CARNIVALS are being held in a number of Oxfordshire towns this summer, as they have for many years.

One of the longest-running and most successful has been at Witney.

This photograph left shows one of the floats in the street procession held in about 1951.

The float, entitled Women through the Ages, featured employees from the Swan Laundry, which still operates in the town today.

The picture was sent in by Elsie Cameron. Then Elsie Brookes, she is on the extreme left.

She appeared as Emmeline Pankhurst, above, one of the leaders of the suffragettes, who campaigned to get women the vote.

Mrs Cameron, of Nuffield Close, Bicester, writes: “I think we came first or second in the competition for the best float.

“The young lady in the sou’wester was my friend from North Leigh. Her surname was Hale, but I can’t remember her Christian name.

“Can any of your readers recognise themselves?”

Although we don’t know the names of any of the other participants, we can see that those in front were portraying Nell Gwynne, mistress to King Charles II, Mrs Astor, who survived the sinking of the Titanic, and Amy Johnson, the first women to fly alone from Britain to Australia.

Mrs Cameron has enclosed two other items of interest – a reference for her father in 1912 and the bill for her sister’s funeral in 1932.

The reference, signed by farmer Mr H Hopkins, reads: “This is to certify that Leonard Brookes has worked for me, nearly four years, and I have always found him honest and straightforward.

“I pay him 14s a week wages in the summer and 12s in the winter, but he loses his time on wet days.”

The bill for burying Mrs Cameron’s sister, Margaret, who died aged 15 months, totalled £2 18s 6d – a polished elm coffin with nickel fittings cost £2 10s and grave and interment fees were 8s 6d.

The average cost of a funeral today is more than £3,000!