A Fine Collection of Medals to Female Medics

Five: Dr. Ruth Nicholson, Scottish Women’s Hospitals, who served as Assistant Surgeon at Royaumont Hospital

British War and Victory Medals (R. Nicholson); France, Third Republic, Croix de Guerre, bronze, reverse dated 1914-1918, with bronze star on riband; Medal of Gratitude, silver-gilt, unnamed, with miniature rosette on riband; Medal of Honour, Ministry of War for Epidemics, gilt, reverse embossed ‘Miss R. Nicholson 1917’, with miniature rosette on riband; together with the relate miniature awards, these mounted as worn, good very fine and better (5) £600-£800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Fine Collection of Medals to Female Medics.

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Tony Sabell Collection, Dix Noonan Webb, June 2013.

Ruth Nicholson was born on 2 December 1884, the daughter of the Rev. Canon Nicholson. She was educated at Newcastle-on-Tyne High School and the Universities of Durham and Dundee, taking the degrees M.B., B.S. in 1909; B.Hy., D.P.H. in 1911; and M.S. in 1923. After graduating in 1909 she worked in a dispensary in Newcastle before going to Edinburgh where she became an assistant to Dr Elsie Inglis in the Bruntsfield Hospital. Prior to the War she worked in Gaza in Palestine. With the onset of war she returned home, and after being turned down for a voluntary medical unit she was accepted by the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and became an Assistant Surgeon at Royaumont Hospital from December 1914 until February 1919. After the War she specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology, became Gynaecological Surgeon and Clinical Lecturer at the University of Liverpool, and was one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She became the first woman President of the North of England Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and played a prominent part in the Medical Women’s Federation. Dr Ruth Nicholson died in Exeter on 18 July 1963.

For the medals awarded to the recipient’s sister, see the following lot (lot 27).