, James Berry had a friend named David
Speaker 1: Stewart Erskine, who is the eleventh Earl of Buchan, and
Speaker 1: he persuaded them to let James into the school. So
Speaker 1: in eighteen twelve James qualified as a doctor. He moved
Speaker 1: to London a year later past the surgeon's exam, and
Speaker 1: now it's time for James to get a job as
Speaker 1: a full doctor doctor Jade Barry. But the job that
Speaker 1: General Miranda had promised Margaret Bulkeley was impossible. Now Miranda's
Speaker 1: revolution and Venezuela had failed and he had been captured
Speaker 1: and imprisoned in eighteen twelve. Randa, you gotta keep up
Speaker 1: your end of the bargain here. Sorry, I try. You
Speaker 1: promised me you would win your revolution. What had happened?
Speaker 1: I thought I would. Turns out they're kind of hard
Speaker 1: to do. So James Barry needed a new plan. Now,
Speaker 1: Britain had quite a few wars going on at this point,
Speaker 1: and they were actively seeking doctors in the British Army,
Speaker 1: so James Barry joined up as a hospital assistant. By
Speaker 1: eighteen fifteen he was an assistant surgeon on par with
Speaker 1: a lieutenant, and he received a posting to Cape Town,
Speaker 1: South Africa, and Lord Buchan once again smooth the way
Speaker 1: for James by providing a letter of introduction to the
Speaker 1: colonies governor, Lord Charles Somerset. But James Barry won a
Speaker 1: firm place in Lord Charles Somerset's heart. When Somerset's daughter
Speaker 1: fell ill right after Barry had arrived in Cape Town,
Speaker 1: Barry took care of her and she made a complete recovery,
Speaker 1: and this made Lord Charles Somerset so grateful that he
Speaker 1: promoted James Barry to his personal physician. Barry immediately made
Speaker 1: a reputation for himself. He was very interested in the
Speaker 1: relatively new field of preventative medicine, so he used to
Speaker 1: throw all these improvements to like water and santation systems
Speaker 1: and the living quarters of enslaved people or prisoners or
Speaker 1: the mentally ill. And he had a sanctuary setup for
Speaker 1: people with leprosy. He was like, maybe the people with
Speaker 1: the infectious disease shouldn't live in the same place as
Speaker 1: just the thought and maybe what if we put other
Speaker 1: people in places that weren't crawling with diseases and and
Speaker 1: just gave him a nice bed to sleep, and so
Speaker 1: they didn't show up sick to work the next day,
Speaker 1: they might live. One article described it as um as
Speaker 1: having an appreciation of health care as well as sick care.
Speaker 1: And I really liked that distinction. Yeah. Now. An article
Speaker 1: in new scientists dot com says that his patients came
Speaker 1: from all walks of life, and they were treated with
Speaker 1: equal kindness and expertise like. Women especially found him ideal,
Speaker 1: They said, quote a person of breeding who showed consideration
Speaker 1: to his patients and who understood the complaints of women.
Speaker 1: That's what a woman sounds like to me, Just so
Speaker 1: you know, that's my impression. That's uh yeah, sorry, all
Speaker 1: women sound like that to me. And I have to
Speaker 1: have a conversation after this so you can hear my
Speaker 1: voice more often. Yeah, there's one thing I never hear,
Speaker 1: it's your voice. Uh. James Berry also instituted regular checks
Speaker 1: on the soldiers and their medical facilities. He improved hygiene
Speaker 1: and living conditions for the true quote in those days,
Speaker 1: when the enlisted soldier was treated with little respect, poorly fed,
Speaker 1: and suffered harsh discipline. Alcoholism and venereal disease were rice,
Speaker 1: and families who accompanied soldiers were treated almost on par
Speaker 1: with prostitutes and other camp followers. Right, So James is
Speaker 1: just like is like this is bullshit. It's like coming in,
Speaker 1: like what the funk are y'all doing? Stop treating people
Speaker 1: like ass and they will stop getting as sick as ass.
Speaker 1: Pretty that's you put. You took the words right out
Speaker 1: of James Berry. That James Berry might have been a
Speaker 1: little short. He often wore shoes with three inch soules
Speaker 1: so he could stand a little taller. But he was
Speaker 1: considered very handsome in his day. He had curly red
Speaker 1: hair and a winning smile when he felt like being charming,
Speaker 1: and he was also a strict vegetarian and teetotaler. He
Speaker 1: took a goat with him everywhere he went, and he
Speaker 1: only drank goat's milk, So so he's got a personal
Speaker 1: drink dispenser at all times. It's like, how don't really
Speaker 1: yeah a little soda stream today, I'm going to get
Speaker 1: goat's milk. Baja blast God. As we've said, James Barry
Speaker 1: did have a very quick temper. He could be very
Speaker 1: overbearing and rude. I mean, you know, we laughed about
Speaker 1: him coming and be like, what the funk are y'all doing?
Speaker 1: But that is kind of the vibe that you get
Speaker 1: from the research. But he could also be tender and
Speaker 1: kind and quite flirtatious with the lady. In fact, he
Speaker 1: behaved scandalously enough with one lady that her close friend,
Speaker 1: Captain Chloete, challenged Barry to a duel with pistols. Dah,
Speaker 1: you'll speak to my woman friend that way. I was like,
Speaker 1: what did he do? Now? This was already illegal at
Speaker 1: the time in the British Army, so they had to
Speaker 1: duel in secret. Some sources say that Barry had better
Speaker 1: aim and took the peek off the captain's hat, and
Speaker 1: others say that Barry received a flesh wound but simply
Speaker 1: retired to his quarters and took care of the wound
Speaker 1: him self, and then showed up a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: acting like nothing had happened. Either way, Barry and the
Speaker 1: captain became great friends for the rest of James Berry's
Speaker 1: lin So I guess it was one of those situations
Speaker 1: like we just got to fight it out and now
Speaker 1: we're cool, cool, get that out of the way, like
Speaker 1: just duel already, am I right now? All right? Get
Speaker 1: to get a dueling ground already. Well. Then a round twenty,
Speaker 1: Dr Barry was asked to attend to a woman named
Speaker 1: Mrs Munnick, and she was having trouble delivering a baby.
