Sarah's Genealogy Snippets: 'My Granny's a Diamond Jubilee Baby'

This week, our Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her sixty years on the throne.  In June 1897, my ancestors were celebrating the birth of the family's first Diamond Jubilee baby.  Maud Mary Shipway was born two days after Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Commemoration Day.  The weather must have been a lot better then, because E. H. Shepard, the artist, records the 22nd of June as being "one of the hottest days of the year" (Drawn from Life, 1961).

My grandmother was born at 3 Gladstone Terrace, Amberley, Gloucestershire.  The villagers commemorated their Queen's Diamond Jubilee by erecting a drinking fountain by the Parochial School and Amberley Inn.  Their memorial inscription reads: Amberley hereby commemorates the light and purity of the long and glorious reign of Queen Victoria, June 1897.  The memorial was nicknamed 'Light and Purity'.

Here is a photograph of my grandmother, Maud Mary Shipway, taken circa 1918.  She had spent some of the First World War working as a government examiner, inspecting fuses at a local munitions firm, Woodchester, Gloucestershire.  In her memoirs, Maudie 1897-1977, she writes:
I quite enjoyed this period in spite of the seriousness of the work.  We were paid £2 a week.