In Celebration of Black History Month 2015

Biography 1 - Mary Seacole 1805 - 1881

Mary Seacole was a Jamaican nurse who cared for British soldiers at the battlefront during the Crimean War. Early Life Mary Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish army officer and her mother a free black woman who ran a boarding house in Kingston. Mary's mother also treated people who become ill. She was a great believer in the herbal medicines. These medicines were based on the knowledge of slaves brought from Africa. This knowledge was passed on to Mary and later she also became a 'doctress'. In 1836 she married Edwin Horatio Seacole, a naval officer, but the marriage was short-lived as he died in 1844, shortly before Mary’s mother also died. Mary remained in Kingston but spent a lot of time nursing in Panama, where a Cholera epidemic was raging. She nursed cases of cholera and yellow fever in Jamaica and at Las Cruces in Panama where, for more than two years, she helped her brother manage a hotel. Her fame as a medical practitioner grew and she was soon carrying out operations on people suffering from knife and gunshot wounds. Start of the Crimean War

In 1853 Russia invaded Turkey and Britain and France came to Turkey's aid, this marked the start of the Crimean War. Soon after British soldiers arrived in Turkey, they began going down with cholera and malaria. Within a few weeks an estimated 8,000 men were suffering from these two diseases. At the time, disease was a far greater threat to soldiers than was the enemy. In the Crimean War, of the 21,000 soldiers who died, only 3,000 died from injuries received in battle.

Return to London In 1853, Mary Seacole travelled to London to offer her services to the British Army. There was considerable prejudice against women's involvement in medicine and her offer was rejected. When a prominent newspaper publicised the fact that a large number of British soldiers were dying of cholera, there was a public outcry, and the government was forced to change its mind.

Florence Nightingale, who had little practical experience of cholera, was chosen to take a team of thirty-nine nurses to treat the sick soldiers. Travel to Crimea Mary Seacole's application to join Florence Nightingale's team was rejected, many suspect on the grounds of ethnicity, so Mary, who had become a successful business woman, decided to travel to the Crimea at her own expense.

She and Thomas Day (a relative in the shipping business) opened the British Hotel near Balaclava a few months later in 1855. The roughly built hotel was also an officers’ club and had a popular canteen serving good food. Using it as a base, she would take mules laden with food, wine

and medicines across country to the battlefield front lines. She obtained special passes, which allowed her to look after the wounded and dying on both sides.

Assistance on the Battlefield By June she was a familiar figure at the battle-front, riding forward with two mules in attendance, one carrying medicaments and the other food and wine. She brought medical comfort to the maimed and dying after the assault on the Redan, in which a quarter of the British force was killed or wounded, and she tended Italian, French, and Russian casualties at the Chernaya two months later.

Whereas Florence Nightingale and her nurses were based in a hospital several miles from the front, Mary Seacole treated her patients on the battlefield. On several occasions she was found treating wounded soldiers from both sides while the battle was still going on.

Later Life After the war ended in 1856 Mary Seacole returned to England, but was bankrupt from debts run up by soldiers at the British Hotel. The newspapers started a public campaign to raise money for her, backed by royalty and a grateful British Army. In 1857 her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, became a bestseller. The Seacole Fund eventually enabled her to live in comfort in Paddington, London, until her death in 1881.

She was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991. In 2004 she was voted the greatest black Briton.