Bertha Carr Rider was born in 1880 in London, the daughter of Edwin George Rider, Secretary of the Railway Clearing House, and Alice Maria Thorne. She was educated at the North London Collegiate School, followed by a year at University College, London, before coming to Girton from 1901 to study Classics, gaining a II/2 in Part I of the Tripos in 1904. She achieved an MA from London University in 1906 and a D.Litt. from London in 1913. She was a Classics Lecturer at Westfield College, London, from 1904 to 1906 and a Professor at the British Institute in Paris from 1906 to 1908. She was then a Lecturer for the Société des Langues Etrangères at the Sorbonne and an Exchange Professor at the École Normale, Gross–Lichterfelde, Berlin, I909–I0. She taught Classics and Ancient History at Chapin School, New York City and also worked for the USA War Department in 1916. Bertha Carr Rider married Frederick Charles Stephens in September 1924: they had one son and one daughter. By the mid-1940s she was living in Banstead, Surrey. She died in 1964.
[Notes drawn from Girton College Register Vol. I.]