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Early Life & Education

Medical Career

Death & Outing

Death details

The Stretch Marks – Developer's Opinion

A common myth of James Barry is that he was pregnant and possibly gave birth to a child sometime in his youth. The only evidence supplied for the theory was the presence of stretch marks on Barry's lower stomach, found after he had died. Technically we can't prove that Barry never had children (Hard to prove a double-negative), but the reasoning of the idea boils down to "She was a female and had stretch marks, clearly her maternal instincts kicked in and she had a child at some point."

Stretch marks happen to many people for reasons outside of pregnancy, mainly due to growth that happens during one's younger years - Coindentally the same time as when the pregnancy myth claims Barry had carried.

Reactions From His Peers

TW: Outdated language for intersex individuals is used, specifically a word now considered a slur.

On the 23rd of August, Registrar General George Graham wrote a letter to D.R. McKinnon, the Staff Surgeon Major. In it, Graham says

"I(t) has been stated to me that Inspector General Dr. James Barry...was after his death found to be a female.

As you furnished the Certificate as to the cause of his death, I take the liberty of asking you whether what I have heard is true, and whether you yourself ascertained that he was a woman and apparently had been a mother?

Perhaps you may decline answering these questions; but I ask them not for publication but for my own information."

The next day, the 24th of August, McKinnon wrote a letter in reply:

"I had been intimately acquainted with that gentleman for a good many years, both in the West Indies and in England, and I never had any assumption that Dr. Barry was a female.

I attended him during his last illness, and for some months previously for bronchitis, and the affection causing his death was diarrhea produced apparently by errors in diet.

On one occasion after Dr. Barry's death, I was sent for to the office of Sir Charles McGregor, and there the woman, who performed the last offices for Dr. Barry, was waiting to speak to me.

She wished to obtain some perquisites of her employment which the Lady who kept the lodging house in which Dr. Barry died had refused to give her.

Amongst other things she said Dr. Barry was a female and that I was a pretty doctor not to know this and that she would not like to be attended by me. I informed her that it was none of my business whether Dr. Barry was a male or a female - and that I thought it as likely he might be neither, viz an imperfectly developed man.

She then said that she had examined the body and that it was a perfect female and farther that there were marks of her having had a child when very young. I then enquired how have you formed this conclusion? The woman pointing to the lower part of her stomach, said from marks here, I am a married woman, and the mother of nine children I ought to know.

The woman seemed to me to think that she had become acquainted with a great secret and wished to be paid for keeping it. I informed her that all Dr. Barry's relatives were dead and that it was no secret of mine, and that my own impression was that Dr. Barry was a Hermaphodite.

But whether Dr. Barry was male, female, or hermaphodite I do not know, nor had I any purpose in making the discovery as I could positively swear to the identity of the body as that being of a person whom I had been acquainted with as Inspector General of Hospitals for a period of eight or nine years."

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Sources

1. Bound photocopies of papers from the Public Record Office re the life and career of James Barry (d. 1865), Inspector General of Military Hospitals, including an account (in own hand?) of their career. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/e4j3dppq
2. THE LIFE, WORK AND GENDER OF DR JAMES BARRY MD (1795–1865). Source: The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Volume 4 Issue 31.
   https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/journal/issue/vol31_no4/R_The_Life.pdf
3. How History Keeps Ignoring James Barry. Source: Distillations Magazine, The Science History Institute.
   https://www.sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/how-history-keeps-ignoring-james-barry/
4. Marks on the Body - by David. Source: Notes on a Gentleman.
   https://notesonagentleman.substack.com/p/marks-on-the-body?s=r

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Last Updated: 6 June 2025