Kathleen Margaret Carter
Advocate for people with disabilities, writer 
Born June 1, 1939

Founder and long-time chairperson of the Bermuda Physically Handicapped Association (BPHA), Margaret Carter championed the cause of people with disabilities with a singular passion. 

She herself was disabled, but unlike the majority of disabled Bermudians of her generation, she received access to a formal education.  That, along with her talents as an organizer, her writing skills, wit and media savvy, combined to make her a formidable advocate. 

It was largely because of her activism that the needs of disabled Bermudians were placed on the national agenda in the 1970s and 1980s. Change was gradual, but lasting. It led to more employment opportunities for people with disabilities and heightened public awareness of the need to make buildings and streets in Hamilton accessible to people in wheelchairs

. Summerhaven, the residence for people with physical disabilities in Smith’s Parish, is just one of her legacies. She was also at the forefront of the BPHA’s seven-year campaign to amend the 1981 Human Rights Act so that people with disabilities would have legal protection from discrimination.

First Boer War POWs arrive 
June 28, 1901

The first contingent of Boer War prisoners arrived and were transferred to internment camps set up at Darrell’s and Burt Island. Over the next 18 months, Bermuda would receive more than 4,000 Boer War POWs, ranging in age from eight to 80.

They were spread out among the internment camps erected in the islands in the Great Sound—Tucker’s, Morgan’s, Port’s, Hawkins, as well as Darrell’s and Burt. The POWS were casualties of the war that had broken out in 1899 in South Africa between the Boers, who were descendants of Dutch settlers, and British settlers. When rising numbers of POWS outgrew facilities in South Africa, the British authorities established internment camps in Bermuda, St. Helena, India and Ceylon.

The Bermuda prisoners were generally well treated: each camp had a school, church and library. Some Bermudians, among them suffragette Anna Maria Outerbridge and William Meyer, lent support through a relief committee, even though they were aiding the enemy side. Initially, the POWs were to have been guarded by Black troops of the West India Regiment, but the plan was nixed by Bermuda’s governor who believed “this would be regarded as an unforgivable insult” by South Africans,” author William Zuill wrote in Bermuda Journey.

Most of the POWs were repatriated to South Africa after the end of the war or moved to North America. A few remained in Bermuda, where they found work on farms, or as carpenters and cabinet-makers. One POW set up a souvenir shop on East Broadway, where he sold cedar carvings to tourists.

For more about the Boer War, visit the Bermuda National Museum in Dockyard or the Bermuda Historical Society Museum in Hamilton.

Sources: Boer Prisoners of War in Bermuda by Colin Benbow; Bermuda—Five Centuries by Rosemary Jones.