Dame Hilda Louisa Bynoe

Did You Know?

 Dame Hilda Louisa Bynoe was THE FIRST WOMAN TO BECOME GOVERNOR OF THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS – Governor of Grenada between 1967 and 1972

Born in Crochu, Grenada, West Indies, Bynoe was educated at the village school, where her father, Thomas Joseph Gibbs, was headmaster and where her mother, sister and aunts had at one time or the other been teachers, and at St. Joseph’s Convent, the island’s only Roman Catholic Secondary School for girls. The first few years of adulthood were spent as a teacher at the Convent of St. Joseph in San Fernando, Trinidad, and later at Bishop Anstey High School in Port of Spain, Trinidad, as a science student. In 1944 she left for Europe to study Medicine and graduated from the University of London’s Royal Free Hospital, then the London School of Medicine for Women, in 1951.

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While still a student, she met and married Peter Cecil Alexander Bynoe, a Trinidadian RAF Officer; they had two sons, Roland and Michael. The Bynoe family returned to the West Indies in 1953 and Hilda Bynoe served in Guyana and Trinidad for the next fifteen years.

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 In June 1968, she was appointed Governor of Grenada, the first woman governor in the British Commonwealth and the first Grenada native to occupy the post. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1969.

A doctor and hospital administrator, Bynoe was, so far, the only woman to have been governor of one of the British Dependencies, Hilda Bynoe was the first woman Governor of a Commonwealth of Nations country, becoming Governor of Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique. She spent most of her adult life as a teacher and Doctor of Medicine in Trinidad and Tobago.

Dr Hilda Bynoe was appointed as one of the very first local governors in the Caribbean in the years just before formal independence, and the first woman and black woman to be appointed a governor anywhere in the Commonwealth.

All previous governors had been white, male and British. The circumstances of her governorship in Grenada placed her at the heart of local, region and international change and later of conflicts.

Based on interviews with Dame Hilda, Merle Collins explores the wider themes of ancestry, the small nation state and regional identity and race in Dr. Bynoe’s conception of her role. It provides an insightful portrayal of not just an exceptional woman, but the emergence of a new Caribbean middle class, many of whom emigrated to the UK in the 1940’s and 1950’s, a journey rarely describes from a female perspective.

Dame Hilda Bynoe is a distinguished and pioneering Caribbean woman who contributed in many ways to the region’s development through her work in education, medicine and government. Renowned for her dedication and public service, she was instrumental in developing the School of Arts and Sciences at St George’s University in Grenada when it was just a medical school. She was also the first female physician to practice in the interior of Guyana. She found herself in conflict with the Gairy regime and the politics of that period which caused her to retire early from her post.

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One of the few female general practitioners in the Caribbean at the time, she made a significant contribution to the promotion of primary healthcare. In Guyana, she was known as the ‘Lady Health Officer’, as she and her team would visit antenatal clinics for pregnant women in rural areas, to determine for example, when they were due to deliver, and if a district delivery was possible, or if they needed to go to the hospital.

Her private practice in Trinidad placed special emphasis on psychosomatic illnesses. Even while she ran her private practice, she served as the District Medical Officer for Diego Martin. This involved offering primary healthcare for the many residents in the areas of Diego Martin, Maraval, St James and Carenage. Possessing a truly caring spirit, she also volunteered with a home for convalescent children in Diego Martin.

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In 1990, she retired to continue her writing and to assist in the care of her granddaughters Olukemi and Nandi. She continued as Patroness of several organizations, including the Caribbean College of Family Physicians, the John Hayes Memorial Kidney Foundation and the Caribbean Women’s Association. She died, aged 91, in Trinidad

This Daughter of the Soil encourages young people to go out and make the best of their future, affirming that, “Your legacy could be a world which you have helped to shape.”

She passed away on April 6th, 2013 at the age of 91.

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