Gertrude Hind, poet, musician and dramatist, was born at 21 College Street South, Belfast, the eldest daughter of a family of 3 sons and 2 daughters of John Hind and his wife Margaret Coey McVickers; her father was a mill manager and engineer.  She was named after her paternal grandmother, Gertrude Heron and her aunt Elizabeth.

One of her plays, The Warming Pan, a comedy, was performed in Belfast in 1933. She lived in Carrickfergus for a time, enjoying sailing her boat on Belfast Lough. She was first violinist in the Belfast Philharmonic Orchestra, and judged original poems by young people at Larne Music Festival. She published, under the name Elizabeth Shane, three volumes of poems, Tales of the Donegal Coast and Islands (1921); By Bog and Sea in Donegal (1923); and Piper's Tunes (from Down and Antrim) (1927). Some of her poems were set to music; collections were produced in two volumes in 1945.

Later in her life she went to live as a companion to a Miss Greer of Glassdrummond House, near Annalong in County Down, who was an aunt to the Lowry family of the Blessingbourne Estate in Fivemiletown. Gertrude Hind died at Glassdrummond.

Her grandfather, William Marsden Hind, was born at Larne, and educated at the Belfast Academy and the University of Dublin where he graduated in 1839. That same year he took up the Curacy at Derriaghy in County Down; it was here that he began his lifelong study of botany and plants. In 1845 he moved to England and held various ecclesial positions while also publishing articles in learned botanical journals and other publications before producing his magnum opus, The Flora of Suffolk, in 1889 while Rector of Honington.

Elizabeth Hind’s brother John became a bishop, and a sister, Adelaide, was a missionary.