When I began my research on Black-owned bakeries in old Bermuda, I was surprised to discover that Samuel David Robinson, a founding member of The Berkeley Institute, was a baker who inherited a bakery business from his father, David Robinson, described as a successful baker. In 1873, at the age of 25, he married Elmira Thomas and moved to the upper floor of Oldham on the corner of Dundonald Street and Princess Street.

The bakery, which traded under the name of The Hamilton Bakery, was located on the lower floor. Little more could be found as to what eventually happened to the bakery but today Oldham is the home of The Bermuda Diabetes Association.

Around the 1920s, all Black businesses were owned or managed by an individual family or a single proprietor. This all changed in 1922 when a group of Black businessmen conceived the idea of forming a consortium. This idea was encouraged by AME Bishop James Connor, Bishop of the 15th District from 1920 to 1924 who was visiting the island at that time. This encouragement, described as a revolutionary business move, led to the formation of the Quality Bakery. The building was located on Bakery Lane, just off St John’s Road in Pembroke where Standard Hardware was once located and is now the home of Medical House.

My grandfather, Henry E.A. Dowling, was one of the board of directors along with Charles B. Smith, his brother, Gladstone Smith, Benjamin T. Stovell, Claude Williams, George A. Williams and Robert N. Hodgson. These men were later joined by Gladstone Hinson, Jonathan James, A.R. Clarke, C.W. Hinson and Dr Eustace Cann.

General managers were Iram Eve, W.L. Tucker, Erskine Dyer, Arnott Jackson and Wesley Dill Sr.

According to Wentworth Christopher, who was a grocery shop delivery boy in his childhood, the original Quality Bakery began on Hurst Crescent. In 1930, they acquired property just off St John’s Road where they built the bakery and a separate building to house the stables and supplies. They had contracts during the Second World War to supply visiting warships and the US navy base in Southampton.

I found Mr Christopher’s delivery job so interesting that I have decided to digress briefly to include his recollections.

In 1948, when he was 10, he delivered groceries for The People’s Grocery, where Fat Man Café was once located on Palmetto Road. He was provided with what was then called a carrier bike. It had a normal-sized wheel at the back with a smaller wheel in the front. There was a metal frame in the front where cardboard boxes where placed to carrying the groceries. Once he arrived at the home of the customer, he took the box into the kitchen, unpacked the groceries and returned the box to the bicycle. He also recalled bread being delivered unsliced. Around the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was told to inform the customers that Quality Bakery bread, beginning the following week, would be sold sliced. This was a progressive change and customers were more than pleased.

Venita Caesar-Smith recalled selling the bread in her grandfather’s shop in Somerset. Quality Bakery bread was called Butternut while Bermuda Bakery Bread was called Buttercrust. In the early days, the bread was delivered unsliced, unwrapped and stored in a glass case until it was purchased. There were two types of paper to wrap purchases — things such as cheese and butter were wrapped in brown greaseproof paper while the bread was wrapped in white paper torn from a wider roll. In later years, it was delivered wrapped in red-and-white waxed paper.

John Smith’s grandparents John and Rosalie Smith, sold Quality Bakery and Bermuda Bakery bread from the store they operated going up Camp Hill. At that time, the bread was delivered in a bread cart by a Mr Swan while others remembered a bread cart driven by Cyril “Slim” Burns, who later established The Green Lantern Restaurant.

Oftentimes, there were people who preferred to buy bread from the White-owned Bermuda Bakery, established in 1923 on Pitts Bay Road. There was a feeling among certain segments of the community that White businesses produced a better product. Interestingly enough, their bread was produced by Black bakers. Respected bakers Archie and Evan Dean, of Somerset, were employed there until they retired. Archie managed the bread-making department while Evan was responsible for the sweet bakery goods.

Quality Bakery bread was not sold in OR Loblein stores and I assume this was because he was a director of the Bermuda Bakery.

Wesley Leroy Tucker joined the successful Quality Bakery company as a manager shortly after returning to Bermuda from the Ontario Business College in Canada. He was young, energetic and eager to improve and expand the company using knowledge he had gained abroad. Oftentimes, he was looked upon as young, arrogant and inexperienced, which caused some friction among the older directors and managers.

One of the problems was that some resented his owing a wholesale business run by family members. Nevertheless, the bakery flourished under his leadership as he was able to acquire lucrative contracts. On several occasions, Mr Tucker requested a pay increase commensurate with his success. This was repeatedly denied, and eventually in 1935, rather than pay him his worth, they parted ways. He was a shrewd businessman, and the loss of his business acumen eventually took its toll. Over time many of the more lucrative contracts were lost.

