Mexborough and Swinton May 19, 1939

Though he has been deeply involved in public work since he was 28, Mr. P. B. Nicholson has never disguised the fact that his most immediate interests are the causes of the Hospitals and the Wath Grammar School, and he will: find particular satisfaction in the fact that on Wednesday, Wath Grammar School Governors once more appointed him chairman.

He was made a Governor in 1924 and held the chairmanship from 1925 to 1927. It is the mark of his public work that through the machinery of local government he astutely brings pressure to bear on higher authorities to introduce hospital and educational reforms. He was the first, for example, to advocate dental treatment for Secondary School children, and by his efforts and those of his collaborators such a scheme was introduced by the West Riding County Council.

For some years now he has been fighting for the equalisation of opportunities for nursing and teaching as a means of supplying the shortage of nurses. He brought the matter before the Grammar School Governors and prepared a memorandum setting out the need for better bursarships for intending nurses. His suggestion was that Government and County Council should be ready to make Vents for the education of nurses as they did for intending elementary school teachers (of whom there is an abundance), and he prepared an appropriate curriculum for girls between 16 and 18, which was approved by the General Nursing Council. The present position is that the County Council are not willing to proceed until they have considered the report of the Inter-Departmental Committee of the Board of Education and the Ministry of Health.

Mr. Nicholson entered public life in 1912 when he became a member of Thrybergh Parish Council and overseer of the poor, and in 1913 he was appointed to Wickersley Education Committee. In 1916 he began a three years’ membership of Brampton Parish Council, and began that long record of public service with which Wath and district residents are partly familiar. He was a Governor of Mexborough Secondary School from 1917-30, and a member of Wath Education Committee from 1916-28. In 1920 he was elected member of Wath Urban Council and has sat continuously: he was chairman in 1925-6 and 1933-6. His association with the Wath Joint Hospital Board began in 1922 and has gone on unbroken, and he has been chairman three times. During his 1925-6 chairmanship the Hospital was enlarged and he was a leading supporter of the proposals which resulted in increasing the population served by the institution to 88,000 by the embracing of two other local authorities; and he has played an important part in the recent extensions of the Hospital. From 1930 he has sat on the Montagu Hospital Management Committee. He has been a Justice of the Peace since 1928, and a member of the Barnsley Court of Referees since 1930.

Mr. Nicholson has also been honoured by members of the industry in which he is engaged. In 1915 he was one of the founders of the Coke Oven Managers’ Association, and was its first treasurer; he was re-appointed to this office in 1927, and still holds it. He was president from 1926-7, a year which was marked by the wider acceptance of the Association’s importance. In 1928 he gave evidence before the National Fuel and Power Committee, and the Committee’s recommendation to the Government led to the formation of the South Yorkshire Gas Grid. At the time being he is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Sir John Cass Technical Institute (London), the County Council Committee on further technical education, and of the Midland Coke Research Committee of Sheffield University.

This is a crowded record, and it is probably incomplete. Mr. Nicholson has certainly served his neighbours prodigiously well and we wish him a fortunate two years as chairman of the Grammar School Governors.