James Barry, a military surgeon in the British Army, was born Margaret Anne in 1789 and died on July 25, 1865. Barry, who is originally from Cork, Ireland, graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School and practised medicine first in Cape Town, South Africa, and then throughout much of the British Empire. Barry was born Margaret Anne, and even though he has lived all of his adult life as a man, she was the name she was known by as a child. Barry pretended to be a man in both public and private settings in order to enrol in college and pursue a career as a surgeon. Only after a post-mortem examination did the general public and Barry's military coworkers learn about his biological sex.