Speaker 1: Dr Barry decided to perform an emergency C section, and
Speaker 1: at this point five percent of the time that meant
Speaker 1: the mother would die. But James Barry went for it,
Speaker 1: and he became the first European doctor to perform a
Speaker 1: successful C section in the British Empire, where both the
Speaker 1: mother and the baby lived. Now it needs all those
Speaker 1: little qualifiers because it becomes clear that indigenous Africans managed
Speaker 1: successful C section operations frequently actually. According to the National
Speaker 1: Institute of Health, a British traveler named Robert Falcon witnessed
Speaker 1: a c section in Uganda in eighteen seventy nine and
Speaker 1: described the treatment, which involved banana wine to semi intoxicate
Speaker 1: and therefore like anesthetize the mother, and then he made
Speaker 1: the incision and used a paste made from roots to
Speaker 1: dress it and encourage healing. The ni h Rites quote
Speaker 1: the patient recovered well, and Falcon concluded that this technique
Speaker 1: was well developed and had clearly been employed for a
Speaker 1: long time. Similar reports come from Rwanda, where botanical preparations
Speaker 1: were also used to anesthetize the patient and promote wound healing.
Speaker 1: So you see, it's not the first C section ever.
Speaker 1: Obviously this was happening in Africa, Uh, you know, on
Speaker 1: a level that white people didn't want to admit or
Speaker 1: be familiar with. But it was the first one performed
Speaker 1: by European doctors. That's still pretty impressive. Yeah, take a win, James.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you see memes or very short articles about James
Speaker 1: Berry that say he performed the first successful C section period.
Speaker 1: Mrs Munnick and her husband Thomas were so grateful that
Speaker 1: they asked Barry to be the godfather of their new infant,
Speaker 1: and they named him James Berry Munnick. And this name
Speaker 1: was passed down through generations until James Berry Munnick Hurtzog,
Speaker 1: who was South Africa's Prime Minister in nineteen Pretty cool,
Speaker 1: what a legacy. So James Berry's crushing in South Africa.
Speaker 1: In fact, by eighteen two, Lord Charles Somerset promoted him
Speaker 1: to Colonial Medical Inspector which was a huge jump in
Speaker 1: rank and responsibility. That same year, Barry introduced smallpox vaccination
Speaker 1: to the Cape, twenty years before it was introduced in England.
Speaker 1: He was made a member of the Vaccine Institute and
Speaker 1: an inspector for the Leprosy Institute. US Medicine dot Com
Speaker 1: writes quote Dr Barry was without question a pioneer in
Speaker 1: those fields we now call health promotion and preventive medicine.
Speaker 1: The fact that he received so little record mission for
Speaker 1: extending the frontiers of military medicine seems mainly due to
Speaker 1: his ability to upset the establishment with monotonous regularity. Plus
Speaker 1: Barry's close friendship with Lord Charles Somerset started the rumor
Speaker 1: mill turning, and we'll hear more about that right after
Speaker 1: this commercial break. Welcome back to the show, y'all. So,
Speaker 1: James Barry, as we said, could be extremely tactless and
Speaker 1: rude when he was crusading for better conditions for soldiers
Speaker 1: in the sick and he would clash with his superiors
Speaker 1: all the time. But Lord Charles Somerset always managed to
Speaker 1: smooth things over and protect James for many repercussions. In
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty four, their close friendship was used against them
Speaker 1: because a poster suddenly appeared, prominently displayed where the whole
Speaker 1: town could see it, declaring that Lord Charles Somerset had
Speaker 1: ben seen buggering Dr James Berry. And even though this
Speaker 1: poster was torn down real quick, the rumors spread like
Speaker 1: wildfire like they do, and did not die. In fact,
Speaker 1: it actually turned into a major scandal. You know, once
Speaker 1: you post a poster, it's there forever. It's like the Internet,
Speaker 1: you know, people see it. It ain't going away. Now.
Speaker 1: Here's where scholars are not a hundred percent sure the facts.
Speaker 1: Some say that Lord Somerset knew James's secret and that
Speaker 1: they did have a physical affair, and maybe we're even
Speaker 1: in love. But if that's the case, Somerset really proved
Speaker 1: himself to be a solid gold friend because we already
Speaker 1: know that it was illegal to be gay at this
Speaker 1: time in Britain or anywhere in the British Empire. Now,
Speaker 1: as a lord and governor, it's not super likely that
Speaker 1: Charles Somerset would have faced the harshest punishments like transportation, imprisonment,
Speaker 1: or death. But at the very least, if he could
Speaker 1: not beat these accusations, Somerset would be socially ruined, his
Speaker 1: career in tatters. He would be forced to like laylow
Speaker 1: somewhere in shame and discomfort. So consequences like that that
Speaker 1: could lead any friends to betray another, Right, it would
Speaker 1: be very easy for him to be like, I'm not gay,
Speaker 1: because that's not a man, you know, like very quick
Speaker 1: to solve that problem for himself. But if he did
Speaker 1: know that James was really a woman, he never said
Speaker 1: a word. So some historians do believe that Somerset had
Speaker 1: no idea and they really just had a close personal
Speaker 1: friendship and no one found out anything until James Barry
Speaker 1: died and his body was inspected. Interesting, so we don't
Speaker 1: really know how much romance was really going on between
Speaker 1: these two. Could they have been doing it in such
Speaker 1: a way that Somerset didn't know well that My speculation
Speaker 1: station is that Somerset had a barongier of the long
Speaker 1: ass situation. Y'all haven't heard that episode. You're going to
Speaker 1: be very confused by this reference. Maybe James was into
Speaker 1: it and he's like, all right, we can do this,
Speaker 1: and he's he's like, let me get let me get
Speaker 1: back there. Wow, you've got a really long assholes in
Speaker 1: the back and goes all the way to up front
Speaker 1: a guy. This was an actual poem written way back
Speaker 1: in the day medieval times, where a guy a night,
Speaker 1: a woman dressed as a night beat him and flashed
Speaker 1: her ass at him. She made him kiss her as
Speaker 1: she made him kiss her ass, and he thought then
Speaker 1: instead of there being a volva there, it was just
Speaker 1: a very long ass crack. He simply could not get
Speaker 1: into his brain that this could be a lady. So
Speaker 1: he was like, this guy must just have our real
Speaker 1: insane asshole station Somerset had the same situation as a
Speaker 1: long asshole. Amazing. Well, a government investigation was launched to
Speaker 1: examine the truth of these accusations. You know, a poster
Speaker 1: goes up and we got to get the government and
Speaker 1: oh yeah, well either there's some gay sex going on
Speaker 1: which is illegal, or somebody saying something against the governor,
Speaker 1: which is also not cool. So yeah, now there's a
Speaker 1: sub stack ran by a transit storian, David Obermeyer notes
Speaker 1: on a Gentleman dot com which is all about James Berry,
Speaker 1: and it says that this was the work of a
Speaker 1: guy named William Edwards, an ex solicitor who already didn't
Speaker 1: like Lord Charles Somerset, and he'd been accusing his government
Speaker 1: of corruption for years, mostly because he thought Somerset showed
Speaker 1: too much preference and lenience to his friends, including James Berry.
