Women Who Pose as Men

Transcript

Dr James Barry

Army surgeon and Inspector- General of Hospitals. In a sketch of “his” career Lieutenant-Colonel Rogers advances evidence that he really was a woman.

In spite of the common opinion that a woman cannot for long pass as a man without arousing suspicion two striking instances have recently come to light where for a number of years the imposition has never been suspected. 

Marie le Roy passed for twenty-five years as Larry Lloyd at Enfield and her sex was only discovered on her death a few weeks ago, and Mrs Elena Smith has engaged for the last five years in business in New York as “Mr A.L. Martinez” and her sex was not even suspected till she confessed it with some scathing criticism of the American as he appears to his fellow men.

One of the most interesting of these impersonations is that of Dr James Barry, M.D. Inspector-General of Hospitals, concerning whom Lieutenant-Colonel E Rogers, sends us the following account taken from the introduction of his book: “A Modern Sphinx.