Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe (1884-1968) was born on 10 February 1884, at Turua, near Thames, in the Waikato. Her father was Richard Wellington Bagnall and her mother Lydia Chadwick Lamb. She had three siblings, Ella, Edith and Stanley. She lived at Turua until her marriage in 1913 to Wallace Fletcher Metcalfe, a descendant of Fletcher Christian who led the mutiny on the Bounty. They moved to their farm, Kiritahi, which was near Te Araroa on the East Coast of the North Island. They had three children: Richard (Dick), Muriel (Wendy) and Beverly (Bev). In her retirement, Shirley wrote the story of her life in three Warwick Jotters. Shirley died in 1968 and is buried, with Wallace, in the Alexander Redoubt Cemetery, near Tuakau.