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
Who was Mary Seacole?
Mary Seacole is one of Britain's neglected heroines yet she was a bona fide celebrity famed for her heroic behaviour during the bloody Crimean War.
Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1805, then the largest and most affluent town in the Caribbean. She was the only child of a liaison between her black mother, a healer, and a Scottish soldier stationed on the island. She learned about healing by following her mother around the family's lodging house, assembling, drying and preparing the herbs that were used to treat patients. By the time she was an adult Seacole was as adept a healer as her mother, and was using these skills to earn a living. Always 'inclined to rove', she visited England twice and spent a number of years in Panama.
When she returned to Jamaica, she married an Englishman, Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole, in November 1836. But Edwin was sickly and Mary spent much of the next decade nursing him. He died in 1844 and Mary retired to her bed, distraught. She soon rallied, however; she was never able to remain inactive for long. 'All my life, I have followed the impulse which led me to be up and doing,' she wrote in her memoirs.
Widowed and in her early forties, Mary was ready for her next big challenge. With the outbreak of the Crimean War, she found it. She left Jamaica for England in August 1854, determined to volunteer her services as a nurse. On arrival she laid siege to the War Office, to Florence Nightingale's colleagues, and even to the private home of the Secretary of War. She was rebuffed by everyone, and told that the full complement of nurses had been recruited.
Mary herself was in no doubt 'that, had there been a vacancy, she would not have been chosen to fill it'. She simply did not fit the refined, ladylike, and of course white face of nursing that was being enthusiastically promoted by Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale wanted to dignify the new profession and distance it from its previously disreputable public image. However, it would take more than the social anxieties of Victorian England to prevent Mary from reaching her goal. Undeterred by her frosty reception in 'the Motherland', she used her own money to finance the journey to the battlefields.
On arrival she set up a hostelry for British troops, called the British Hotel, in order to raise money for her medical mission. Seacole's talents as a hostess were considerable, and soon the profits were rolling in. The months that followed were a frenzy of activity. Mary spent her days at the front treating the soldiers as they fell: dispensing medicines, dressing wounds and comforting the dying. Her nights were divided between playing hostess to her guests and concocting the herbal remedies with which she would treat the soldiers. She saved hundreds of lives, the troops adored her, and her fame spread throughout the Crimea and back to England, where she rapidly became a folk heroine.
The abrupt end of the war was a mixed blessing for Mary. She was relieved that her 'boys' would no longer suffer but bereft without her vocation. She missed the intensity, the camaraderie and excitement of life in the field. Her return to England, impoverished and depleted, was one of the lowest points in her life. But news of her plight became public knowledge, triggering an enormous swell of support. A four-day long concert, replete with classical music and fireworks, was organized to raise funds and when her biography, The Amazing Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands, was published in 1857, it was a best-seller. In the years that followed Mary was feted by British society and became an intimate friend of the royal family. When she died in 1881, at the age of 76, her unique contribution was lauded in numerous obituaries both in Britain and Jamaica.
Mary Seacole's impact >
