Callipygian Captain

People throughout the world last week looked and looked at pictures of "Captain Barker," the woman who long persuaded the British Army that she was Captain Leslie Ivor Victor Gauntlett Slight Barker, a "Mons man," a devoted husband, a first rate boxer (TIME, March-18).

The pictures appeared as the result of her discovery by a sharp-eyed prison surgeon in Brixton Jail, where the callipygian captain was temporarily detained a fortnight ago on a charge of bankruptcy. One of the most fetching of these pictures (see below), shows her wearing the collar of an officer in the Legion of Honor, while across the scarlet bosom of her mess jacket dangle the British D.S.O.; the Star of Mons, the Cross of a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and the Belgian Croix de Guerre with palm.

Last week "Captain Barker" was arrested again. Her offense before the law was not that she had worn men's clothes, or even that she had persuaded Miss Alfreda Emma Howard of Littlehampton, Sussex, to marry her, but on a common charge' of perjury, for she 'had falsely sworn in high court that she was "Captain Leslie Ivor Victor Gauntlett Slight Barker," when she was really Mrs. Lilias Irma Valerie Barker Smith, mother of two.