Speaker 1: This guy's already saying James Berry and Somerset are too close,
Speaker 1: and I don't like the way it's shaken out. And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, maybe they're buggering each other. Right, I
Speaker 1: know how to get some action around by accusations. I'll
Speaker 1: say this now. Edwards friend, George Greeg was also accused
Speaker 1: of putting up the poster. They did. It's a two
Speaker 1: man job to put up a poster. He was the
Speaker 1: guy who ran a local paper that Somerset had actually
Speaker 1: been trying to shut down because summer Set wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: a fan of freedom of the press. So Edwards and
Speaker 1: Greek both accused of this kind of slander, and they
Speaker 1: were tried and convicted of false accusations, and Edwards was transported.
Speaker 1: He got shipped out of the country off somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And now, as Obermeyer points out, we have no record
Speaker 1: of how Somerset and James felt about this, except for
Speaker 1: an account that James uncharacteristically quote burst into angry tears
Speaker 1: when he was told about the poster. Other than that
Speaker 1: we got nothing, we don't really know exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: how they felt about this. Was this something that was
Speaker 1: accurate or was it just some horrible things some mean
Speaker 1: person said. But the scandal is part of the reason
Speaker 1: that Lord Charles Somerset left Cape Colony in eighty six
Speaker 1: after his term as governor ended. And then also James
Speaker 1: Barry was given a new posting in Mauritius, probably related
Speaker 1: to this. Yeah, so they each had to leave Cape
Speaker 1: Town and each other with these accusations, even though they
Speaker 1: were found false. And David Obermeyer in his article Infamy
Speaker 1: and Infidelity has a lot of interesting research about how
Speaker 1: this scandal kind of happened at a time when accusations
Speaker 1: of sodomy we're tied up with class conflict and government corruption.
Speaker 1: So kind of we just said, William was like, I'm
Speaker 1: yelling about government corruption and nobody cares. I know, I'll
Speaker 1: make a real crazy something they have to look into.
Speaker 1: And that's because there was a case in eighteen eleven
Speaker 1: where this bishop and member of parliament his name is
Speaker 1: Percy Joscelyn was accused of sexually assaulting a coachman named
Speaker 1: James Byrne. So just some guy, you know, a poor
Speaker 1: man who was driving this coach and Percy uses his
Speaker 1: influence to completely escape punishment. He got all these wealthy
Speaker 1: man all his friends to come to court and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: my friend Percy wouldn't ever, he's a upstanding gentleman, an MP.
Speaker 1: Where is this coachman? What a poor man from nowhere?
Speaker 1: No one knows him. Why would you like take his
Speaker 1: word over this gentleman's word? So no problem. He everything
Speaker 1: got dismissed. But then Percy doubled down and sued Burned
Speaker 1: for libel, just for accusing him in the first place. Now,
Speaker 1: eventually Burne was forced to sign a statement saying that
Speaker 1: he had lied about being sexually assaulted by Percy, and
Speaker 1: he was publicly flogged and nearly die well. Ten years later,
Speaker 1: Percy Jocelyn Is arrested again for having sex with a
Speaker 1: soldier in a tavern, and everybody realized, oh ship, James
Speaker 1: Byrne was telling the truth of all time. So this whole,
Speaker 1: this whole situation kind of made this case a symbol
Speaker 1: of class conflict Overmyer writes quote. What better way to
Speaker 1: characterize the aristocracy's cruelty and predatory intent towards the working
Speaker 1: class than a lord who had not only gotten away
Speaker 1: with sexually assaulting a working class man, but managed to
Speaker 1: get the man beaten to within an inch of his
Speaker 1: life for daring to speak up at all. So he's
Speaker 1: basically saying that William and George and whoever was involved
Speaker 1: with this poster, they knew that when they accused Barry
Speaker 1: and Somerset of sodomy that would sort of wrap all
Speaker 1: in all their complaints about government overreach and rules of
Speaker 1: law for one class versus another. And that also they
Speaker 1: kind of knew that James Berry, who at this point
Speaker 1: in his life should have been respectably married with kids,
Speaker 1: you know, according to the grand traditions of society, would
Speaker 1: suffer more from these accusations than Lord Charles Somerset because
Speaker 1: he's a social nonconformist already, so everybody is very willing
Speaker 1: to believe anything weird you want to say about him.
Speaker 1: In fact, a lot of the whispers were, oh, Lord
Speaker 1: Charles Somerset was seen with James Berry's wife, Dr Berry's wife,
Speaker 1: and since he didn't have a wife, everybody knew what
Speaker 1: that meant, and they would say, Oh, he's not the
Speaker 1: kind to ever have a wife, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It was like became very sly crazy shit about James Berry,
Speaker 1: which would have worked for William because he didn't like
Speaker 1: James Burry. So he's like, great, I want this guy
Speaker 1: to be really uncomfortable. David Oberbier concludes the article quote.
Speaker 1: Although the Somerset and Barry sodomy scandal has been given
Speaker 1: little attention by Barry's biographers, it stands at an interesting
Speaker 1: intersection of social tensions around governmental oversight, social reform, and
Speaker 1: the disruptive power of non normative sex, both at home
Speaker 1: in Britain and abroad. Damn. So, ultimately it all came
Speaker 1: down to I got other things I want to get
Speaker 1: taken care of, so let me put this flashy poster
Speaker 1: up to get everyone's attention, right, Like I even said,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, Lord Charles Somerset is a lord. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a governor, and what's gonna happen. You know, he's
Speaker 1: just gonna pay people off or something like. They don't.
Speaker 1: That don't that's the point. They don't suffer in the
Speaker 1: same way as the rest of us. But at this time,
Speaker 1: after this this Percy Jocelyn case, it did become more
Speaker 1: common to accuse lords of sodomy. And I think that's
Speaker 1: why it was like, Oh, you care about this, so
Speaker 1: that's what we'll do in that investigation. Maybe you'll uncoverag
Speaker 1: some other bullshit, or at least it will be in
Speaker 1: the papers and we can ruin this guy's reputation. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting. I mean, you know, if Charles Somerset
Speaker 1: is just handing out jobs to his friends, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been thinking, like, James Barry had a lot of
Speaker 1: people looking out for him and given him privileges that
Speaker 1: other people might not have had. And fortunately he turned
Speaker 1: out to be an amazing person who changed the world
Speaker 1: for the better. But if he had not, he'd just
Speaker 1: be some other twerp who got you know, a bunch
Speaker 1: of handouts, you know, from from rich family members and friends.
