Thomas MacDermot

Thomas MacDermot (26 June 1870 – 8 October 1933) He also published under the pseudonym Tom Redcam (derived from his surname spelled in reverse). He was the first Poet Laureate of Jamaica.

Early life Thomas Henry MacDermot was born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, the third of five children, and spent much of his childhood in Trelawny. He was educated at the Falmouth Academy and at the Church of England Grammar School in Kingston, Jamaica. Alongside his work as a journalist, he wrote two novels. The first, Becka’s Buckra Baby, is said to mark the beginning of modern Caribbean writing. MacDermot's poems were not collected into a single volume until 1951. He was posthumously proclaimed Jamaica's first Poet Laureate for the period 1910–33 by the Jamaican branch of the Poetry League.

MacDermot retired because of illness in 1922.

Death He died in an English nursing home in 1933, aged 63.