Posts Tagged nurse pine
Suffrage Stories: The Mystery of Nurse Pine’s Medal – Solved
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on April 27, 2024
Nurse Pine’s Medal ‘For Duty’ sold at auction on 26 April 2024
Very nearly 8 years ago – on 26 May 2016 – I published a post titled The Mystery of Nurse Pine’s Medal. I knew that Nurse Catherine Pine, who had for many years attended Emmeline Pankhurst, had been given a medal by the Women’s Social and Political Union and I knew that she had bequeathed it to a now defunct nursing organisation but, as my post makes clear, I didn’t know what the medal looked like or what had happened to it.
Most satisfactorily, the mystery is now solved. The medal, resplendent with its bars, was given to Nurse Pine ‘For Duty’ (rather than ‘For Valour’, as denoted on the Hunger-Strike Medals). She did indeed leave it in her will to the ‘History Section’ of the British College of Nursing, who had it in their possession until the BCN, a charity, dissolved in chaos in 1956. It would seem that the contents of the ‘History Section’, along with the furniture and fittings of the BCN building, were sold off to any member interested – perhaps at a valuation set by Harrods, who had been appointed as valuers.
The medal resurfaced in 1990 when put up for sale at Sothebys, where it failed to sell, reappearing at a specialist medal sale in 2008 when it was bought by an American dealer. He sold it to an American collector of suffrage memorabilia, who has since died and whose collection was auctioned yesterday in Dallas, Texas, by Heritage Auctions.
I have known since the beginning of this year that the medal was coming up for sale and tried to interest various institutions in this country, but none had sufficient funds to consider acquiring it. However, for the last couple or so years I have been in touch with a US academic, Hope Elizabeth May, who has taken a legal, philosophical, and personal interest in the fate of Nurse Pine’s medal. She and I recorded a podcast about Nurse Pine and her medal a few days ago – on 21 April. You can listen to it here:
I am pleased to say that Hope Elizabeth May is now the ‘steward’, as she rather delightfully terms it, of Nurse Pine’s medal. She has interesting plans to use it for educational purposes, not only to promote interest in suffrage history but also to discuss philosophical questions about autonomy and its implications for estate law. I think we can be assured that the intention behind Nurse Pine’s bequest to the BCN will now be honoured.
Since being able to view the medal so clearly (thanks to the auctioneer’s image) I researched the dates on all the bars and established (thanks to the information contained in the entry on Emmeline Pankhurst in my The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, in which I had carefully noted from the Home Office papers the precise dates on which she was released from prison) that all except the first represented a date in which Nurse Pine had taken over the care of Mrs Pankhurst. Hope Elizabeth May suggested, and I am sure she is correct, that the first bar – engraved ’25 March 1913′ – refers to care taken of Sylvia Pankhurst, who was released from Holloway on 21 March after being forcibly fed for several weeks while on hunger-and thirst-strike.
For an article about Nurse Pine, written in the centenary year of 2018, see the City University’s City Magazine Although the nature of the medal was still then unknown to the writer – and to me – it does tell something of the life of Nurse Catherine Pine.
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Suffrage Stories: The Mystery of Nurse Pine’s Medal
Posted by womanandhersphere in Suffrage Stories on May 26, 2016
While undertaking some research for a talk I gave a couple of weeks ago at the Royal College of Nursing I encountered an intriguing mystery. What happened to Nurse Pine’s ‘suffragette medal’.
Nurse Catherine Pine
Nurse Catherine Pine (1864-1941) was the Pankhurst family’s special nursing attendant – she had cared for Mrs Pankhurst’s son, Harry, who died in her nursing home in 1910. She ran the nursing home at 9 Pembridge Gardens, Notting Hill, and it was here that many suffragettes were taken after release from prison after hunger striking.
Nurse Catherine Pine ran her nursing home in this large Kensington villa
Mrs Pankhurst was among the many who recovered from imprisonment in the care of Nurse Pine. Although the authorities never dared force feed Mrs Pankhurst, she was desperately weakened by successive hunger strikes. See here for a photograph of Nurse Pine tending Mrs Pankhurst.
In her will Nurse Pine left what she described as her ‘suffragette medal’ to ‘the History Section of the British College of Nursing.’. Now the term ‘suffragette medal’ is usually used to describe a medal given by the WSPU to those who went on hunger strike – and I knew that there was no evidence that Nurse Pine was ever imprisoned – so began to wonder ‘what did she mean by her “suffragette medal”?’
Delving a little further I came across a note in a March 1942 issue of the British Journal of Nursing that tells us that ‘A few months ago we announced that the late Sister Catherine Pine had bequeathed to the British College of Nurses the priceless historic Medal and Bars bestowed upon her by the late Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, for her devoted services to her when released from durance vile. As time goes on this gift we may hope will be valued at its true worth by women all over the world.’
Could this have been a medal specially struck for Nurse Pine? Perhaps it was. If so, I wonder what the ‘Bars’ represented? Did they commemorate the number of times she admitted to Mrs Pankhurst to her nursing home? That really does seem very fanciful.
In terms of the suffragette campaign, the description ‘Medal and bars’ usually refers to a ‘hunger strike medal’, with bars added for each subsequent hunger strike.
The only explanation I could think of was that it was Mrs Pankhurst’s own medal – given to Nurse Pine in thanks. Noting that the British College of Nurses (an organisation that was not the Royal College of Nursing) closed in 1956, I wondered what had happened to Nurse Pine’s bequest.
Now, in the same 1942 issue, the British Journal of Nursing recorded that:
Miss Mary Hilliard, a gentle, very valiant suffragette, has bestowed as a gift to the College the fine linen handkerchief, signed by and embroidered by all the gallant women who suffered imprisonment for conscience sake, in support of the enfranchisement of women in Holloway prison in March 1912. It displays 67 signatures embroidered in various colours, and all that remains is to offer a warm vote of thanks to Miss Mary Hilliard, R.B.N.A., and to await the time when this historic gift can he suitably framed and placed in the History Section of the British College of Nurses, where its unique value will be appreciated.’
In fact I know that that embroidered handkerchief is now housed in Priest House, the museum of the Sussex Archaeological Society in West Hoathly, Sussex, and so I emailed the Custodian to enquire how it had arrived with them. He was able to tell me that it had surfaced at a West Hoathly jumble sale around 1970 where, in fact, nobody had bought it and it was rescued off a bonfire at the last minute. I must say I can’t see such an artefact being a jumble sale wallflower nowadays. However, nobody knows by what means the handkerchief ended up in West Hoathly after the closure of the British College of Nurses.
The archive of the British College of Nurses is held by King’s College University of London and their archivist has kindly checked for me and nothing resembling Nurse Pine’s’ suffragette medal’ is held by them.
So were the contents of its ‘History Section’ scattered when the British College of Nurses closed? What happened to Nurse Pine’s medal? Is it, in fact, one of the two medals presented to Mrs Pankhurst that are now held in public collections – one in the Houses of Parliament and one in the Museum of London?
This also doesn’t seem to be the answer. Neither of the medals has added ‘bars’. The one held by the Museum of London was given to Mrs Pankhurst in recognition of her hunger strike in Holloway beginning on 1 March 1912 and Beverley Cook, the Museum’s curator, tells me that, although the provenance is a little unclear, it is likely to have arrived at the Museum in 1950 along with the rest of the Suffragette Fellowship archive.
The other medal awarded to Mrs Pankhurst is not a ‘hunger strike’ medal – it predates the employment of the hunger strike – but commemorates her imprisonment in Holloway in October 1908 after being convicted for inciting crowds to ‘Rush the House of Commons’. It is now held by the Parliamentary Art Collection in the House of Commons – see here.
Could there have been a third medal awarded by the WSPU to Mrs Pankhurst? She certainly went on more than one hunger strike and would have merited ‘bars’, which the Museum of London medal doesn’t have. Could she then have ‘bestowed’ this on Nurse Pine? Or did she, indeed, have a medal made specially for Nurse Pine? As I said, it’s all a bit of a mystery. If anyone knows the answer I shall be delighted to hear from them.
Whatever the truth, it is rather sad that the British College of Nurses does not seem, in the event, to have taken care of the gift that they hoped ‘will be valued at its true worth by women all over the world.’ However, Nurse Pine’s collection of photographs, now held in the Museum of London, most definitely is treasured.
You can read more about Nurse Pine in her entry in my The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide, Routledge.
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