Mary Mariamne Gilbert on 'Ladybird'

An inscription on the album page reads 'Self on Ladybird.' The album was compiled by the sitter's mother and then later annotated by the sitter.

From an album compiled by Mrs Marianne Charlotte Isabelle Gilbert, wife of Colonel Walter Raleigh Gilbert of Priory House, Bodmin, Cornwall, and daughter of William Peters of Beckenham, Kent (later of Ashford House, Slaugham, Sussex).

Mary Mariamne [sic] Gilbert was born on 22 August 1851 and baptised in the parish church at Bodmin on 21 February 1852.

When the 1861 census was taken she was, together with her mother and younger sister Cecilia, visiting the Beckenham home of her grandfather, the banker William Peters.

In 1881 she was 29 years old and still unmarried, living at home with her parents at the Priory, Bodmin.

On 15 May 1884 at Bodmin she married army officer Wolstan Francis of the 46th Regiment, son of the late Clement Francis of Quy, Cambridgeshire (Homeward Mail from India, China and the East, 20 May 1884). The couple lived initially at the Hotel Angleterre in Cairo. They also at some point lived at Prince Patrick Terrace in Dublin.

When the census was taken in 1891 she and her husband were living at ‘Halgavor,’ a house near Bodmin with their two young children Mariamne Francis and John Clement Wolstan Francis. Wolstan Francis gave as his profession Captain in the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry.

In 1911 Major and Mrs Francis were living at the Mill House, Quy, Cambridgeshire.

On 20 October 1914 Mrs Francis began proceedings to obtain a judicial separation from her husband on the grounds of his unkindness and physical cruelty, which had begun on their honeymoon in Paris, and his more recent adultery (with a servant named Sarah Wolff). The petition was ‘dismissed on terms’ on 3 February 1916.

In 1939 Mrs Francis was living at Cuckfield in Sussex.

Mrs Mary Mariamne Francis died, aged 96, at Weston-super-Mare on 7 April 1948 (Wells Journal, 16 February 1948). She left an estate valued at £1723.

Photographed by the sitter's grandfather, the banker and amateur photographer William Peters.