A veteran Girl Guides leader who became the island’s first black woman postmaster has died.

Janice Dill, who also worked for decades with the Salvation Army, was 88.

Ms Dill was part of a group of older Girl Guides from the Cedar Hill Land Rangers in Warwick sent to Britain in 1953 for a camp to mark the coronation of the Queen.

In 1955, she became leader of the First Heron Bay Rangers, and in 1970 she was sent to Britain for trainer education.

On that occasion, she was invited to Buckingham Palace for tea with 500 other guide leaders from around the world.

Ms Dill returned home to become a Brownie Guide trainer.

She was one of a group of ten to be the first black clerks in the Bermuda Post Office and rose to become postmaster.

Ms Dill was an early member of the Salvation Army and was appointed Corps Secretary of Cedar Hill in 1961.

She was appointed Corps Sergeant Major in 1968, and in 1972 was made an Envoy.

Ms Dill, a graduate of the Berkeley Institute, had to defer her dream of a college education to look after her younger brothers and sisters.

She enrolled at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada, after she took early retirement from the post office, aged 56, and studied social services, addiction, criminal justice and mental health.

Ms Dill returned to Bermuda after graduation and worked as the Salvation Army’s Director of Family Services for a decade.

She stayed on with the Salvation Army as a volunteer after she stepped down from the role in the early 2000s.