Tributes have been paid to Iris Davis, an iconic figure who persevered through segregation to become the Island’s senior nurse, who has died at the age of 94.

Miss Davis, well known to generations of families as a midwife and school nurse, was hailed as a powerful example for black people, particularly black women, throughout her trailblazing 40-year career.

She was the second black Bermudian nurse, after Sylvia Richardson, to be taken on at the government Health Clinic, and was appointed MBE in recognition of her service in 1974.

Describing Miss Davis as “an icon in the community”, historian Walton Brown told The Royal Gazette: “We take a lot for granted today, but during that period of rampant segregation, she represented a powerful example for black people and for black women.”

Nursing was an early dream from her humble origins in Somerset, where her father, William Davis, emerged as a pivotal early figure in the Island’s labour movement.

As a midwife she helped bring generations of Bermudian babies into the world, and she grew familiar to later generations of schoolchildren as the nurse who brought the vaccination shots.

Preferring to be addressed as “Miss”, as she never married, she was famously private but known around Bermuda for the lovingly restored 1961 classic Austin Cambridge that remains in her garage today.

She won recognition only after pressing ahead through arduous training at a time when even qualifying was segregated, and King Edward VII Memorial Hospital refused to accept black nurses. Miss Davis obtained her initial training at the Cottage Hospital, followed by a year’s study at Lincoln Hospital in New York — her first departure from the Island.

However, as veteran nurse Cecille Simmons recalled, she “trained three times before she could get a job here”, because of discrimination.

“She could not get enough work to sustain herself, so she worked as a midwife — her father had a room at the house where she could even deliver at home,” she said.

“When I asked her how she got her instruments, she said that her father got Dr EF Gordon — an early icon in Bermuda’s civil rights and labour struggle — to buy them for her.”

In 1956 she went to St Giles Hospital in London, where she won a prize as the best second-year nurse, receiving her award from Lady Macmillan, wife of the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.

Discrimination persisted at home, Mrs Simmons said, but Miss Davis “really was the one who put her foot down”.

She recounted how during one delivery, Miss Davis found complications with her patient and called a white doctor to take her and her patient to the hospital in a horse-and- buggy for a Caesarean.

“They wouldn’t let her come into the operating room, but she refused to budge, for her patient,” Mrs Simmons said.

“She was one of the most determined forces in my nursing career.

“It’s amazing — she refused to talk about it. I spoke to her last year and told her she needed to tell me this stuff.”

Miss Davis, she added, was “a very forceful woman who believed in the importance of attention to detail, to documenting things, to professionalism — she worked hard and expected that from the rest of us”.

Her great-nephew Rudolph Cann, Warden of Pilots at the Department of Marine and Ports, remembered her prevailing at a time when “people of colour were not allowed to practise in the hospital”.

“She had a memory and mind that you could not imagine, and if you stepped out of line she very quickly put you in your place. At the same time, she was the kindest person in the world.”

After retiring from the Health Department she worked for Trimingham’s department store, Mr Cann said.

“She was nicknamed Checkpoint Charlie. She was the first person you saw in the door and the last person out.

“Upon retiring from there she just relaxed and dedicated her time to her family.”

Her father William Davis, a carpenter who helped lead workers in protest against their wages at the United States base, subsequently helped organise workers into a group that became the Bermuda Workers Association, later the Bermuda Industrial Union.

DelMonte Davis, her godson, recalled that Ms Davis’s mother, Isabella, was connected with the work of Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born figure in the Pan-African movement.

Mr Brown, a Progressive Labour Party MP, said of Miss Davis: “Her demeanour, her selflessness, were fully recognised by the community, as we saw just last year when she was honoured at the Emancipation Ceremony.”

Mr Brown said it would be “entirely appropriate to have a more permanent and fitting tribute to her”, such as a scholarship in her name.

Miss Davis diligently attended the Presbyterian Church in Warwick, where her funeral is to be held this Sunday at 3pm.