Copeland John Stamers (1802–1866) was a Bermudian-born salt proprietor and public official who anchored the family’s fortunes in Turks & Caicos. Born in Bermuda in 1802, he was living on Salt Cay by 1825, where he owned salt properties; in 1830 he married Caroline S. Smith of Bermuda, and they had three children: Benjamin H., Copeland Place, and Susanna D. He died in August 1866. His will left “all of my lands situated at the Caicos Islands,” including Breezy Point (East Caicos)—described as “one portion by original grant containing 1,360 acres … together with all horned cattle & other stock … and all houses and buildings”—to be divided equally among the three children; a court-ordered estate inventory followed in January 1867. Copeland also served on the Legislative Council of the Turks & Caicos Islands, underscoring his status in the colony. In 1871, the three children took a 99-year government lease over additional East Caicos land and, nine months later, sold 1,288 acres at Breezy Point plus the lease to South Caicos salt merchant John N. Reynolds—a transaction that fixed the Stamers name in the island’s land records. Collectively, Copeland’s salt holdings, legislative role, and multi-thousand-acre estate explain how his son Benjamin could afford fee-paying medical study in Edinburgh and abroad.
Copeland John Stamers was the son of Benjamin Stamers and Deborah (née Place) Stamers; after Benjamin’s death, Deborah married Thomas Ingham Jr. (making Ingham Copeland’s stepfather). The article explicitly names Deborah’s three children from her first marriage to Benjamin—Elizabeth M. Stamers, Jane S. Stamers, and Copeland John Stamers—and also notes that in 1823 the administration of Thomas Ingham Jr.’s estate was granted to his stepson, Copeland John Stamers.
Dr. Benjamin Henry Stamers, M.D., L.R.C.S. (c.1831–1886) was a Caribbean-born physician whose education and career traced the routes of a nineteenth-century Atlantic professional. Born on Turks Island, he spent part of his youth in Bermuda before leaving for medical study in Europe; he qualified L.R.C.S. (Edinburgh) and held an M.D. (Edinburgh). In January 1855, amid the Crimean War, he was commissioned Assistant Surgeon in the East Kent Militia and soon after served in Malta, then a major British hospital base for the conflict.
By the early 1870s Stamers had settled as a physician in Spanish Town, Jamaica, where the 1878 city directory lists him—“Stamers, Benjamin Henry, M.D., L.R.C.S., Whitechurch c Ellis, h(ouse) same”—placing him both in practice and residence at that corner address. A journey to Colón (Panama) late in the decade proved fateful: he contracted severe malarial fever, resigned from Jamaican service in 1879, and never fully recovered. He died in Spanish Town on 19 February 1886, aged 55; contemporary notices remembered him as widely esteemed in the community he served.
His ability to obtain Edinburgh surgical credentials and an M.D. in Canada speaks to family means and standing. Edinburgh was a premier medical centre actively drawing fee-paying students from the West Indies in this period—“arriving with letters of introduction in hand and money in their pockets”—so reaching that training track usually required resources, connections, or both. Briefly, those resources are visible in his father Copeland John Stamers: a Bermudian-born salt proprietor in the Turks & Caicos, member of the Legislative Council, and holder of extensive land at Breezy Point (East Caicos). His 1866 will left the Breezy Point property to his three children—Benjamin H. Stamers, Copeland Place Stamers, and Susanna D. Stamers—and in 1871 the children leased additional government land and sold the Breezy Point tract, reflecting a household positioned among the colony’s landholding and administrative elite.
Stamers’s schooling points straight to a family with means and ambition. Earning the L.R.C.S. in Edinburgh—then one of the world’s foremost medical centres—meant years of paid study far from home, and his additional M.D. in Canada (often taken at institutions such as McGill) burnished his credentials and gave him flexibility across the empire. That British licentiate plus North American doctorate was a well-trodden route for colonial physicians seeking status and mobility, and it was beyond the reach of ordinary families. For a young man from the Turks Islands to make that journey suggests resources, connections, or patronage—more in line with a merchant or professional household tied to regional trade or administration than with the labouring class. In short, his education places him firmly within the aspiring colonial professional class, using medicine—like law or the church—as a vehicle for advancement and social integration between the Caribbean and Britain.
Sources: Malta RAMC officer profile for B.H. Stamers (training, postings, Jamaica service, death); Spanish Town Directory 1878 (practice location); Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh heritage note (on colonial/West Indian students in Edinburgh); and Times of the Islands (on Copeland John Stamers’s office, lands, will, and named children).
Benjamin Henry Stamers married Elizabeth Quinton and they had around 9 children. Including Jessie Bethune Stamers - 1858–Deceased married Archdeacon John Henry Heron Graham, aged 22.
https://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/d/dstcat01.htm
https://www.maltaramc.com/regsurg/s/stamersbh.html
https://www.timespub.tc/2023/12/a-property-puzzle/
https://www.rcpe.ac.uk/heritage/heritage-blog/slavery-medicine-and-philanthropy-scotland
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~bmuwgw/copelandgen.htm
What he likely witnessed in Malta (1855–56)
Stamers reached Malta as an Assistant Surgeon during the Crimean War, when the island was flooded with sick and wounded evacuated from the front. Bed capacity was rapidly expanded—from 120 promised beds to roughly 2,500 across the Lazaretto on Manoel Island, the Royal Naval Hospital at Bighi, and other improvised sites—while Florence Nightingale’s team passed through on their way east. Surgeons grappled with cholera outbreaks among troops and passengers, over-crowded barracks, and the limits of pre-antiseptic care; it’s the moment Malta earned its nickname, the “Nurse of the Mediterranean.”
Why Jamaica—and how Turks, Bermuda, and Jamaica were linked
Settling in Spanish Town in the early 1870s made sense for a British-trained doctor: the town had been Jamaica’s capital until 1872 and remained an administrative and professional center even after government functions shifted to Kingston. Turks & Caicos, where Stamers was born, had long been tied into Jamaican governance and markets; official despatches from the Turks Islands to the Governor of Jamaica run through the 1850s, and in 1874 the Turks & Caicos formally became a dependency of Jamaica—so professional and family networks, as well as shipping, already knit the places together. Regular Royal Mail steamers and postal links connected Kingston with Central and South America via the Isthmus of Panama, making Jamaica a natural base for a peripatetic colonial physician.
Why Colón (Panama) was on his path—and the Jamaica connection
Colón (then often called Aspinwall) was founded in 1850 as the Atlantic terminus of the Panama Railroad (opened 1855), the fastest trans-isthmian route for people, mail, and cargo. Thousands of West Indians—Jamaicans in particular—moved through or worked there during the railroad era and later canal attempts, creating a steady flow of patients and risk: malaria and yellow fever made Colón notorious. From Jamaica, regular steamship services and postal routes fed that traffic, so a Jamaican-based doctor like Stamers could plausibly travel to Colón to attend expatriate communities or shipboard passengers—where, per his service record, he contracted severe malarial fever before resigning in 1879.
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