Prof Richard Garrett George Barry, MD, FRCPI, FRCP, was born in Carrigtohill, Co Cork, in 1914, and was educated in Presentation College, Cork, and in the Benedictine Abbey of Douai, Berkshire. He graduated in medicine from University College, Cork in 1937, having been awarded the Charles Gold Medal in anatomy in his second year. He undertook junior medical posts in Bristol and London before joining the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1940, serving until 1946 in Norway, India, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and Italy.
After the war, he recommenced paediatric training in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, London, and in the Park Hospital, London. He was later appointed senior paediatric registrar to Prof Sir Douglas Hubble at the Derbyshire Royal Hospital. In 1948, he obtained his MD (NUI) and became a member of the Royal College of Physicians of London. He was elected a fellow of that college in 1971 and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 1978.
In 1949, he was appointed as temporary visiting physician (with charge of the children's wards) in the Cork County Home and in later years, there followed appointments as paediatrician to Erinville Maternity Hospital and to the Mercy and Bon Secours Hospitals.
These were the first paediatric appointments in this country outside Dublin and it is a commentary on those times that his first and major appointment did not designate paediatrics in its title, as all subsequent such appointments were to do.
A typically modest quotation from a letter written shortly before his death is appropriate here: "It is difficult to write about the impact of someone with some paediatric experience on the city without sounding vainglorious. Suffice it to say that the mortality rate of babies admitted with gastroenteritis fell from 23 per cent to 4 per cent and the infant mortality rate from 50 to 23 per 1,000 births over the period 1950 to 1954."
He was appointed lecturer in paediatrics in UCC in 1951 and was responsible for introducing paediatrics into the final MB examination and also for establishing a university department of paediatrics. In 1970, he was appointed the first professor of paediatrics in UCC and, until his retirement in 1979, he oversaw the rapid expansion of paediatrics in Cork, culminating in the establishment of the university teaching unit in the new University Hospital and of the Paediatric Day Centre. Throughout his career, he maintained a special interest in paediatric gastroenterology, publishing regularly and making his work in coeliac disease internationally known.
He became paediatrician in a voluntary capacity to St Anne's Adoption Society at the time of its foundation in 1954 and, in 1989, he was awarded the Papal Benemerenti Medal for this work. The regard in which he was held by his students, junior medical staff, and colleagues was shown by their establishment of the Barry Prize, to be awarded to the best student in paediatrics in the final medical examination. After retiring in 1979, he continued to work at St Finbarr's Hospital until 1982.
Dick Barry epitomised, to all who knew him, the perfect gentleman. Indeed, one had the impression of an inability to behave otherwise. He was interested in family history, tracing his own branch of the Barrymores back to the 12th century. On his Italian paternal grandmother's side, he was heard to say with a chuckle that he had two cardinal ancestors, to one of whom there had been erected a statue in the Pantheon in Rome.
He was equally modest about both his family background and his pioneering paediatrics. Widely read, he had a particular interest in the ancient world. With a good grasp of several languages, he and his wife Janet spent holidays frequently in Italy, where they traced several of his family connections. Janet and he had first met when they were both training in paediatrics in London. He renewed his interest in sailing relatively late in life and, with Janet as crew and accompanied by two devoted dachshunds, he explored the Cork and neighbouring coastlines for many years.
Of their two sons, Thomas, the elder, was tragically killed in a motor accident during his second postgraduate hospital year. William is a consultant paediatrician in Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup.
To Janet, William and his wife Elizabeth and their children, we offer our deepest sympathy.
B.McN. and N.V.O'D.