Margaret Purves

Margaret Purves, born Margaret Vaughan in Cardiff on 25 November 1934 and died on 12 September 2021, was a British nurse who held the George Cross. In May 1949, at the age of fourteen, she swam out from the beach near Sully Island in rough, cold water and towed a Scout and his leader to safety after the rising tide cut a party of Scouts off from the causeway, an act for which King George VI gave her the Albert Medal. She was the last living person to receive that medal before it became a posthumous-only award, and when the Albert Medal was discontinued in 1971 she exchanged it for the George Cross, which was presented to her in 1974. After school she trained as a nurse and from 1957 served as an officer in the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps. She later settled in Wiltshire with her husband, served on town and county councils there until 1989, and has a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery.