Macclesfield Express

Nurse only woman to be on WW1 memorial

- RHIANNON MCDOWALL

AWAR memorial featuring the name of a female nurse who died during the First World War has been discovered among forgotten archives.

It is believed that Sarah Wiggin, a servant from Macclesfie­ld who became a Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse for the Royal Army Medical Corps, is the only woman to appear on a Macclesfie­ld war memorial.

She is named alongside 16 male soldiers on a brass plaque commis- sioned by the Macclesfie­ld Mill Street Mission, which has been discovered in the archives at the Silk Museum.

Geoff Archer, from the Macclesfie­ld and District World War One Centenary Committee, said there are 40 First World War memorials in Macclesfie­ld, but Sarah is the only woman to be named.

He said: “We knew there was a plaque with a woman’s name on it because there are reports of the unveiling of it in the local paper at the time. But we didn’t know where it had ended up.

“The vast majority who died would have been men as women didn’t fight. Sarah was a nurse and died on active service, so she has every right to be remembered.”

It is believed Sarah, who was originally from Tunstall, had worked as a servant from the age of 13 for Nathan and Harriett Storey, of West Bond Street, who were preachers at the Mill Street Mission which commission­ed the plaque.

Sarah contracted Spanish flu while treating sick and wounded soldiers at a hospital in Preston and died from pneumonia on November 2, aged 30, just nine days before the Armistice was signed.

Geoff said he is thrilled the plaque has been recovered, and is now hoping to unearth more plaques commission­ed over the years.

He said: “Over the years, when churches, mills or schools have closed, all too often the memorials they housed have simply been discarded. A number have literally been rescued from the skips into which they had been thrown. However, as the rediscover­y of the Mill Street Mission memorial suggests, it is possible that some of these memorials may yet turn up.”

The Mill Street Mission, which commission­ed the plaque, was based at the Quakers meeting house on the corner of Pickford street and Mill Street.

The plaque, which is believed to have been passed to the museum for safe keeping, is expected to go on public display in The Silk Museum soon.

The youngest was just nineteen when killed in action in 1918; the oldest was forty-five.

Some were single, some married with young families. They fought in France and Belgium, at Gallipoli and in the Middle East. Most were buried in battlefiel­d cemeteries; some died at home and are buried in Macclesfie­ld; some have no known grave. All are named not only here but at Park Green, St Michael’s, the Town Hall and on a range of other memorials in the town.

 ??  ?? Mill Street Mission memorial plaque
Mill Street Mission memorial plaque

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