Woodlawn’s Lady Doctor, Bertha Beckwith

During the late 1800s, many young people from the West Cornwallis area left their home villages and moved to the United States. Some of these Nova Scotians became rich and famous in their adopted country.

Bertha Delight Beckwith was born in Woodlawn April 18, 1875, one of nine children and the daughter of Samuel and Jemima (nee Saunders) Beckwith and the granddaughter of one of the first settlers in Berwick, Samuel Beckwith Jr.

Bertha’s father was a farmer and a fisherman and the family homestead was located at the corner of the Shore Road, now called the Nollet Beckwith Road, named after her brother , born November 18, 1876. Nollet continued to operate the farm until his demise in 1942. With the exception of Nollet, all the surviving children eventually established their homes in the United States.

Bertha was very career-minded and, when her education drew to an end at the Burlington school, she moved to Saint John, New Brunswick to further her studies. Moving to the U.S., Bertha specialized in medicine, earning her degree as a registered nurse. Attending New York University, where she received her doctorate in medicine, Bertha was not the first person in the Beckwith family to become a doctor. She was certainly the first woman of that family, the first woman of West Cornwallis and among very few women in Canada overall to attain such status in an era when women did not have the right to vote and were discouraged from becoming doctors. Some universities flatly refused to accept women and others made their terms so difficult few women pursued their education in medicine beyond nursing.

World War I was an especially brutal war, but the large number of casualties and desperate calls for more doctors was not enough to override the mandate of “male doctors only” in the military. Dr. Bertha Beckwith was more concerned with aiding the victims and, rather than not participate at all, she chose to go overseas and serve as a nurse. She was considered to be the first female doctor to practice the art of physiotherapy on wounded soldiers.

If Dr. Beckwith had witnessed more than her share of atrocities, she never said so, but shortly after her return to the U.S., she gave up practicing medicine and became an actress on the New York stage. The New York Times newspaper reported “Miss Bertha Delight Beckwith, a talented Nova Scotia girl, is making a name for herself in New York City. She appeared in musical monologues and has a most pleasing personality and demonstrated great ability. The Times wishes the talented young woman success in unbounded measure.”

A service held at Riverside Church in New York City indicates Bertha Beckwith probably spent the remainder of her life there prior to her demise in August of 1967. She now rests in the Burlington Cemetery, near the home where she was born.