Rachel McMillan

Rachel McMillan (1859 - 1917) was a health visitor and advisor on education. She came to notice due to the efforts of her sister Margaret McMillan who reinvented her life after her death.

Life

Rachel was born in 1859 at Throggs Nick in New York state to Scottish emigrant parents. Her parents, James and Jane (born Cameron), had married the year before and they would have one other surviving daughter who they named Margaret. Her father and an infant sister died in 1865 from Scarlet Fever and their mother took the family back to Scotland. Rachel and Margaret were brought up in Inverness. Rachel and Margaret attended the Inverness Academy. Rachel was there until she was fifteen when she went to teach in Coventry for three years at a college for ladies. Her sister Margaret recovered her hearing when she was fourteen after losing as a result her bout of the Scarlet fever which killed her father and sister.^[1]

Rachel and Margaret McMillan plaque, Bromley.

Rachel did not take paid employment until her grandmother died in 1877 when she went to London and ran a hostel for women. Rachel's growing understanding and support for socialism has been used in a case study of growing public understanding of the writings of William Morris and Karl Marx but her claim to fame arrived after her death in 1917. Margaret renamed a nusery school which had been founded in 1914 the Rachel McMillan Nursery School.^[2] Her reputation as a convert relies on a valadictory biography written about her by her sister in 1927. Margaret had been nursed through a severe illness by Rachel. Rachel and Margaret had lived together at lodgings at 51 Tweedy Road in Bromley, and there they entertained well known people. These included Prince Kropotkin, the Lansburys, Margaret Llewelyn Davies, and the Countess of Warwick. In 2009 English Heritage had a blue plaque placed on this house in Bromley to record Margaret and Rachel lodging there.^[3]

Her sister Margaret McMillan created the Rachel McMillan Training College in 1930. She not only named the college after her sister but she ascribed the innovations in teaching there to Rachel. The biography that she wrote for her sister describes her as having an ideal childhood and to have been a leader in the development of child care and teacher training. Rachel was a hard working woman who worked with children, education and health issues but her notable life appears to have been the creation of her sister.^[1]

References