Speaker 1: Uh and somebody, you know, he took someone's slot at
Speaker 1: that school. Well, that's always the problem with nepotism is
Speaker 1: that you're like, well, you have to hope that the
Speaker 1: person is good, and that's not always true because part
Speaker 1: of the problem with this is that there was this
Speaker 1: whole kerfuffle where James Barry is like, all these people
Speaker 1: are coming to South Africa and opening pharmaceutical like apothecaries
Speaker 1: and stuff, and they're selling medicine, but the medicine is
Speaker 1: not real medicine, it's snake oil. So he's like, I
Speaker 1: want to be the one who licensed all the apothecaries
Speaker 1: in Cape Town. And so people are like, oh, James
Speaker 1: Berry's just power hungry. He's controlling, you know, But he
Speaker 1: actually had a really good reason for that, like he's like,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that this is legit what
Speaker 1: you're selling to these people, um and so. But somebody
Speaker 1: wanted their friends to have the job, so he was
Speaker 1: always clashing with someone else who's wanted their friend to
Speaker 1: come in and James was like no, and his friend
Speaker 1: is protecting him, on and on. So it's just it
Speaker 1: was like two shitty nepotisms at the same Well. Despite
Speaker 1: Charles Somerset and James Berry parting ways after these accusations
Speaker 1: and having to go take new jobs, everything that went down,
Speaker 1: their friendship endeared. In fact, when James found out that
Speaker 1: Charles Somerset had fallen seriously ill in eighty nine, James
Speaker 1: went a wall to return to England and take care
Speaker 1: of his friend, and he remained there until Somerset died
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty one, and when he was asked why
Speaker 1: he left his post, James Barry apparently said, quote, I
Speaker 1: was fed up with my hair and wanted a proper haircut,
Speaker 1: which to which his superior Director General, Sir James McGregor
Speaker 1: reportedly replied, quote it would seem, sir, that your audacity
Speaker 1: is equal to the prodigious growth of your hair. I
Speaker 1: love these wordy eighteenth century Yeah. But you know, despite
Speaker 1: just dipping to go take care of his friend, James
Speaker 1: Barry was welcomed back into the army anyway, and he
Speaker 1: went off to Jamaica and then St. Helena, and in St.
Speaker 1: Helena his temper reared its ugly head again and James
Speaker 1: was court martialed and tried for quote conduct unbecoming the
Speaker 1: character of an officer and a gentleman. What in the
Speaker 1: world he pulls off his hat and it's like, I
Speaker 1: am no gentleman. Well, there's no word on what this
Speaker 1: behavior was. But he was found not guilty and he
Speaker 1: was honorably acquitted, so you know, probably the same deal.
Speaker 1: He probably just piste off the wrong guy again with
Speaker 1: some sharp words. Yeah. He was on the Greek island
Speaker 1: of Courtfu when the Crimean War broke out in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, and Barry's hospital took wounded soldiers who had
Speaker 1: managed to survive the insanely bad conditions at the medical
Speaker 1: hospital in Scutari in istanbul As. The Scutari hospital had
Speaker 1: a lot of the features of military hospitals that Barry
Speaker 1: objected most strenuously to. No hygiene, poor sanitation, no equipment
Speaker 1: to process food for the patients, overworked staff, and first
Speaker 1: of all official indifferent. They're kind of like, do what
Speaker 1: you gotta do. I don't care that man's bleeding. Pack
Speaker 1: some mud in there and call it a day and
Speaker 1: put him next to the healthy guy exactly. And I'm
Speaker 1: busy right now. Just slices slices arm off and call
Speaker 1: it a day. Uh. New policy in the hospital. All
Speaker 1: the sick patients should make out with the staff that
Speaker 1: that'll that'll work out great. We need to give them
Speaker 1: more antibodies through saliva. It's it will work out fine
Speaker 1: well with policies like that. Obviously, mass infections were common
Speaker 1: and usually fatal. US Medicine dot Com writes quote. Dr
Speaker 1: Barry received in all, four hundred and sixty two casualties
Speaker 1: from Scutari, and there were only seventeen debts in his hospital. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the casualties that were fit enough to travel to Corfu
Speaker 1: were not as seriously wounded as those confined to Scutari,
Speaker 1: but it is still a remarkable statistic for its day.
Speaker 1: Good job. Just is a great doctor, James Barry crushing it.
Speaker 1: Another person objected strenuously to the conditions of soldiers in
Speaker 1: Crimean military hospitals, and her name was Florence Nightingale. Now
Speaker 1: she gained her fame by showing up in Scutari with
Speaker 1: a bunch of nurses. She wrote please to the government,
Speaker 1: being like, you don't understand these dreadful conditions, and then
Speaker 1: she helped transform the hospital into a much cleaner one
Speaker 1: with proper sanitation, more available medicines, better diet, be ter hygiene.
Speaker 1: That rate sharply dropped. That's great. I have nothing negative
Speaker 1: to say about Florence Nighton That's right. She's a great
Speaker 1: historical hero. Now you think, with so much in common
Speaker 1: that Florence Nightingale and James Berry would get along gangbusters.
Speaker 1: But let us assure you they did not. No, they
Speaker 1: met in eighteen fifty seven when Dr Barry's friend Fitzroy Somerset,
Speaker 1: who's Lord Charles Somerset's brother, who was also now called
Speaker 1: Lord Raglan, and yes, for the fashion forward among us,
Speaker 1: the Raglan sleeve is named for him. Oh well, there
Speaker 1: you go. Well, Lord Raglin invited Barry to Crimea to
Speaker 1: hang out. Battlefield seems like a weird place for a
Speaker 1: friendly visit, but if you heard our recent episode about
Speaker 1: Lady Seymour Worseley, you'll know that battlefield tourism was actually
Speaker 1: a favorite pastime with the aristocracy. They love to see
Speaker 1: how it all went down. I could never die now.
Speaker 1: James Barry met Florence Nightingale on a visit to the
Speaker 1: proved Scutari Hospital, and there's no details of this argument
Speaker 1: recorded anywhere, but reports say that they quote disliked each
Speaker 1: other on site way in the future. When Florence Nightingale
Speaker 1: heard about James Barry's death, she called him, quote the
Speaker 1: most hardened creature that I have ever met in my life. Now.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for Barry, Florence Nightingale was also kind of a
Speaker 1: big deal at this point in her life. She had
Speaker 1: revolutionized the idea of nursing and advocated for better conditions
Speaker 1: and hospitals that led to fewer deaths from infection and disease.
