Shirley Nolan or Shirley Oakey (10 February 1942 – 3 December 2001) was a British teacher who set up the Anthony Nolan Register to allow

Bone marrow transplant Hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) is the transplantation of multipotent hematopoietic stem cells, usually derived from bone marrow, peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood in order to replicate inside of a patient and to produce ...

s. Her son died and she was diagnosed with Parkinson disease taking her own life in 2001. The charity she founded made transplants possible for 4,000 people.

Life

Nolan was born in

Cookridge Cookridge is a suburb of north-west Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, north of the Leeds Outer Ring Road. In 1715 Ralph Thoresby described it as a village four miles from Leeds and three from Otley, dating from 1540.Ralph Thoresby (1715) ''Duc ...

in 1942. Her father was a soldier at the time and her mother was a bus conductor. She attended Pontefract Girls' High School and went on to Trent Park College in Hertfordshire. She married James Gerald Nolan in 1962. She had studied at London's

Guildhall School of Music and Drama The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a conservatoire and drama school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz ...

and in 1963 she began teaching and in 1965 she was head of drama at a school in Rainham in Essex. In 1969 she travelled in Australia accompanied by a British man named as "Ted". They were living together in Adelaide when Anthony Nolan was born. Shirley was teaching literature and her partner had a delivery business. In 1971 her son, Anthony Nolan, was born. He was quickly diagnosed with

Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome (WAS) is a rare X-linked recessive disease characterized by eczema, thrombocytopenia (low platelet count), immune deficiency, and bloody diarrhea (secondary to the thrombocytopenia). It is also sometimes called the eczem ...

, a rare inherited blood disorder. In 1974 she founded the Anthony Nolan Register, based at the Westminster Children's Hospital Nolan was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The disease would not necessarily be fatal, but she was very ill with an increasingly poor quality of life. She criticised regulators who were not allowing stem cells to be used in research into a cure for Parkinson disease and she joined the Euthanasia Society.

Death and legacy

Nolan died in Fairview Park in Australia, having succeeded at the second attempt to take her own life. She described her first attempt to take her life as "botched" and emergency medics created her recovery despite her written instructions. She was denied further painkillers but her friends knew that she intended to try again. Because they could not be implicated as accomplices, Shirley died alone using another cocktail of drugs. The charity that she founded made transplants possible for 4,000 people. When she died there were 50 similar registers to her own recording the bone marrow details of 7 million people. The Anthony Nolan Register moved to

St Mary Abbots Hospital St Mary Abbots Hospital was a hospital that operated from 1871 to 1992 at a site on Marloes Road in Kensington, London. History The hospital building, which was designed by Alfred Williams as a workhouse infirmary and built by John T. Chappell, ...

in 1978 and to offices and research institute in north London, in the grounds of the Royal Free Hospital. The charity was renamed in 2001 as the Anthony Nolan Trust and again in 2010 to "

Anthony Nolan Anthony Nolan is a UK charity that works in the areas of leukaemia and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. It manages and recruits donors to the Anthony Nolan Register, which is part of an aligned registry that also includes the ''Welsh Bon ...

". In 2008 the "Anthony Nolan" charity created the UK's first cord blood bank, allowing mothers to donate the blood from their umbilical cord and placenta after they give birth, to use this blood in stem cell transplants.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nolan, Shirley 1942 births 2001 deaths People from Leeds British educators Suicides in South Australia Founders of charities