The History of Policing in Bermuda is the first book documenting the evolution of policing on the Island. This is the fourth in a series of articles that will appear in The Royal Gazette in advance of the book’s sale at local stores.

When the Second World War broke out in 1939, there were only 45 motor vehicles in Bermuda, none of which were police cars. By comparison, there was an estimated 20,000 pedal cycles on the roads and 550 horse-drawn carriages; today there are probably less than three dozen carriages in use.

The main cause of accidents at this time was speeding … on pedal cycles! A major gripe of the cyclists themselves was that they kept getting their wheels caught in the railway lines that ran along Front Street.

The effect of the war on Bermuda was immediate; tourism, and with it the economy, quickly nosedived, and the repercussions were soon felt by everyone. Police officers for example, had their salaries cut by ten per cent.

Fortunately this state of affairs did not last too long. By 1941 Britain had signed a land lease agreement with the United States, and work began on building two US bases here. The wages of officers were soon returned to their pre-war levels!

A major task for officers during the war years was to keep in line several thousand American Navy Seabees, who had been brought over to the Island to construct the bases. Navy court martials were convened at Kindley Air Force Base, and officers were frequently required to testify.

The First Police Car

By mid-1942 the estimated number of motor vehicles on the Island had spiralled to over 1,000, though most were military. To keep up with developments, the police paid £375 for a Dodge sedan motor car. However it was solely for the use of the Commissioner!

Nazi In Our Midst

I am somewhat getting ahead of myself, and I need to return to events in October 1940, when the SS Excambion berthed in Bermuda.

Among the passengers on board was a German national by the name of Otto Strasser, who also happened to be travelling on a forged Swedish passport.

What made Strasser so interesting to the British military and the Bermuda police was that he was a known Nazi; not just any Nazi, but a founding member of the Party together with Adolf Hitler. He had even helped to develop their platforms and policies together with such figures as Goering, Himmler and Goebbels.

Strasser had allegedly broken with the Party and was on the run, and he was seeking political asylum in Canada in exchange for information that he offered to impart to British Intelligence (the United States was yet to enter the war).

During his six months on the Island, Strasser was at liberty; he resided for a while in a house opposite the Cathedral in Hamilton.

Once word leaked out about his existence, renowned British author and journalist, HG Wells, sailed to Bermuda specifically to interview him. He demanded to know why Strasser, “a bloodstained Nazi, was not in a concentration camp”.

Wells subsequently wrote a damning article about Strasser, which later appeared in the Miami News.

In 1941 Strasser was granted the asylum that he craved, and he sailed to Canada, where he took up residence in Paradise, Nova Scotia.

The Stapleton Murder

Much more shocking and of particular interest to Bermudians at the time (these were the days before television), was the murder of Margaret Stapleton.

Miss Stapleton was a censorette, one of a number of young British women brought to Bermuda during the Second World War, who worked in the basement of the former Hamilton Hotel.

Their job was to discreetly open and read foreign mail being sent from Europe (via Bermuda) to North America. Basically they were looking for any information whatsoever about planned enemy (Axis) activities.

In July 1941, Miss Stapleton visited friends at Bleak House on Palmetto Road, Devonshire (the same residence where in September 1972, Police Commissioner George Duckett was murdered). When it came time to leave, she declined an escort and began pushing her pedal-cycle along the moonlit railway track towards the train stop at Toby’s Lane, just east of Dock Hill. However, she never caught the train, and when her flatmates telephoned to say that she had not returned home, her friends began to search for her.

Miss Stapleton’s half-naked body was later found among the bushes near Prospect Railway Halt. She had been raped and beaten to death. The resultant coroner’s inquest in August 1942 named one 23-year-old Harry Sousa, a soldier in the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps, as the murderer. Police knew exactly where to find Sousa; he was lodging next door in the Hamilton jail (now the site of the main post office), having recently begun serving a ten-year sentence for rape.

Sousa’s trial contained a number of sensational twists and turns, and even the Commissioner was called to testify when it was claimed that he had tried to bribe a witness, which he hotly denied. Sousa was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to hang on the anniversary of Miss Stapleton’s death.

But that wasn’t the end of events. Just hours before the sentence was due to be carried out, Sousa escaped under suspicious circumstances. Less than 24 hours later however, he was back in prison custody after having been flushed out of his hiding place — a cave near Black Watch Pass.

He was hung on July 7, 1943, and it would be another 24 years before Bermuda’s final executions (those of Erskine Durrant “Buck” Burrows and Larry Tacklyn) took place in 1977.

Next week: Read the concluding article in this series, about the first policewomen, the birth of the Marine Section, and the Belco riot from the police perspective.

The History of Policing In Bermuda, which covers the period 1620 to 2014, is available through the Bookmart at Brown & Company, and other book distributors.