Speaker 1: She also had a lot of influence with the War Office,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen fifty seven she may have been the
Speaker 1: one to instigate a transfer for Dr Barry to Canadian
Speaker 1: Command in Montreal as Inspected General of Hospitals at the
Speaker 1: rank of Major General and US Medicine writes that quote.
Speaker 1: In this way, she ensured that he never became Director
Speaker 1: General or received the traditional knighthood that went with the
Speaker 1: top job. So one of those like, oh, it's like
Speaker 1: when um once transferred Captain Holts. You know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a promotion for you, and it totally screws
Speaker 1: your career. That's right, It's very much like that sounds
Speaker 1: really good, but actually wow, So a very onunch Holt
Speaker 1: rivalry between these two. I hope they had similar insults
Speaker 1: and forth, you grackle and who wouldn't want to see
Speaker 1: a man fight a crocodile? Oh, Florence Nightingale, But if
Speaker 1: you're here, who's guarding hades? Now? Even though Barry is
Speaker 1: sixty years old by now and in failing health, he
Speaker 1: still grabbed this Canadian command job with his usual fervor.
Speaker 1: He campaigned for and got a better diet for soldiers.
Speaker 1: He improved drainage and sewerage in the barracks, and he
Speaker 1: replaced straw palette with hair mattresses and hair and feather pillows. Listen,
Speaker 1: I said, hair mattress, excuse me? But then I was like,
Speaker 1: I guess feathers isn't any weirders? Sounds of whose hair
Speaker 1: is it? What kind of hair? The animal hair, human hair?
Speaker 1: I don't know if I want to know, but I
Speaker 1: guess it was better than whatever the straw they were
Speaker 1: sleeping on. James Barry also went against opposition from every
Speaker 1: level of the army to institute separate living quarters for
Speaker 1: married soldiers. Before Barry, married soldiers and their wives lived
Speaker 1: with single soldiers twenty two a room, and they just
Speaker 1: had a thin sheet sort of dividing them from all
Speaker 1: the fellas. So imagine trying to get get close in
Speaker 1: those conditions. Not great US Medicine says that Barry thought
Speaker 1: this led to the dehumanizing of families and contributed to
Speaker 1: alcoholism and venereal disease. So he created separate accommodations for them,
Speaker 1: and he clamped down on alcohol use. Now we are
Speaker 1: know James Barry is a teetotaler, so he's probably like
Speaker 1: alcohol sucks anyway, But US Medicine writes quote, alcohol was
Speaker 1: universally consumed in huge quantities. It was seen as an
Speaker 1: essential part of military life, despite the fact that it
Speaker 1: was the single greatest contributor to accidental deaths at the time.
Speaker 1: Many a soldier died from hypothermia while sleeping in a
Speaker 1: drunken stupor. So it does seem like another thing if
Speaker 1: you're like, I'm here to keep people alive. That's my
Speaker 1: whole point. Uh, here's a quick one. Let's not make
Speaker 1: out on the mouth without somebody who is leprosy and
Speaker 1: also stopped drinking. Now, the same year that Barry was
Speaker 1: posted to Canada, which is eighteen fifty seven, Florence Nightingale's
Speaker 1: Royal Commission on Army Health was formed, and this was
Speaker 1: intended to improve and observe conditions in military hospitals scientific
Speaker 1: American Rights quote. After ten years of sanitary reform, in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three, Nightingale reported that mortality among the soldiers
Speaker 1: in India had decline from sixty nine to eighteen per
Speaker 1: one thousand. Nice, that's a huge drop. But as US
Speaker 1: Medicine writes quote, even though it was widely known that
Speaker 1: doctor James Barry was responsible for devising and initiating many
Speaker 1: of the reforms the Royal Commission endorsed, Florence Nightingale appears
Speaker 1: to have been instrumental in ensuring that he never received
Speaker 1: more than a passing recognition. He paid dearly for their
Speaker 1: spat in the crimean war. Damn Wow, Florence Nightingale holds
Speaker 1: a grood. Who would have thought that she's the villain
Speaker 1: of the week in my opinion? Well, also, what did
Speaker 1: James Berry say? I do want to know? I wish
Speaker 1: I could be there. That's one of those things. I'm like,
Speaker 1: if I could be the fly on the wall, that
Speaker 1: would be such a great conversation to hear, because you know,
Speaker 1: he was like, you aren't doing enough for something. You know,
Speaker 1: he was like, whatever it was, it cut deep. Now.
Speaker 1: There's something interesting about Florence nighting Else that she didn't
Speaker 1: not respect women very much, herself being one and you know,
Speaker 1: feeling that there was a place for women in medicine.
Speaker 1: She actually didn't really have a lot of use for women.
Speaker 1: She didn't like women. She preferred men a lot. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, is that weird? Is there something weird with
Speaker 1: like did she kind of like unconsciously be like that's
Speaker 1: a lady and I don't trust her. I don't know,
Speaker 1: or like you said, James Barry is just a bit
Speaker 1: of a jerk. Well, in eighteen fifty nine, Dr Barry
Speaker 1: became ill with pneumonia and he was sent home to England.
Speaker 1: Later that year, he was placed on half pay and
Speaker 1: forced to retire despite his strenuous objections. So he went
Speaker 1: on home to London with only his servants and his
Speaker 1: dog for company. But during a very hot month in
Speaker 1: the summertime, Dr Barry contracted dysentery and on July eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, Dr James Berry died at seventy years old. Now,
Speaker 1: for most people that would be the end of the story,
Speaker 1: but not Dr Barry. His story was basically just beginning.
Speaker 1: So we'll find out more about of that right after
Speaker 1: these words welcome back. After James Berry's body was discovered,
Speaker 1: his usual doctor, Major McKinnon was called in to declare
Speaker 1: James debt. Dr McKinnon had known James Berry for years,
Speaker 1: so he didn't even bother to examine his body. He
Speaker 1: just wrote up a death certificate, and a day later,
Speaker 1: an unnamed nobleman's valet arrived to take away Barry's dog
Speaker 1: and his personal papers, and he gave his servants some
Speaker 1: money to return to Jamaica. That was that boring death stories.
