Historical and Art Medals, Numismatic Books

20th Century, Margaret McMillan Memorial Medal, a silver-gilt award, unsigned, bust three-quarters left, rev. legend, named (Muriel Nichol, Member of Parliament for Bradford North 1945-50, for Her Great services as Member of the National Appeal Committee 1957), 76mm. Test mark on edge, otherwise extremely fine, very rare (£80-100)

Muriel Edith Nichol (b.1893), née Wallhead, daughter of Richard Wallhead, the Independent Labour Party chairman 1920-2 and MP for Merthyr 1922-34. A teacher, she stood unsucessfully in the 1935 election for Bradford North and later served as chair of Welwyn Garden City UDC, 1937-45. She won the Bradford North seat for Labour at the 1945 election but lost it in 1950 after boundary changes.

Margaret McMillan (1860-1931), born in Westchester county, NY but who grew up in her family’s native Inverness, became an early Christian Socialist. In 1892 she and her sister Rachel joined Dr James Kerr, Bradford's school medical officer, to carry out the first medical inspection of elementary school children in Britain. Kerr and McMillan published a report on the medical problems that they found and began a campaign to improve the health of children by arguing that local authorities should install bathrooms, improve ventilation and supply free school meals. Together with Katharine Glasier (1867-1950), a close confidante of Emmeline Pankhurst, they led the campaign for free school meals, which became an Act of Parliament in 1906. The McMillans opened school clinics and nurseries at Bow, Deptford and Peckham and Margaret opened the Rachel McMillan College to train nurses and teachers in Deptford in 1930. Katharine Glasier established the McMillan Memorial Fund, which raised nearly £250,000 to build the Margaret McMillan Memorial College at Bradford, opened in 1954