The photo above was taken in St Leonard’s Church on 6 July 2012.
Maggy Cole was born in Bexhill in 1930, the family moving to Reading then Oxford at the outbreak of World War II. Financial constraints meant that higher education was not an option and Maggy, determined at the time to enter nursing, became a student at the Churchill Hospital in the late 1940s. But a nursing career was not to be. Talking her way into a tour of a hospital lab in Tunbridge Wells, she made such an impression that a while later she was offered a job. Working and studying for lab technician exams she was soon back in Oxford. Itchy feet took her to Canada. It was Maggy who started a blood bank at Montreal General Hospital. The next big job was at Middlesex Hospital with the new discipline of cytology. Headhunted she was back once again in Oxford, this time as Chief Technician at The Churchill, and later based at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
Lab technicians, especially women lab technicians, often make an unacknowledged contribution to research and practice. Maggie was co-author on a paper in her Canadian days and sometimes credited with contributions to other work too. But she was not always at the lab bench or managing her team. Talking to a history researcher, she recalled setting up a breast clinic and leaving her rings at home on clinic days. It was sometimes so important, she said, just to hold a patient’s hand.
A year before her retirement in 1987, Maggy bought a house in Eynsham, making her home here for the next 30 years and more. She volunteered at Woodstock Museum and at the Oxfordshire Museums Service. In 2009, on a very successful open day at the Museum Resource Centre, she displayed a mid-19th century sewing box to visitors, telling them what it revealed about the life of its owner. She was a keen lacemaker, enjoyed gardening and looking after her beloved cat. Volunteers who took Maggy to her health care appointments in recent years all recall her positive outlook in life and her sense of fun. ‘Could we stop at the fish and chip shop on our way back from the JR?’ she asked her driver one day. It was something she and her colleagues used to do after a hard day in the lab.
Maggy coped with determination and grace with failing eyesight, remaining as active as she could. Following a serious fall in the summer of 2023, however, she took the decision to move to a care home. She passed away early in January 2024.
Celia Davies