Mary Seacole: The Real Angel of the Crimea

Writer: Andrea Stuart

Intro | Who was Mary Seacole? | Mary Seacole's impact | Black British Contribution | Forgotten People of Colour

Mary Seacole's impact

Mary Seacole's contribution to British history is significant. Without her interventions, hundreds of men survived who would otherwise have died. She was inevitably compared to that other heroine of the Crimea, 'The Lady of the Lamp', Florence Nightingale. Some even dubbed Seacole 'the Black Nightingale', (though the soldiers in her care preferred the more familiar 'Mother' or 'Aunty'). But the two women couldn't have been less similar. Mary was a large, outgoing woman with a flamboyant dress sense. Nightingale was a pale, undemonstrative, austere woman, who preferred to dress in black. Their nursing styles were also very different: Nightingale, with her concern for propriety and hygiene, promoted a professional demeanour of gentle but cool and slightly distant concern. Seacole, always larger than life, opted for a warm, feisty hands-on approach: she preferred an earthier, more tactile style of care.

The two women met only once, when Seacole first arrived in the Crimea. The encounter took place at the hospital in Scutari where Nightingale and her team were trying to cope with the hundreds of wounded and dying. It was brief and strained. Mary had already been rejected by Nightingale's organization and now her offer of help was rejected again. Nightingale had a prejudice against large women like Mary and also disliked women who were too 'dark'; her organization once rejected another nursing applicant for being 'almost black'. Certainly Nightingale was very unkind about Seacole on a number of occasions, implying in one report that she was sexually immoral and kept 'a bad house' while in the Crimea. Seacole dismissed this slander as jealousy but wisely refrained from criticizing such a revered figure as Nightingale in public. In truth, the two women were never destined to get along; their backgrounds, personalities and purposes were too different.

Their lack of collaboration is a shame, since both women made a crucial contribution to their chosen profession. When Nightingale emerged, nursing was not considered a respected profession. With the exception of nuns, the women who worked as nurses were often ill-trained and poorly disciplined. Many of the books and cartoons of the time depicted nurses as drunken slatterns who were just as likely to rob or kill their patients as help them. Nightingale was determined to encourage educated, 'respectable' women into nursing. In order to do so, she had to transform its public image. She also recognized, long before it became 'common sense', the vital importance of hygiene in medical care. Hence her emphasis on discipline and sobriety. It is really due to her efforts that nursing became the highly trained, organized and respected profession that we know today.

Mary Seacole's approach, though very different, was also highly valuable. Her practice was inherited through the oral tradition from her African ancestors. It emphasized the use of herbs, poultices and therapeutic rubs. The Crimean soldiers believed in her cures - they besieged her for her famous herbal remedies - but doctors of the time tended to dismiss her. Today, the medical establishment agrees that Seacole's remedies were often more effective than the western alternatives of the time, especially in the treatment of diseases like cholera and typhus. The herbs she used are today being used for contemporary medications, and her insistence on a warm bedside manner, and the power of appropriate touch, are now recognized as essential components of 'patient-centred care'.

Of the two women, Nightingale undoubtedly had the greater impact on modern nursing. And yet it can be argued that, had Seacole been white and well-connected, she would now be remembered as the mother of modern nursing. After years of neglect, she has been rehabilitated and is now increasingly well known - not just as an important role model for black people, but for all those in the nursing profession.

Black British Contribution >