Ena Collymore-Woodstock: 103-y-o trailblazer going strong

At 103, Jamaica’s first female resident magistrate, Ena Collymore-Woodstock, keeps herself busy doing exercises via Zoom.

She is not one to keep still. During her very active legal career, she broke several glass ceilings as she ventured into territories that were considered male-dominated. When she saw a newspaper advertisement for applicants to fill a vacancy for a male clerk at the Sutton Street Resident Magistrate’s Court, she applied and was employed as a typist.

Collymore-Woodstock served in that capacity until 1943 when she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Services (ATS), the women’s branch of the British army. She became the first West Indian to become a radar operator and is today Britain’s oldest surviving female Second World War veteran.

After travelling in a boat from Jamaica to England, she was first offered a clerical job at the War Office, but she strongly protested as she wanted to be on the front line.

“After a few weeks, Mrs Collymore-Woodstock, who was then just 26, wrote an angry letter to Army bosses telling them: ‘I haven’t come all this way just to be stuck behind a typewriter’!” the Daily Mail reported her as saying in a full-length feature on Sunday.

“I wanted to be where the action was. I felt British, I was young and single, so why not go and fight? My generation of women were determined to prove we were capable. I helped show what women could achieve despite there being no female role models at senior level of society at the time,” she said.

BATHE TWICE A DAY

Collymore-Woodstock became Britain’s first black female radar operator. She and her team would radio their command post to inform them of enemy planes on the horizon, so that counter-attacks could be coordinated. She also served in Belgium nearer to the enemy’s turf, and according to her son Robert Woodstock, some of her Jamaican habits were hard to break.

“Being Jamaican, you have to sort of bathe every day, twice per day, so even though she was in Belgium and there was rationing of water and so on, she would always go and bathe first, and so some of the other girls would bathe once per week, so they would give her some of their water,” he said.

After serving in Belgium, she returned to England where she trained to become a barrister at London’s Gray’s Inn. She was called to the Bar in 1948, and upon her return to Jamaica two years later, was appointed the country’s first female clerk of the courts.

Collymore-Woodstock became Jamaica’s first female resident magistrate on August 7, 1959.

“It was a big thing. She used to sit in the Sutton Street Court and they would call people and people would come to the door and look in, because they had never seen a woman sitting on the Bench before,” her son said.

“It wasn’t so crowded, we didn’t have so much [women], Collymore-Woodstock told The Gleaner from her home in Barbados, as she reflected on her time as a judge.

The legal luminary married Horace Victor Woodstock on May 5, 1951 and together they produced two daughters and a son.

FAMILY A PRIORITY

Robert, who is an architect, said despite his mother’s hectic schedule, her family was a priority. He still recalls her getting up early to prepare breakfast for them every day, despite staying up late to do her paperwork. When he was boarding at DeCarteret College in Mandeville, he was envied by the other boys because his mother sent him a letter every week.

“She is a sort of jack of all trades, she does everything and does everything well. Growing up, she was a magistrate, she had her orderly and was in charge of court and all that, but she always found time to do other things, so she was deeply involved in the Girl Guides, she was chief commissioner of the Girl Guides for 10 years, she was involved in the Soroptomist, she was involved with YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) at one time, and you never ever thought that you were neglected because of all these things that she did,” he said.

The former resident magistrate’s daughter, Marguerite Woodstock-Riley, is an attorney and a Queen’s Counsel in Barbados. She told The Gleaner that her mother is an inspiration. Her other daughter, Careth, is an artist. Of her four grandchildren, three are attorneys and one is a social worker.

Collymore-Woodstock is featured in the book, Jamaican Women of Distinction: Holding Up more than Half the Sky, written by Dalea Bean. She is a member of the Order of Distinction Officer Class (OD), and a member of the British Empire (MBE). In a citation by the Jamaican Bar Association in 2017, the former judge was described as a woman before her time and “a forerunner for women who are now routinely called to the Bar in their superlative numbers”.

nadine.wilson@gleanerjm.com