Cleopatra White

Cleopatra White (1898–1987) was a Belizean nurse, social worker and community leader. She was the second matron of the Black Cross Nurses Association. She was one of the first formally trained nurses in Belize and was the first rural health practitioner in Gales Point and the Manatee River area of Belize. She also organized the first village council in the country, in Gales Point, recognizing the need for managing village affairs, especially in the case of hurricanes. Her model was replicated throughout Belize, and she is credited with the idea for the present village council system. She served in the relief efforts of the 1931 hurricane, Hurricane Janet (1955) and Hurricane Hattie (1961). She received a Victoria Medal in 1953 for her services from the British crown and in 1958, went to England to accept the medal of Member of the Order of the British Empire.

Cleopatra Eugenie White was born on 28 June 1898 in British Honduras, now Belize, to Joseph and Maria White. Her mother died when she was a child and she was raised by her father with one sister. White attended Miss Braddick’s School for Girls and Ebenezer Primary School before pursuing nursing. In 1919, when she was 21 White followed her mentor, Vivian Seay, a fellow nurse, into organizing and promoting the Black Cross Nurses Association as a home health care organization. Officially founded in 1920, with untrained personnel, the organization began in its second year to offer general nursing and maternity classes under Dr. K.M.B. Simon, the government medical officer, and Amy Clare Woods George, a certified British Honduran midwife who had studied in Britain.

In 1931, after the hurricane, White helped set up the nursing facilities and supply stations for the relief effort. The barracks were located at what is now the Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport. In the 1940s, White and others began training for public health services. In 1943, she attended four-hour lectures each morning and completed rounds at the hospital for four hours each afternoon to obtain practical training. She graduated a year later and qualified as a rural health nurse. Initially she was appointed to serve in Double Head Cabbage village, but then moved on to Gales Point and the Manatee River area of Belize, where she spent most of the next sixteen years. She was the first rural health nurse in the area and her duties soon expanded into areas of social work. She became a mentor to many of the village children and taught hygiene practices to many young women.

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