Hilda Seligman

Hilda Mary Seligman (née McDowell; 18 January 1882 – 20 December 1964) was a British sculptor, author and campaigner.

Hilda McDowell was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1882. She married the metallurgist and chemical engineer Richard Seligman (1878–1972) in London in 1906. They had four sons: Adrian (1909–2003), Peter, Oliver (who was killed in WWII), and Madron (1918–2002); and a daughter: Audrey Babette Seligman (1907–1990).

During the inter-war period, Seligman entertained Mahatma Gandhi and the Emperor Haile Selassie at her home in Wimbledon, London. She spent some time in India and founded the 'Skippo' Fund in London in 1945. The fund was set up with royalties from her book Skippo of Nonesuch (1943) about a goat named 'Skippo', and donations and gifts from Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Isobel Cripps. The Fund paid for a mobile health van that was custom built in the UK, and later other health vans to serve isolated villages in India and Pakistan. The Fund's 'Asoka-Akbar Mobile Health Vans' were given to the All India Women's Conference to administer.

Seligman also wrote two other small books: When Peacocks Called (1940), Asoka, Emperor of India (1947). Rabindranath Tagore wrote the foreword to When Peacocks Called.

In 1999, Seligman's papers (Ref: 7HSE) were presented as a gift to the Women's Library, London School of Economics, where they are still held.