For more than 50 years during the era of segregation, F. Harvey Edmondson devoted his time and talents to Friendly Societies and other black institutions.
A carpenter by trade, he was chairman of the Berkeley Educational Society from 1935 to 1946. He was also chairman of the Bermuda Nursing Association, the parent body of the Bermuda Nursing Home and its successor, the Cottage Hospital Nursing Home.
A leading lodgeman, he was a longtime general secretary of Alexandrina Lodge, and oversaw the reconstruction of Alexandrina Hall in Hamilton, after it was demolished by a hurricane. From 1938 to 1948, he was a Member of Parliament for Warwick.
Carpenter
Edmondson was born on July 4, 1866 in Paget, and lived in Warwick for most of his life. He was one of five children of William Joseph Edmondson and Martha Harvey.
The public record is silent about his early schooling or where he learned his trade, but it is likely he attended Paget Glebe School. He ran his carpentry shop on Washington Lane in Hamilton before moving it to Court Street.
He devoted much of his energies to Alexandrina Lodge, which was established by the Oddfellows in 1852, and whose building on Court Street, Hamilton, Alexandrina Hall, was constructed during the 1860s. Edmondson was elected general secretary in December 1898 and held the position for more than 50 years.
When Alexandrina Hall was nearly destroyed by a hurricane in 1926, he oversaw its rebuilding, and remained in charge of the building’s maintenance.
In taking on the role of chairman of the Berkeley Educational Society—the governing body of The Berkeley Institute—he was following in the footsteps of his father, who served as chairman from 1905 to 1911.
Nursing
For a time, he served as chairman of the executive committee of the Bermuda Nursing Home, which was established around 1904, with financial backing from several lodges, as a nursing home for elderly lodge members and for the training of black district nurses.
He was chairman of Bermuda Nursing Association for 50 years. In this role, he led the drive to raise funds for the nursing home. Although Government eventually increased its annual grant and assumed greater responsibility for operation of the nursing home, this did not diminish the need for additional funding.
For black nurses for whom employment at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital was off limits because of their race, and black doctors who were denied admitting privileges, the Nursing Home and its successor, the Cottage Hospital Nursing Home on Happy Valley Road, were an important link in the island’s health care system until it closed in 1956.
When Edmondson was honoured for his service to the Association and to lodges in general in 1952, he was praised for his dedication, especially during the early years when keeping the nursing home open was a “struggle.”
Younger
Edmondson also dipped his toes into the political waters in 1938, when he was elected to Parliament, and served two terms. But in 1948, the Warwick Political Association led by power broker Martin Wilson determined it was time for Edmondson, then age 82, to step down.
E.T. Richards, who had recently qualified as a lawyer, was the association’s choice to replace him. Edmondson agreed to resign, then changed his mind. E.T. Richards, who would become Bermuda’s first black leader, told biographer J. Randolf Williams that Edmondson was more acceptable to Front Street businessmen.
Unlike labour leader E.F. Gordon, Edmondson was no firebrand. He told a political meeting held prior to the general election that he supported the 1948 White Paper, which E.F. Gordon had denounced as “trash”, and was not in favour of universal suffrage. Gordon, who was at the meeting, took Edmondson to task, asking him why he consistently voted “against the interests of the underprivileged in Bermuda”.
In the end, Edmondson was defeated at the May 1948 general election, while Richards was successful. He retired from public life in 1952. In 1960, he was awarded an MBE. He died at the age of 98 at his home Edmonton in Warwick where he had lived since 1894. His funeral took place at his family church, St. Paul’s in Paget.
Infancy
Edmondson outlived two wives, Mary Ingham and Susan Robinson Eve, and four of his five children. Daughters Muriel and Sybil died in infancy, son Alfred died age 10, while his eldest son John Harvey, a Canadian trained accountant, died in 1935 at age 39.
He was survived by his third wife, the former Mary Darrell of Flatts, son Leonard Edmondson and a grandchild, Jeannette Fubler.
Edmondson did not challenge the political status quo. Richards’ biographer Randolf Williams described him as “mild-mannered”. Yet, by all accounts, he commanded respect for his community service. His work on behalf of institutions that supported the welfare, education and health of black Bermudians is worthy of recognition.
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