Speaker 1: But then a char woman was brought in to prepare
Speaker 1: the body for burial, and many sources say there's no
Speaker 1: clear indication of who this was, although US Medicine calls
Speaker 1: her Sophia Bishop. She stripped the body to wash it
Speaker 1: and redress it in burial clothes, as was her job,
Speaker 1: but only to discover to her amazement that genitally speaking,
Speaker 1: Dr Barry was a woman. What Sophia even suspected that
Speaker 1: James Barry had been a mother, given that he had
Speaker 1: some stretch marks on his stomach. As we had mentioned
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the episode, that secret baby Juliana
Speaker 1: that might have been his. Now, apparently Sophia was having
Speaker 1: trouble getting paid for her funeral services, so she marched
Speaker 1: right to Dr McKinnon, and she demanded that he pay
Speaker 1: her right then and there, or she would go straight
Speaker 1: to the press. Not long after, Dr McKinnon received a
Speaker 1: letter from the General Register Office asking him to verify
Speaker 1: her claims right there, like, we got a death certificate
Speaker 1: here that says a guy died, but this lady saying
Speaker 1: a lady died. What's going on now? Dr McKinnon wrote
Speaker 1: in response that he had known Dr Barry for years.
Speaker 1: He attended him as a physician. He never suspected a
Speaker 1: thing about his gender, one way or the other, and
Speaker 1: he continued quote On one occasion after Dr Barry's death,
Speaker 1: I was sent for to the office of Sir Charles
Speaker 1: at Gregor, and there the woman who performed the last
Speaker 1: offices for doctor Barry was waiting to speak to me.
Speaker 1: She wished to obtain some perquisites of her employment, which
Speaker 1: the lady who kept the lodging house in which Dr
Speaker 1: Barry died had refused to give her. Amongst other things,
Speaker 1: she said Dr Barry was a female, and that I
Speaker 1: was a pretty doctor not to know this, and that
Speaker 1: she would not like to be attended by me. She
Speaker 1: then said that she had examined the body and that
Speaker 1: it was a perfect female, and farther that there were
Speaker 1: marks of her having a child. When very young. I
Speaker 1: then inquired, how have you formed this conclusion? The woman,
Speaker 1: pointing to the lower part of her stomach, said, from
Speaker 1: Mark's here. I am a married woman and the mother
Speaker 1: of nine children, and I ought to know. The woman
Speaker 1: seemed to me to think that she had become acquainted
Speaker 1: with a great secret and wished to be paid for
Speaker 1: keeping it. I had formed her that all doctor Barry's
Speaker 1: relatives were dead, and that it was no secret of mine,
Speaker 1: and that my own impression was that doctor Barry was
Speaker 1: a hermaphrodite. But whether doctor Barry was male female or
Speaker 1: her for died, I do not know, nor had I
Speaker 1: any purpose in making the discovery. I love this letter.
Speaker 1: This lady is so rude. I love her being like you,
Speaker 1: what a ship doctor you are? Well, you know she's
Speaker 1: trying to get paid. Somebody wasn't paying her, and you
Speaker 1: know she should get paid, I guess, but I guess
Speaker 1: they don't work out. Who does that if somebody right
Speaker 1: like has no immediate family nearby? What a weird Well.
Speaker 1: Dr McKinnon said, it ain't my job, and he refused
Speaker 1: to pay this later it ain't my secrets, and as promised,
Speaker 1: she made the story public and of course, it's spread
Speaker 1: like wildfire. Letters appeared in print from people who knew Berry,
Speaker 1: either claiming to have known all along or expressed complete
Speaker 1: disbelief our old buddy. Charles Dickens even wrote a fictitious
Speaker 1: account of James Barry's life in eighteen sixty seven in
Speaker 1: his weekly literary magazine All the Year Round. And it's
Speaker 1: in this where Dickens gave the name Black John two,
Speaker 1: Barry's servant. It's the only place know of the servant
Speaker 1: to be named generally referred to as John. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you look up this story, you might see John other places,
Speaker 1: but apparently originated with Charles's imagination. Now, this whole scandal
Speaker 1: such a kerfuffle that the British Army chose to seal
Speaker 1: Dr James Berry's records for a hundred years a little embarrassed.
Speaker 1: I guess he was buried as Dr James Berry, Inspector
Speaker 1: General of Hospitals. And it wasn't until the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: that historian Isabel Ray gained access to the army records
Speaker 1: and concluded that he was the niece of the painter
Speaker 1: James Berry. And it wasn't until sixteen that all the
Speaker 1: pieces of James's life were put together by Michael Duprez
Speaker 1: and Jeremy Dronfield. So of course the remaining questions are
Speaker 1: pretty impossible to answer without James Berry himself here to
Speaker 1: answer them. And David Obermeyer dedicates a couple of articles
Speaker 1: arguing that the insistence on James Berry having had a
Speaker 1: child and even the attribution of his full name being
Speaker 1: James Miranda Stewart Berry, which you will see a lot
Speaker 1: if you If you type in James Berry doctor, it
Speaker 1: comes up as James Miranda Berry all the time. But
Speaker 1: James Berry never used the name Miranda himself and any
Speaker 1: of his letters, he never used it. So where did
Speaker 1: Miranda come from? So David Obermeyer's argument is that that's
Speaker 1: sort of a way from modern historians or modern thinkers
Speaker 1: to underline and emphasize that this was a woman and
Speaker 1: not a man. So they really want to hammer home
Speaker 1: Miranda a female name. They really want to hammer home
Speaker 1: this kid so that you are making sure you think, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a lady in men's clothes. Um. Now, Obermeyer
Speaker 1: points out first of all that James doesn't use the
Speaker 1: names Miranda or Stewart in any of his papers, and
Speaker 1: also that The American Academy of Dermatology cites several reasons
Speaker 1: aside from pregnancy, that a person may have stretch marks
Speaker 1: on their stomach, including sudden growth, sudden gaining or losing
Speaker 1: of weight, gaining muscle mass, certain genetic can to sans.
