Helen Nicol

Helen Lyster Nicol (29 May 1854 – 22 November 1932) was a New Zealand suffragist and temperance campaigner. She is one of six suffragists honoured in the Kate Sheppard National Memorial.

Biography

Nicol was born in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, in 1854 but immigrated to New Zealand with her family at age two. She was one of ten children of Margaret (born Cairns Smith) and David Nicol. Her father was a gardener who prospered in New Zealand. She was a teetotaller and committed Presbyterian. She taught in a Sunday School, and her work with the poor exposed her to the ills of alcohol, and she became a committed prohibitionist and member of the temperance movement. She is one of six suffragists memorialised in the Kate Sheppard National Memorial, a sculpture located on the banks of the Avon River in Christchurch.

Nicol died on 22 November 1932 in Dunedin, New Zealand.