The month of May has been designated Nurses Month, and as always during the month, I will present some of those who have set the standard for nursing excellence in Bermuda.

Seventy-five years ago, nurse Iris Davis was my school nurse at the West End Primary School. There she was performing injections, followed by a candy to help us forget the discomfort she had just inflicted in the name of immunisations. She was a tall, no-nonsense woman who was the epitome of professionalism.

Over the years, I attempted repeatedly to interview her, but she always politely declined. She said it was a memory she chose not to relive.

She was a friend of my parents and often came to our house for lunch when she was visiting the schools in this area. About 40 years later, she became my senior nurse at the Department of Health.

Over the years, I continued to remind her that she had a story that needed to be told, and finally, to my great delight in 2015 — one year before her death — she acquiesced.

Iris Davis was born into a family of cedar craftsmen and union involvement. She was the youngest of six children born to William Alexander and Isabelle Churchill Davis on October, 1921. Originally the family lived in Spring Hill, Warwick, but later moved to White Hill in Somerset Bridge. She attended the West End School and Sandys Secondary School.

During her adolescent years, she knew many young women who were nurses, and she aspired to follow the tradition. The only local training facility for Black nurses was the Cottage Hospital Nursing Home, to which she applied, was accepted and completed the three-year training programme.

Mabel White was the matron and Mabel Crawford the assistant matron. There were four beds for probationers who were terrorised by Ms White, who was a perfectionist. Probationers had many responsibilities, including sluicing dirty linen, preparing the bodies of patients who died during the night, and watching to prevent insects from crawling over them.

The Cottage Hospital Nursing Home had seven beds for women patients in one ward and another ward with two semi-private beds, as well as one room for a private patient. There were four beds for men.

Women with eclampsia and fever were wrapped in thin blankets, which had to be placed in boiling water and rung out using large sticks. The patients were then wrapped in these sheets and blankets. Bottles for urine specimens were brought from home by the staff and boiled for sterilisation purposes. All specimens were sent to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for testing.

On the sunny afternoon of our interview, she became silent and gazed from the dining-room window of her home overlooking Hamilton Harbour. She became deep in thought and began recalling memorable cases.

There was the young boy who could not see his mother because he was under 16 and not allowed to visit the facility. She recalled that he arrived every day to play his guitar and sing outside her window because he just wanted her to know that he was there.

Then there was the young girl with the sweet personality and beautiful smile who was nursed in a full body cast because she had some form of bone disease from which she did not survive. There was the child who died of pinworms, and the child whom they discovered was blind in one eye, possibly because her mother had contracted measles during pregnancy, and the teenage boy who piggybacked his little sister every day to have her legs dressed because she had impetigo.

Ms Davis did not speak for quite some time as she pondered the fate of these children from her early years in nursing.

In 1944, Iris Davis travelled to Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx with Leonie Harford and Madelyn Burchall to complete an additional year of training which included midwifery. This additional year was sponsored by the Bermuda Government with the agreement that the Government be repaid for the year. When she returned to Bermuda, she passed the required midwifery examination that enabled her to practise midwifery.

KEMH did not accept Black nurses or American qualifications, which created a problem as she was expected to repay the Government for the additional training. Iris decided that she had no alternative but to go into private practice delivering babies in the community and in her parents’ home. Her father built blocks to elevate the bed so that she could deliver at a comfortable height and asked E.F. Gordon, who often referred patients to her, to purchase midwifery instruments for her when he travelled to New York. In those days, after delivery the placenta (afterbirth) was wrapped in newspaper and buried on the property near the house. Patients remained in her home for five days.

When I interviewed Ms Davis in 2015, she was still in possession of the midwifery bag and the stainless-steel instruments.

Ms Davis had many stories to tell, but the one she found of great importance was the delivery she was called to on Hog Bay Level. As the labour progressed she became increasingly concerned as the baby’s position was transverse and she knew the patient would need a Caesarean section. She quickly summoned Raymond Nash, who arrived from his home on Wreck Road by horse and carriage. An ambulance was called, but Ms Davis refused to be separated from her patient, and so Dr Nash took her with him to the hospital where she once again refused to be separated — and the distressed patient cried for her familiar midwife to be with her.

Ms Davis adamantly demanded she be in the operating room — a situation unheard of as no Black nurses were ever allowed. Finally, she was gowned up and present when Dr Nash performed the C-section.

She smiled defiantly when she described the number of eyebrows raised that day. She was the first Black nurse to grace the operating room at KEMH.

Unable to get sufficient work to sustain her, she decided to retrain in Britain in the hope that she could be employed at KEMH. She entered St Giles Hospital, Camberwell, South London in 1956 to repeat her entire general nurses training. The hospital offered to reduce her training by six months, as she had already trained, but she declined the offer and went on to become a state registered nurse, then completed her midwifery part one at St Giles and part two at North Hertfordshire Maternity Hospital in Hitching about 45 miles away.

To further her studies she travelled daily from St Giles Hospital to Elephant and Castle where she trained in family planning. Her tutor had the distinction of being the gynaecologist to the Royal Family.

When Ms Davis returned to Bermuda, she joined the health department as a school nurse and later returned to London to complete a year at the Royal College of Nursing, where she obtained her health visitor’s certificate. Upon her return, she was promoted to the position of Senior Nursing Officer.

“IAD”, as we fondly called her, was the consummate professional. Punctuality and professional behaviour at all times were expected and, above all, attention to proper and accurate documentation of information was essential to working with her. We were never allowed to call each other by first names. She was in charge and we certainly knew it. In fact, one of our colleagues who was occasionally late for work, mastered the art of walking into the department backwards. When she heard Ms Davis’s voice, she would begin to walk forward in the hope that if she saw her, she would think she had been there on time and thus avoid her wrath.

Under her leadership, she promoted public health through her weekly public health radio shows and encouraged school nurses to provide health education in the school.

Ms Davis felt it essential that she be up to date on world health initiatives and obtained the Nursing Organisation and Administration Certificate under the auspices of the World Health Organisation. This qualification allowed her to practise in Zone 1 of the world and enabled her to work professionally in whatever area in that zone deemed necessary.

After 26 years of devoted service, Iris Almeria Davis retired as the Senior Nurse at the Department of Health. Everyone thought she would retire to her newly built home off Harbour Road overlooking Hamilton Harbour and enjoy driving around in her powder-blue 1961 classic Austin Cambridge. To everyone’s surprise, she accepted a security and first-aid position at Trimingham Brothers where she remained for 14 years.

She was a member of the Bermuda Registered Nurses’ Association, a member of the Gamma Sigma Bermuda Chapter of the Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Inc, a member of the Business and Professional Women’s Club, and president of the Socratic Literary Club. Ms Davis was a keen gardener, an amateur photographer and devoted member of Christ Presbyterian Church in Warwick.

In 2015, she was honoured by the Department of Cultural Affairs, and in recognition of her exemplary dedication to her profession and years of devotion to the health and welfare of the community, she was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, which she proudly accepted from Queen Elizabeth II in London.

Iris Almeria Davis MBE, SRN, SCM, HV died in 2016 at the age of 94.

• Cecille Snaith-Simmons is a retired nurse, historian, writer and author of The Bermuda Cookbook