Caro Spencer Wilson was one of a long line of Black Bermudian women who trained at U.S. nursing schools during the first half of the 20th century, only to be denied employment at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital (KEMH) and as district nurses because of their race.
She trained for three years at the Lincoln Hospital School for Nurses in the Bronx, New York. But when she returned to Bermuda in 1929, a newly qualified registered nurse, her employment options were limited to the Cottage Hospital Nursing Home and private duty nursing. Learning of her plight, a group of community leaders formed the Hamilton Parish Nursing Association and hired her to be a nurse-midwife for Hamilton and Smith’s parishes.
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A brief noonday ceremony made it official—the British Government closed HM Dockyard, its mammoth base in the west end, ending an era lasting nearly 200 years.
Construction of HM Dockyard, which was called the 'Gibraltar of the West', began in 1809 with enslaved people and free Black men, working under the supervision of British engineers, supplying the labour. The next set of workers were British and Irish convicts, who were shipped across the Atlantic and holed up in airless hulks moored off Dockyard. Convicts provided the bulk of labour from 1824 to 1863. By the end of the19th Century, workers were being brought in from Jamaica, St. Kitts, Nevis and Saba. The Dockyard, which had its own movie theatre, hospital, church, schools and shops, was of major economic importance to Bermuda, employing more than 1,000 locals.
News of the closure was a major shock, although the establishment of U.S. bases at Morgan's Point in Southampton and St. David's in 1941 lessened the impact on the economy.
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HM Dockyard in 1865.
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