Shirley Nolan

In 2008 the "Anthony 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.

The Anthony 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. The charity was renamed in 2001 as the Anthony Nolan Trust and again in 2010 to "Anthony Nolan".

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

In 1971 her son, Anthony Nolan, was born. He was quickly diagnosed with Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome, a rare inherited blood disorder.

Shirley Nolan or Shirley Oakey (10 February 1942 – 3 December 2001) was a British teacher who set up the Anthony Nolan Register to allow Bone marrow transplants. Her son died and she was diagnosed with Parkinson disease taking her own life in 2001. The charity she founded made transplants possible for 4,000 people.

Nolan was born in Cookridge in 1942. Her father was a soldier at the time and her mother was a bus conductor. She attended Pontefract Girls' High School and went on to Trent Park College in Hertfordshire. She married James Gerald Nolan in 1962. She 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. In 1969 she travelled in Australia accompanied by a British man named as "Ted". They were living together in Adelaide when Anthony Nolan was born. Shirley was teaching literature and her partner had a delivery business.