The 'remarkable' military surgeon who changed identity to overcome Edinburgh University ban on women

It was a closely-guarded secret at the heart of a story described by Edinburgh University as one of the most remarkable in its history.

The medical school graduate James Barry would go on to enjoy a distinguished and ground-breaking career as an army surgeon and officer in charge of military hospitals.

But it was only after Dr Barry’s death that it emerged that he disguised his real identity as a woman to secure entry to the male-only university – becoming not only Edinburgh’s first female graduate but the first qualified female doctor and surgeon in Britain.

James Barry was born Margaret Anne Bulkley.

Now the story of how Dr Barry duped the world-leading medical school in Edinburgh and rose through the ranks of the military with a male identity for nearly half a century is set to be brought to life at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

A Singular Deception, which will be staged at the Royal Scots Club, will recall how Dr Barry transformed the treatment of sexual diseases and mental illness, and battled to ensure soldiers had better diets and more comfortable accommodation.

But it will also reflect on efforts by military top brass to whitewash the story of Dr Barry out of the history books due to embarrassment at how they had been duped for decades.

Dr Barry was born as Margaret Ann Bulkley in County Cork, in Ireland, in 1789, is widely believed to the first woman to graduate from Edinburgh University, in 1812, a remarkable 57 years before the first group of students matriculated in the wake of the “Edinburgh Seven” campaign, which would eventually lead to women being allowed entry to universities throughout the UK.

A Singular Deception, a new play about the extraordinary life of the Edinburgh University medical student and military surgeon Dr James Barry, will be performed at the Royal Scots Club in the New Town at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Picture Ian Rutherford

After graduating in Edinburgh, Dr Barry trained at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in London, and initially worked in hospitals the city before joining the British Army as a medical officer in 1813.

Dr Barry quickly gained a reputation as a first-class surgeon after being posted to South Africa, and is said to have carried out the first ever caesarean section there in 1826.

Dr Barry would go on to work in the West Indies and Canada, before retiring in 1859 and living his final years in London.

However Dr Barry’s real identity was only disclosed after his death in 1865, when his body was being prepared for the funeral. A maid’s insistence that she had attended to the corpse of a woman was leaked to a newspaper in Dublin.

A Singular Deception, a new play about the extraordinary life of the Edinburgh University medical student and military surgeon Dr James Barry, will be performed at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

An Edinburgh University web page on Dr Barry states: “In the 1950s historian Isobel Rae gained access to army records and concluded Dr Barry was a niece of James Barry, the celebrated Irish artist and professor of painting at London's Royal Academy.

"Then in 2008, a South African doctor, Michael Du Preez, discovered letters from both James Barry and Margaret Ann Bulkley amongst the artist’s papers. Alison Reboul, a document analysis expert, concluded that the letters were written by the same person.”

The show, which will be performed by the Edinburgh Graduate Theatre Group, has been in development for around seven years by Edinburgh-based writer and director Hilary Spiers.

She said: “I was really looking for interesting women to write about and was particularly looking for women who had been ignored by history.

“I was leafing through various books about forgotten women. There’s obviously quite a lot of them, but when I came across the story of James Barry. I just thought ‘surely this is the one’.”