Wesley L. Tucker continued in the business world as an astute businessman and owner of Tucker’s Commission House on King’s Street. He was the first Black Bermudian appointed to the Executive Council, today known as the Senate. In 1962, as chairman of the Franchise Bill, he, along with other Black parliamentarians, piloted the Bill giving all voters over the age of 25 full voting rights. He was often described as the Father of the Franchise Bill, and in 1963, he became the first Black Bermudian to be appointed CBE.

At the end of the war, the Quality Bakery continued to remained profitable. The decision was made to expand the business by purchasing property on the corner of Court Street and Victoria Street to establish a retail outlet and extend the existing building off St John’s Road to accommodate new equipment, which eventually proved to be of inferior quality and plagued the operation with frequent breakdowns.

In her book Second Class Citizens; First Class Men, Eva Hodgson wrote: “The Quality Bakery, selling a commodity as fundamentally necessary as bread, failed. The reasons given for the failure were as numerous as the persons who gave the reasons.”

Sadly, the Quality Bakery closed its doors in 1954.

Another Black-owned bakery whose history I studied on behalf of the Bermuda National Trust for its Southampton book was the Home Bakery, more commonly known as Jones’ Bakery.

This bakery, operated by Archibald and Lillian Rowling Jones, was located on Middle Road, Southampton, around 1930.

Burton Jones, a relative, remembers visiting the bakery as a child. There were giant mixers for the bread and pastry. There were long tables for kneading dough and rolling pastry. There were shelves of bread so high that he could not reach the first shelf. On the side of the building, he recalled piles of cedar wood used as fuel to heat the four baking ovens.

They made Bermuda rye, white and whole-wheat bread, old-fashioned bread pudding often called “kill me quick”, cream puffs, doughnuts and a round bread with a puffed-up top similar to a baker’s hat. They did not make wedding cakes but were known for decorating them on request. The bakery building still remains on the corner of Luke’s Pond Road, where there was once a large garden, horse stables and a carriage house.

Many seniors recall the aroma of baking bread as the train approached the Evans Bay train stop just across the street from the bakery. This was a busy, high-traffic area as that station was considered an agricultural collection centre. There was a large packing shed behind the station where produce from western farms was stored until the government dispatched it by rail to the Hamilton Docks. Unfortunately, the Bermuda train service was discontinued in 1948.

Baked goods were delivered by horse-drawn wagon to Somerset and as far as Hamilton. According to Mrs Sylvia Courtney, who is now 96 years old, the wagon had a tall red box on the back that reminded her of an “outhouse”. When she was a student at the St Mary’s Church school for Black and Portuguese children, commonly called Della Beans’s school, Mr Jones would stop to sell cookies and gingerbread for a penny, then deliver baked goods to White’s grocery store located just across the street. Once Mrs Courtney and her brother, just to be mischievous, told him there was a fly in their gingerbread and he gave them their penny back!

Cora Charles recalled as a child in the 1940s the students from Southampton Glebe School (Dalton E Tucker School) in their lunch hour, running all the way from the school to the bakery to buy doughnuts. In the 1980s, she ran Déjà Vu, a curio shop, in one of the Jones’ Bakery buildings. One morning, as she opened the front door, she heard the back door open and when she looked up she saw a man in a very white apron who quickly faded from view. This puzzled her and when she mentioned it to Mr Jones’s daughter, she identified the person as her deceased father, a baker, who always prided himself in wearing an apron of that description.

The Motor Car Act of 1946 finally made the purchase of cars accessible and by 1950 the bakery purchased a van, which made it possible to make deliveries as far as St George’s. Mr Jones died in 1958 and the business continued for a period managed by one of his sons. The late Leroy Riley often described the plight of many Black businesses during the era of racial segregation when credit was unavailable. This made it difficult to survive and eventually the descendants sought other more profitable opportunities.

• Cecille Snaith-Simmons is a retired nurse, historian, writer and author of The Bermuda Cookbook. With thanks to the Reverend Nicholas Tweed, Dale Butler, Gary Phillips and others mentioned in the article

References:

Bermuda National Trust Heritage series:

Hamilton Town and City, 2015

Southampton, 2022

The Bishops of the AME Church, by Bishop R.R. Wright Jr, Ph.D, LLD

Second Class Citizens; First Class Men, by Eva N Hodgson, 1988

Blacks In Bermuda: Historical Perspectives, Bermuda College Lecture Programme, 1980

Arnold A Francis, LL.B — Lecture: The Role of Black People in Professions and Business