Pioneersof progress

The first members of the Bermuda Union of Teachers in February 1919. Back row, from left: E. Scott Tucker, Miss Matilda “Mattie” Crawford, Mrs. Hetty Tucker Morrell, Mrs. Mildred Outerbridge Paynter, Miss Lauretta Smith, Miss Ida Hinson and Mr. Ossie Francis. Front row, from left: Miss Edith Crawford, secretary; Rev. R.H. Tobitt, president; and Miss Adele Tucker, treasurer.   Photo: Collection of Dr. Kenneth E. Robinson. Courtesy of Mrs. Rosalind Robinson  EndFragment

Bermuda’s public education system was founded by trailblazing, dedicated and courageous individuals who often battled racism and injustice to make education available to everyone.

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Samuel David Robinson and the beginning of Berkeley

A new era in education began when The Berkeley Institute opened at Samaritan’s Lodge on Court Street, Hamilton on September 6, 1897 with 27 students.  Berkeley was the realisation of a dream that began 18 years earlier when businessman Samuel David Robinson invited five men to his home Wantley on Princess Street, Hamilton on October 6, 1879 to discuss the feasibility of opening a high school. They established The Berkeley Educational Society and spent the next 18 years raising funds and public support for the school. The school, which became the heading high school for black Bermudians during the era of segregation, was named after George Berkeley (1685-1753), an Anglo-Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop, whose plan to establish a college in Bermuda for native Americans a century earlier had foundered. Five months after the school had opened, students were being prepared to take Cambridge exams (the forerunner of today’s GSCE’s) in scripture, Latin, French, English language and literature. Berkeley's first headmaster was George DaCosta, who had been recruited from Jamaica to be headmaster of the Bermuda Collegiate Institute, which opened in 1892 as the first high school for black Bermudians. He remained Berkeley’s head for 37 years. EndFragment

Edith Crawford, left, and Matilda Crawford devoted their lives to teaching.

Edith Crawford biography

Edith Crawford (1881-1978) and her cousin Matilda ‘Mattie’ Crawford (1879-1948) devoted virtually their whole lives to education and were founding members of the Bermuda Union of Teachers in 1919. In an era when education got short shrift from the Government, teachers set up their own schools, after notifying the Board of Education, and ran them with a combination of Government funding and student fees. Free primary school education did not become a reality until the early 1950s. In 1908 Edith founded the Central School in a room at Alaska Hall on Court Street, Hamilton with 12 students. Matilda started her own school at Till’s Hill, Pembroke in the early 1900s. The clamour for education was such that by the 1920s, schools like the Crawfords were overcrowded and their one-room schoolhouses were in poor condition. In 1928 Central, along with Matilda’s school, moved into the first wing of a new school built by Government at Glebe Road, Pembroke. The completed Central School was formally opened in 1931 with 900 students and 20 classrooms and became one of the Island’s top black primary schools. Edith taught at Central until December 1949, aged 68. A month later she began teaching at Haven High School on Berkeley Road until it closed in 1966, bringing her 66-year teaching career to an end. [if gte mso 9]> 0 0 1 272 1551 Kaleidoscope Media Ltd. 12 3 1820 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE