Friends and former colleagues have paid tribute to Ann Cartwright DeCouto, who died at age 71 and was buried at St Anne’s Church in Southampton.

Attorney-General Trevor Moniz recalled the lawyer, former United Bermuda Party minister and Deputy Premier, as a principled and uncompromising person who sought simply to contribute.

She served in Cabinet for 12 of her 18 years in Parliament.

“I admired Ann long before I met her,” said Mr Moniz, who as a novice lawyer worked with Mrs Cartwright DeCouto and her colleague Wendell Hollis.

“Many of her sterling contributions such as the fish pot ban have been noted.

“The importance and success of the ban was only widely appreciated years later but with no great public recognition. In that dispute, she was picketed and faced personal threats. But as usual she showed that steely determination.

“Ann was a great speaker in the House and had unbelievable stamina in those long and exhausting overnight sessions so common in those days when there were no time limits on speeches.”

Her mother died when she was young, he said, and she became a mother to her family on their sprawling rural property in Southampton.

Former Progressive Labour Party Premier Dame Jennifer Smith said she enjoyed her relationship with Mrs Cartwright DeCouto through her friendship with her political mentor, the late Dame Lois Browne Evans.

“There were not a lot of woman lawyers, and her perspective was that we had to stick together and look out for each other,” said Dame Jennifer, who added that the popular image of MPs as constantly bickering was incorrect.

“Ann was someone with a strong sense of integrity.

“When she took a position, she was going to stick by it. Ann was also brilliant.

“We had some great minds in the House — you could just sit and listen to them.”

Mr Hollis remembered his old colleague as a formidable divorce lawyer and accomplished cross-examiner, a “jack-of-all-trades in all the aspects of the practice of law, and a mater of them all”.

“She was one of Bermuda’s best litigators in her heyday, defending in criminal cases some of the most unpopular defendants.” He added that many of Bermuda’s best-known law firms “owe their genesis to their founders working with Ann”.

“But Ann’s greatest success in life was her family.

“She enjoyed a long and loving marriage with her husband Roddy, who predeceased her, and I feel that she never really recovered from the loss she suffered in his passing.”

One Bermuda Alliance senator Georgia Marshall said Mrs Cartwright DeCouto had been a trailblazer and a mentor to her.

“I joined Ann Frith Cartwright Chambers as a newly qualified attorney 30 years ago,” Ms Marshall said.

“By then, Ann had established her reputation as the undisputed Queen Bee of matrimonial law.

“Contrary to urban legend, Ann represented both men and women in equal portion.”

Mrs Cartwright DeCouto, she said, was “a fiercely private person, not prone to public displays of emotion or affection — but in her own way, she encouraged, she set the bar high”.

“I will always be grateful to this great lady.”