Hilda Seligman
British sculptor, author and campaigner / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hilda Mary Seligman (née McDowell; 18 January 1882 – 20 December 1964)[1] was a British sculptor, author and campaigner.[2]
Hilda McDowell was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1882. She married the metallurgist and chemical engineer Richard Seligman (1878–1972) in London in 1906.[3][4] They had four sons: Adrian (1909–2003),[5] Peter, Oliver (who was killed in WWII), and Madron (1918–2002); and a daughter: Audrey Babette Seligman (1907–1990).
During the inter-war period, Seligman entertained Mahatma Gandhi and the Emperor Haile Selassie at her home in Wimbledon, London.[6] She spent some time in India and founded the 'Skippo' Fund in London in 1945. The fund was set up with royalties from her book Skippo of Nonesuch (1943) about a goat named 'Skippo', and donations and gifts from Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Isobel Cripps. The Fund paid for a mobile health van that was custom built in the UK, and later other health vans to serve isolated villages in India and Pakistan.[7] The Fund's 'Asoka-Akbar Mobile Health Vans' were given to the All India Women's Conference to administer.
Seligman also wrote two other small books: When Peacocks Called (1940), Asoka, Emperor of India (1947). Rabindranath Tagore wrote the foreword to When Peacocks Called.
In 1999, Seligman's papers (Ref: 7HSE) were presented as a gift to the Women's Library, London School of Economics, where they are still held.[8]