Barry was born on 19 March 1903 at Cork in Ireland, the elder son of Jerome Barry, Fleet Surgeon RN, and was educated at the Christian Brothers' School, Cork, Clongowes Wood College and University College Cork. After graduation and a period as a house surgeon at Cork he followed his father into the Royal Navy, in which he served from 1927 to 1949: here he was influenced by W J Colborne and Eric Pearce Gould "who taught me what surgery I knew". During the second world war he served chiefly with HM Hospital Ship *Isle of Jersey* with the Home Fleet. After retiring from the Navy he was ASAMO South Western Regional Hospital Board from 1949 to 1952; thereafter he moved to Canada, was Director of Outpatients, Montreal General Hospital 1952-54, and Executive Director, Reidy Memorial Hospital from 1954 to 1968. In his own words he 'played most games with enthusiasm, but without distinction'. He particularly enjoyed shooting. Surgeon Commander E B C Cliff RN who knew Barry in 1947 in Singapore noted him as 'most charming, and [he] used to invite me to play tennis on a friend's rolled sand court'. He contributed the chapter on Royal Naval Hospital Ships to the Royal Naval Medical Service volumes of the History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Medical Series. In 1937 he married Monica Thunder of Ravensdale, County Louth: they had two sons. Barry died in Perth, Ontario, on 4 November 1993.