Dr Ernest Henry Marcus Milligan in Glossop, Derbyshire

'IN

LOVING

MEMORY

OF

A DEAR HUSBAND AND FATHER

ERNEST H. M. MILLIGAN

WHO DIED 21ST MARCH 1954, AGED 75 YEARS.

FOR 26 YEARS M.O.H. FOR GLOSSOP

FEAR NOT MORE THE HEAT O' THE SUN

NOR THE FURIOUS WINTER'S RAGES;

THOU THY WORLDLY TASK HAST DONE

AND HIS BELOVED WIFE SARAH

BORN 17TH JAN 1883 DIED 19TH JAN 1961.'

Ernest Henry Marcus Milligan (1879–1954) was an Irish Protestant from Belfast who became the first medical officer of health in Glossop, Derbyshire. He lived at Daisy Bank in nearby Hadfield, and according to his obituary in the Glossop Chronicle of 26 March 1954 he began a 'health revolution in the town, a health revolution that has gone on ever since' when he moved to Glossop in 1920. He had a great interest in the nutrition of school children, and provided considerable details on them. He is perhaps best known for his peanuts and whey toffee.

Milligan wrote a book of poems in 1907: Up Bye Ballads, published under the pseudonym of 'Will Carew'. Many years later he wrote several plays – some in collaboration with his solicitor son-in-law A. V. Williams – which were broadcast on the radio in Manchester, such as: The Ballad Singer (1933), Muggleston on the Map: A Municipal Mockery (1934), The Mayor Chooses a Wife (1935), and 'Twas in Old Ireland – Somewhere (1936).

Milligan came from a highly talented family, and his most famous sibling is Alice Milligan (1865-1953), the Irish Nationalist, poet and novelist. He wanted the Irish Republican W. P. Allen to write her biography, but this was not to be. However, in 1994 Sheila Turner Johnston published a short biography of Alice, which was re-published in 2009. And for a more academic angle, there's now Catherine Morris's Alice Milligan and the Irish Cultural Revolution (2012).