Hilda Bynoe

Dame Hilda Louisa Gibbs Bynoe, DBE (b. Crochu, Grenada, West Indies, 1921) was governor of Grenada (British Dependency) between 1967 - 1972. A former doctor and Hospital Administrator she is 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, Cariacou and Petit Martinique.

She spent most of her adult life as a teacher and doctor of medicine in Trinidad and Tobago.

Born in Crochu, she 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 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 at Bishop Anstey High School in Port of Spain, as a Science Student. In 1944 she left for Europe to study Medicine and graduated from London University's Royal Free Hospital, then from the London School of Medicine for Women in 1951.

While still a student, she met and married Peter 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.

In June 1968, she was appointed the First Woman Governor in the British Commonwealth and First Native Governor of her island home. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1969.

She also wrote poems, short stories, essays and vignettes. In 1990, she retired to continue her writing and to assist in the care of her granddaughters.

She continues as Patroness of several organizations, including the Caribbean College of Family Physicians.

Links

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 * Women in Power excerpt
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