The mystery of nurse Catherine Pine's suffragette medal—and its solution

Abstract

ABSTRACT When writing her will shortly before her death in 1941, Nurse Catherine Pine intended her ‘suffragette medal to be sent to the History Section of the British College of Nurses ’. But for decades no information was available to tell us what form Nurse Pine’s ‘suffragette medal’ took or where it was. For, although caring for Emmeline Pankhurst, the leader of the Women’s and Social Union, both during and after the suffragette campaign in Edwardian Britain, Nurse Pine had never been imprisoned and on hunger strike, the usual qualification for receiving a ‘suffragette medal’, and all effects held by the British College of Nurses were dispersed when it closed in 1956. Employing a range of internet resources—and a measure of serendipity—this Viewpoint unravels the mystery surrounding Nurse Pine’s medal.