The nursery school / by Margaret McMillan.

  • McMillan, Margaret, 1860-1931
Date:
[1930]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The nursery school / by Margaret McMillan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE LAST CHAPTER Here is this book on the open-air school. Often, while the first edition was a-writing, storms threatened to overwhelm it. Often even in the last six months ere its first issue, it was an open question whether our sorely tried and hardly won venture would be swept away. It was not swept away. In 1919 I found a few good friends among my colleagues on the L.C.C., and to their tolerance and patience in shielding an unknown and still unproved experiment I owed the power to carry on. I say “power,” and let the word stand. But the deeper truth is that power—real and resistless—was flowing in then, and long before that time from another source. My sister Rachel had been from her girlhood the inspirer of many; and through her I was able to face what seemed for years impossible obstacles and a hopeless enterprise. From 1904 to 1908 she worked with me for the passing of the legislation that gave medical inspection to school children. In 1910 we moved the Bow clinic to its present site and made our home in Deptford. The last seven years of her life were spent in work in this place. No one ever undertook or carried forward more hopeless and heart-breaking work than Rachel faced in these years. It meant a complete break with every interest than this of finding the depths where children perished in silence, and of discovering a way out of this abyss. There is no doubt at all that great vision as well as power was granted to her. She never hesitated i35