Speaker 1: We also do know that James had a dysenterry, so
Speaker 1: it is possible that they had a lot of weight
Speaker 1: loss and that might be where that came from. There's
Speaker 1: also no real evidence that a baby ever happened. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned in the start, Julianna, the young sister, has
Speaker 1: been pretty convincingly linked to James's mother having an affair
Speaker 1: rather than James himself having a baby. But this pregnancy,
Speaker 1: whether it existed or not, is enough evidence for some
Speaker 1: that James was and wanted to be a woman. Obermeyer
Speaker 1: shares a tweet from eighteen that says, quote, they're trying
Speaker 1: to trans another woman who defied stereotypes and pretended to
Speaker 1: be a man so she could practice medicine. James Barry
Speaker 1: born Margaret Anne Bulky also gave birth to a baby,
Speaker 1: So one female, A lot of problem, a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of presuppositions in this week. For sure, it's
Speaker 1: really not fair to say that we know some transman
Speaker 1: can definitely have babies and have had babies, um, and
Speaker 1: it's weird to say that's something that might have happen,
Speaker 1: and before she chose to transition has anything to do
Speaker 1: with him. Now you know what I mean? Right? The
Speaker 1: Guardian also has an article detailing a debate that sprung
Speaker 1: up after a new novel about James Berry's life came
Speaker 1: out that only used she her pronounce for James and
Speaker 1: called him quote a heroine for our time. Novelist Celeste
Speaker 1: Ning wrote that quote many are telling you Berry himself
Speaker 1: used and wanted he him pronounce, and writer Alexandra Aran
Speaker 1: tweeted quote, he categorized himself as a man, lived as
Speaker 1: a man, died as a man, and would have preferred
Speaker 1: to be buried as a man. There's no room for interpretation.
Speaker 1: The author of the novel in question, E. J. Levy,
Speaker 1: wrote that quote in death as in life, Dr Barry
Speaker 1: and Gender's controversy, but one thing is clear. She refused
Speaker 1: facile gender categories. So do I in my novel to
Speaker 1: insist Barry as trans distorts complex history. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: Barry considered herself trans. She dressed as a man as
Speaker 1: needed to be a soldier doctor. I used she her
Speaker 1: pronouns as her biographers do, right. But some of these
Speaker 1: biographers clapped back on that because another of James's biographers,
Speaker 1: whose name is Rachel Holmes, wrote The Secret Life of
Speaker 1: Dr James Barry in two thousand two, and Rachel told
Speaker 1: The Guardian that using female pronouns was quote really quite disrespectful.
Speaker 1: As a young feminist. When I set out to write
Speaker 1: this book, which was based on PhD research, I thought
Speaker 1: I was writing a story of a woman who cross
Speaker 1: dressed in search of fame and fortune because she couldn't
Speaker 1: become a doctor wearing skirts. I was struck very quickly
Speaker 1: when I started doing research that this wasn't the case
Speaker 1: at all. In her opinion, Dr Barry had androgen insensitivity syndrome,
Speaker 1: meaning he was genetically male but had female or ambiguous genitalia.
Speaker 1: Let's sort of put Rachel Holmes in agreement with our
Speaker 1: major Dr McKinnon, who thought Barry might be right, who
Speaker 1: thought Barry might be a hermaphrodite, or we would call
Speaker 1: it intersects today. Holmes believes that today James Barry would
Speaker 1: identify as a trans man, but some are not so
Speaker 1: sure one way or the other, like one Cardiff professor
Speaker 1: and an author, Ann Heilman does think that by today's standards,
Speaker 1: James would be trans, given that he not only lived
Speaker 1: and presented as a man to the outside world, but
Speaker 1: in his private life as well. But still, she tells
Speaker 1: the Guardian quote, I don't think that Barry can be
Speaker 1: easily mapped onto contemporary trans thought, though of course there
Speaker 1: have always been trans people. The lived and felt gender
Speaker 1: identity of an eighteenth and nineteenth century person would have
Speaker 1: been very different from our contemporary identity politics and Jeremy Dronfield,
Speaker 1: who co authored the biography Dr James Barry, a woman
Speaker 1: ahead of her time with Michael Duprez, says he chose
Speaker 1: to use male pronouns throughout, saying that when Margaret first
Speaker 1: became a man, it was intended to be temporary. And
Speaker 1: he tells the Guardian quote, there's evidence that Barry missed
Speaker 1: being a woman, but we also know that he relished
Speaker 1: being a man, his behavior exceeding what was necessary for disguise.
Speaker 1: But he says the claim that Barry left a will
Speaker 1: asking to be remembered as a man is false, so
Speaker 1: we don't have any definitive idea of how he thought
Speaker 1: of himself. Jon Field concludes, quote, if Margaret had been
Speaker 1: born in ninety nine instead of seventeen eighty nine, free
Speaker 1: to be a surgeon and soldier, would she have chosen
Speaker 1: to become a man? On balance? I don't think so,
Speaker 1: but Margaret might have identified as non binary. I have
Speaker 1: no argument with seeing James Barry as a transgender icon
Speaker 1: or Margaret as a feminist role model. I do take
Speaker 1: issue with those who insist on recognizing one and erasing
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, I like that too, because I think
Speaker 1: this comes up a lot for us where you have
Speaker 1: women who were incredibly constrained by their gender. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't any expression of I wish I were a man,
Speaker 1: wasn't about their body. It was about how they got
Speaker 1: to move through the world and how much freedom they had,
Speaker 1: and how much choice they had and how many options
Speaker 1: they had, and where they could travel and with whom
Speaker 1: and where you know. Um. Some people are arguing now
Speaker 1: that Louisa may Alcott would be a transman because she
Speaker 1: wrote a lot, you know, I wish I were a
Speaker 1: man with that I were a man, But it was
Speaker 1: a lot to do with because women aren't allowed to
Speaker 1: do what I want to do, so I wish I
Speaker 1: were dude so I could do what I want to do,
Speaker 1: rather than I wish women were allowed to do what
Speaker 1: I want to do, you know what I mean, like
Speaker 1: the society around it, it seemed easier to change your
Speaker 1: own gender than to change the society that you were
Speaker 1: living in. I guess well, And there's value in kind
Speaker 1: of re examining people, you know in history through you know,
Speaker 1: all of our modern understandings and not even understandings, but
Speaker 1: just conversations and theories and things that were coming up
Speaker 1: with now. And I think, as drown Field says, it
Speaker 1: can be both. I mean this is this is a
Speaker 1: person who died a long as time ago and has
Speaker 1: no idea what we're talking about today in terms of
Speaker 1: how they would identify, how they would move through the world.
Speaker 1: It's totally incomparable in a lot of ways. So is
Speaker 1: their value in James Barry as a trans icon. Absolutely
Speaker 1: is their value in saying this person Margaret Born, a woman,
Speaker 1: grew up and found a way through the world to
Speaker 1: be a doctor when women weren't allowed to. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: value in that story too. Um and then just kind
Speaker 1: of you know, intellectual arguing about which one is more
Speaker 1: accurate seems kind of frivolous. You can see why it
Speaker 1: matters in a way just from that tweet that we
Speaker 1: read that Obermeyer shared, because the tweet is very aggressive.
Speaker 1: It's very much like they're trying to do a thing
Speaker 1: again and stay a lady. But there definitely were a lady,
Speaker 1: not a man. I don't want to hear that, you know.
