Muriel Shipman

Muriel was born in Melton on 27th October 1879 to Wilson Eager and his wife Mary Jane. Wilson was medical superintendent at the County Asylum Melton from 1876 to 1897. Muriel had a younger brother Richard who also became a doctor.

On 23rd July 1901, Muriel was married at St Mary Abbot’s Kensington to Gervase Armstrong Shipman, youngest and only surviving son of the late Reverend William Shipman, rector of Melton for fourteen years from 1870 until his death in 1884. Gervase was an auctioneer and valuer who lived, before his marriage, at 2 Morden Villas, Melton Hill. Their first child, Dorothy Muriel, was born in 1902, followed by Eustace Trafford in 1904 and Robert Wilson in 1905.

The 1911 census shows Muriel and Gervase, together with their children, living with Wilson Eager, now a widower, at St Aubyns, Thoroughfare (Melton Hill), Woodbridge.

In November 1913, Muriel joined No.2 Suffolk Voluntary Aid Detachment and passed her first aid exam and in the spring of the following year, she went on to pass her nursing certificate. Just after war was declared, Muriel was sent to the grammar school in Woodbridge to help set up a Red Cross hospital; she worked part-time as the hospital moved to its various temporary homes in Woodbridge and continued to do so when it moved to its permanent home at Foxborough Hall in April 1915.

Muriel worked at the Hall until 1916, when she decided that the family came first. This did not mark the end of her nursing though, as in July 1917, she worked for two weeks full time at Northgate Street Red Cross Hospital, Bury St Edmunds, and then, from October to December 1917, she worked full-time in Sudbury. From May 1918 until Sept 1918 she worked at Maxillo Facial Hospital in Kennington, London – again, full time.

Muriel kept a diary throughout the war that described her life at the time:

“ May 12th (1915) message from Commandant at 11am to go to the Hospital. Left my spring cleaning! And arrived to find forty wounded men expected at 5.30pm. During my work here I was very tired and sometimes thought I should give it up. I had to get there at 9am, me generally walking two and a half miles all weathers returning at 9pm on foot, and during my two hours off duty had to return home to do my housekeeping, shopping etc.….”

“..on November 24th ( 1915) my work at the Hospital abruptly came to an end as Dorothy developed measles and I had to stay and nurse her, having dispensed with children’s maid in October.”

For her Red Cross work during the war, she was awarded one War Service Bar. Muriel continued to be involved with Red Cross and was a member of the committee in Woodbridge until she retired due to ill health in 1953. Muriel died on 30th June 1956.