13 Facts About Shirley Nolan

Shirley Nolan or Shirley Oakey was a British teacher who set up the Anthony Nolan Register to allow Bone marrow transplants.

Shirley Nolan's son died and she was diagnosed with Parkinson disease taking her own life in 2002.

Shirley Nolan's father was a soldier at the time and her mother was a bus conductor.

Shirley Nolan attended Pontefract Girls' High School and went on to Trent Park College in Hertfordshire.

Shirley Nolan had studied at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama and in 1963 she began teaching and in 1965 she was head of drama at a school in Rainham in Essex.

Shirley Nolan was teaching literature and her partner had a delivery business.

In 1974 she founded the Anthony Shirley Nolan Register, based at the Westminster Children's Hospital.

Shirley Nolan criticised regulators who were not allowing stem cells to be used in research into a cure for Parkinson disease and she joined the Euthanasia Society.

Shirley Nolan died in July 2002 in Australia, aged 60, from an apparent suicide.

Shirley Nolan described her first attempt to take her life as "botched" and emergency medics created her recovery despite her written instructions.

Shirley Nolan was denied further painkillers but her friends knew that she intended to try again.

The Anthony Shirley Nolan Register moved to St Mary Abbots Hospital in 1978 and to offices and research institute in north London, in the grounds of the Royal Free Hospital.

In 2008 the "Anthony Shirley Nolan" charity created the UK's first cord blood bank, allowing mothers to donate the blood from their umbilical cord and placenta after they give birth, to use this blood in stem cell transplants.