"Jubilee" Sanitary washable wallpaper hangings 1887 / © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Click on the button above to listen or download on the Radio Brockley website to hear two unique celebrations of Queen Victoria's 1887 Jubilee, celebrations outside the official pomp and spectacle.
Miss Mary Wardell's Jubilee Picnic takes place in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, celebrating 50 years of her reign. This was a global celebration, as illustrated by the 'Jubilee' Sanitary Washable wallpaper pictured above - showing Victoria as the Queen Empress of her dominions, illustrated with popular stereotypes of their people and wild animals - including some delightful beavers carrying bundles of sticks.
Crown Princess Liliuokalani, niece of the Queen of the Hawaiian Islands, and destined to be the very last Queen of Hawaii, is one of many Royal guests invited to participate in two days of spectacular Jubilee celebrations taking place in London on June 20th and 21st.
A number of foreign royals are staying in the Alexandra Hotel, London, and it is there, on June 20th, that Princess Liliuokalani composes 'The Queen's Jubilee', her tribute to Queen Victoria. Celebrated in Hawaii as a gifted musician and composer of Hawaiian songs and chants, her composition is still a popular song in Hawaii and is often performed.
On June 21st, the second day of celebrations, Miss Wardell has a challenge; infectious disease is still rampant throughout Britain and how can she celebrate the Queen's Jubilee in her Convalescent Home for Scarlet Fever, with celebrants who are seriously unwell and who must be in strict isolation? But she is, as always, determined.
She organises a picnic on the lawn outside the Convalescent Home - now Eastgate House at the RNOH. There is a Jubilee cake donated by a local baker, and a little ceremonial planting by child patients of a rose, a thistle, and a shamrock. As the1889 'Girl's Own Paper' ( https://www.victorianvoices.net) records:
"Adults and children, nurses and servants, Matron and Sister, formed a goodly company, however, and "the lame, the halt, and the blind", managed to gather to the feast..."
Listen to this evocation of a very special celebration, beautifully read by former RNOH patient and artist Anne-Marie Creamer, and narrated by Radio Brockley award winning broadcaster Keith Reeve, both pictured below. Click on the images for more details.
Anne-Marie Creamer is a British artist based in London whose works experiments with film, fiction drawing and theatre. She has a longstanding interest in the ways stories are entangled in place, and has exhibited internationally. She is a Lecturer and researcher at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London working in the Fine Art department. She was a patient on Ward 4 at RNOH in 2018 treated for a sacral Giant Cell Tumour, and remains under permanent treatment shared now with UCLH under The London Sarcoma Service. Since her time at Stanmore she has spoken about vulnerability, most recently at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway. She has Convenor of HEARD, the first medical humanities research hub within an UK art school context focusing on Art and Design in relation to health. She is developing a story-telling project on the patient-clinician relationship with researchers from the Bethlam Gallery (Maudsley NHS Trust) and is researching a cultural history of the spine, which may take some time.
Keith Reeve was first an RNOH patient in 1968, and since 2016 has been a part time employee. He commenced volunteering for their hospital Radio Brockley in 1977, joining shortly after his last period as a patient at the hospital, and has been actively involved in the multi-award winning station ever since. In 2016 he was awarded the Hospital Broadcasting Associations “John Whitney Award” for his outstanding contribution to UK hospital radio. He also presents a show on Potters Bar Community Radio.
Pegleg Productions warmly thanks the Radio Brockley team, the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore and all those who generously volunteered to take part.
Cast in order of performance:
Narrator : Keith Reeve
The Girl's Own Paper,1889: Anne-Marie Creamer
Sound Design:Louis Morand https://www.louismorandsound.com/
"Queen's Jubilee" by Queen Liliuokalani performed by the Honolulu Boy Choir, "The Voices of Aloha" / 1978