Speaker 1: It's just very defensively written, So you can see why
Speaker 1: somebody would be like, I really want to let you
Speaker 1: know that that's not the case. I I do want there.
Speaker 1: I want to be able to point to to ambiguously
Speaker 1: trans people through history, so you're not saying that my
Speaker 1: lived experience is just some little fat or trend that
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do or whatever. And there are lots
Speaker 1: of people like James Barry. There's several people through history
Speaker 1: women who dressed like men in order to do really brave,
Speaker 1: very courageous things like fighting wars and crazy ship or
Speaker 1: the opposite, like the Bosom Buddies. But they're not allowed
Speaker 1: to have the apartment, you know, or or um or
Speaker 1: be a jazz musician or whatever. You know like there's
Speaker 1: there's so many. There's a few on our list that
Speaker 1: we're definitely gonna get to and in some cases, the
Speaker 1: jazz musician, for example, is Billy Tipton. They certainly wanted
Speaker 1: to be a man that was That is pretty unambiguous
Speaker 1: with others. It's really just like, I have this spirit
Speaker 1: in me and this courage in me that I want
Speaker 1: to be out there doing these things that only men
Speaker 1: get to do. So what do I care. I'll put
Speaker 1: some pants on if you care so much, Fine, I
Speaker 1: don't care. But they didn't have any kind of dysmorphia
Speaker 1: about who they were necessarily, but it was just about
Speaker 1: feeling constrained by your society. So in a way, this
Speaker 1: part is also feeling constrained by society. You know, Obermeyer
Speaker 1: clearly feels a little constrained by society and wants to
Speaker 1: prove like this person was a man and I need that.
Speaker 1: I need that to be true, and some people really
Speaker 1: need it to not be true. Right, So I like
Speaker 1: that quote from Jeremy John Felt as well because it
Speaker 1: felt like the most encompassing of it. I think it's
Speaker 1: true that there's really no way to know. There is
Speaker 1: no answer in a modern context. You know, there is
Speaker 1: only the exact story of James Barry's life is all
Speaker 1: we have, you know, and we can't say, well, but
Speaker 1: if today you know, because I don't know, if you know,
Speaker 1: taking it out of a gender conversation, if George Washington
Speaker 1: were alive today, would he have been a revolutionary general?
Speaker 1: Or would he have been a podcaster? Like you know,
Speaker 1: who knows? I don't know. I can't say that he
Speaker 1: probably would have been a podcaster. It probably would have
Speaker 1: been the word military history with George Washington. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't feel good about what his podcast would have
Speaker 1: probably not. I do find it a little weird that E. J.
Speaker 1: Levy is up here being like, oh, I used she
Speaker 1: her pronouns like her biographers do, and then immediately biographers
Speaker 1: are like, that's really disrespectful, like what biographies are you reading? Then?
Speaker 1: But then Jeremy john Field is like, I used him pronouns.
Speaker 1: But the book is called A Woman ahead of Her Time?
Speaker 1: So how did you use male pronouns throughout the book
Speaker 1: when you're talking? You know, you immediately told me that
Speaker 1: you're talking about a woman. Well, and he wrote that
Speaker 1: with Michael Dupris, did they alternate chapters. I know, right,
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know, but um, like I guess E. J.
Speaker 1: Levy was reading only the biographers who used she her
Speaker 1: pronouns or who only used the seventies or the fifties biographies,
Speaker 1: was select. Yeah, But Charles Dickens, even when he was
Speaker 1: writing the article, in all the year long of James
Speaker 1: Barry's life, still called him a man, still called him
Speaker 1: he Most people did. So it's so interesting to me
Speaker 1: that like they managed the pronouns better than that we
Speaker 1: do now. But yeah, it's a it's a fascinating tale
Speaker 1: though about James Barry. And there's never a time that
Speaker 1: he seemed to consider leaving the army or the medical
Speaker 1: profession to like, I don't know, get married and have
Speaker 1: kids or anything like that that you might expect him
Speaker 1: to want at some point in his life. Um No,
Speaker 1: he was like, I want to be a doctor. This
Speaker 1: is what I want. I'm doing what i want, so
Speaker 1: I'm happy with this. And as far as we know,
Speaker 1: he lived as a man in private as well. There's
Speaker 1: no like dress at home that he put on to
Speaker 1: feel like himself or something he felt like himself. So
Speaker 1: you know, the the main lesson I think is that
Speaker 1: when society gets off their boot off your neck, you
Speaker 1: can feel like yourself in any number of clothes or
Speaker 1: roles and it doesn't have to mean one thing or
Speaker 1: another about your sexuality. What a nice lesson my next, society,
Speaker 1: stick of your ship with the heavy boots on our next.
Speaker 1: I now right, we're really suffering over here. No, but
Speaker 1: I really want to thank Milo Ira at Bond Milo
Speaker 1: for this great suggestion because it was a really interesting
Speaker 1: story to look into. And I love James Barry. I
Speaker 1: I really you have to. You have to admire the
Speaker 1: courage of this person's convictions, because however they felt, they
Speaker 1: were like, let me get in, I want to get
Speaker 1: my hands dirty and I want to make things better,
Speaker 1: and honestly didn't seem to really care about this credit
Speaker 1: thing or this knighthood like that. That's shitty of Florence Nightingale.
Speaker 1: But there's no indication that James Barry particularly cared. You know,
Speaker 1: for him, it was like I want to practice the medicine,
Speaker 1: and who amongst us is willing to go toe to
Speaker 1: toe with Florence Nightingale. You know, maybe it's about time
Speaker 1: somebody said something with James Barry spoke up. I love
Speaker 1: the idea though, of like Florence Nightingale having shown up
Speaker 1: and done all this work and improved conditions like a
Speaker 1: lot maybe. And then James Barry shows up and he's like,
Speaker 1: what's this ship? Looks like trash? You should see my
Speaker 1: hospital in Corfu, you know what I mean. And she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm sweating over here. I should have seen it a
Speaker 1: week ago. Oh dare you, sir? Like Florence Nightingale, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you heard, I might be somebody and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna really make you heard for this conversation. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks again, Milo, and if you like them, have a
Speaker 1: suggestion for us, please send it our way. Our email
Speaker 1: is ridic Romance at gmail dot com right or reach
Speaker 1: out on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom and
Speaker 1: I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli and the show is
Speaker 1: at ridic Romance. Don't forget to drop us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcast. Thanks for joining us in the new year,
Speaker 1: and we can't wait to see all in the next episode.
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