94 Facts About Mary Seacole

Mary Jane Seacole was a British nurse and businesswoman.

Mary Seacole was famous for her nursing work during the Crimean War and for publishing the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain.

In 1990, Mary Seacole was awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit.

Mary Seacole went to the Crimean War in 1855 with the plan of setting up the "British Hotel", as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers".

Mary Seacole gave assistance at the battlefield on three later battles, going out to attend to the fallen after serving wine and sandwiches to spectators.

When Mary Seacole left, it was with the plan of joining her business partner and starting their business.

Mary Seacole travelled with two black employees, her maid Mary, and a porter, Mac.

Mary Seacole was largely forgotten for almost a century after her death.

Mary Seacole was the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army.

Mary Seacole's mother, Mrs Grant, nicknamed "The Doctress", was a healer who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal medicines.

At Blundell Hall, Mary Seacole acquired her nursing skills, which included the use of hygiene, ventilation, warmth, hydration, rest, empathy, good nutrition and care for the dying.

Mary Seacole's autobiography says she began experimenting in medicine, based on what she learned from her mother, by ministering to a doll and then progressing to pets before helping her mother treat humans.

However, Mary Seacole, using traditional West African herbal remedies and hygienic practices, boasted that she never lost a mother or her child.

Mary Seacole emphasises her personal vigour in her autobiography, distancing herself from the contemporary stereotype of the "lazy Creole".

Mary Seacole spent some years in the household of an elderly woman, whom she called her "kind patroness", before returning to her mother.

Mary Seacole was treated as a member of her patroness's family and received a good education.

Mary Seacole herself was "only a little brown"; she was nearly white according to one of her biographers, Dr Ron Ramdin.

Mary Seacole returned to London approximately a year later, bringing a "large stock of West Indian pickles and preserves for sale".

Mary Seacole then worked alongside her mother, occasionally being called to provide nursing assistance at the British Army hospital at Up-Park Camp.

Mary Seacole travelled the Caribbean, visiting the British colony of New Providence in the Bahamas, the Spanish colony of Cuba, and the new Republic of Haiti.

Mary Seacole married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in Kingston on 10 November 1836.

Mary Seacole put her rapid recovery down to her hot Creole blood, blunting the "sharp edge of [her] grief" sooner than Europeans who she thought "nurse their woe secretly in their hearts".

Mary Seacole absorbed herself in work, declining many offers of marriage.

Mary Seacole later became known to the European military visitors to Jamaica who often stayed at Blundell Hall.

In 1851, Mary Seacole travelled to Cruces to visit her brother.

Mary Seacole was on hand to treat the first victim, who survived, which established Mary Seacole's reputation and brought her a succession of patients as the infection spread.

Mary Seacole eschewed opium, preferring mustard rubs and poultices, the laxative calomel, sugars of lead, and rehydration with water boiled with cinnamon.

Mary Seacole later expressed exasperation at their feeble resistance, claiming they "bowed down before the plague in slavish despair".

Mary Seacole performed an autopsy on an orphan child for whom she had cared, which gave her "decidedly useful" new knowledge.

Mary Seacole described it as a "tumble down hut," with two rooms, the smaller one to be her bedroom, the larger one to serve up to 50 diners.

Mary Seacole was forced to wait for a later British boat.

In 1853, soon after arriving home, Mary Seacole was asked by the Jamaican medical authorities to provide nursing care to victims of a severe outbreak of yellow fever.

Mary Seacole found that she could do little, because the epidemic was so severe.

Mary Seacole returned to Panama in early 1854 to finalise her business affairs, and three months later moved to the New Granada Mining Gold Company establishment at Fort Bowen Mine some 70 miles away near Escribanos.

Mary Seacole had read newspaper reports of the outbreak of war against Russia before she left Jamaica, and news of the escalating Crimean War reached her in Panama.

Mary Seacole determined to travel to England to volunteer as a nurse with experience in herbal healing skills, to experience the "pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war" as she described it in Chapter I of her autobiography.

Mary Seacole travelled from Navy Bay in Panama to England, initially to deal with her investments in gold-mining businesses.

Mary Seacole then attempted to join the second contingent of nurses to the Crimea.

Mary Seacole applied to the War Office and other government offices, but arrangements for departure were already underway.

However, Mary Seacole wrote that this was just one of the testimonials she had in her possession.

Mary Seacole applied to the Crimean Fund, a fund raised by public subscription to support the wounded in Crimea, for sponsorship to travel there, but she again met with refusal.

Mary Seacole questioned whether racism was a factor in her being turned down.

Mary Seacole gave me the same reply, and I read in her face the fact, that had there been a vacancy, I should not have been chosen to fill it.

Mary Seacole finally resolved to travel to Crimea using her own resources and to open the British Hotel.

The ship called at Malta, where Mary Seacole encountered a doctor who had recently left Scutari.

Mary Seacole wrote her a letter of introduction to Nightingale.

Mary Seacole visited Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari, where she asked for a bed for the night.

Mary Seacole found a site for the hotel at a place she christened Spring Hill, near Kadikoi, some.

Mary Seacole records meeting Seacole in his 1857 work A Culinary Campaign and describes Seacole as "an old dame of a jovial appearance, but a few shades darker than the white lily".

Mary Seacole requested Soyer's advice on how to manage her business, and was advised to concentrate on food and beverage service, and not to have beds for visitors because the few either slept on board ships in the harbour or in tents in the camp.

Soyer was a frequent visitor, and praised Mary Seacole's offerings, noting that she offered him champagne on his first visit.

Mary Seacole often went out to the troops as a sutler, selling her provisions near the British camp at Kadikoi, and nursing casualties brought out from the trenches around Sevastopol or from the Tchernaya valley.

Mary Seacole was widely known to the British Army as "Mother Seacole".

Mary Seacole is always in attendance near the battlefield to aid the wounded and has earned many a poor fellow's blessing.

Mary Seacole did not spare herself if she could do any good to the suffering soldiers.

Mary Seacole often carried bags of lint, bandages, needles and thread to tend to the wounds of soldiers.

In late August, Mary Seacole was on the route to Cathcart's Hill for the final assault on Sevastopol on 7 September 1855.

Later in the day, Mary Seacole fulfilled a bet, and became the first British woman to enter Sevastopol after it fell.

Mary Seacole looted some items from the city, including a church bell, an altar candle, and a three-metre long painting of the Madonna.

Mary Seacole was joined by a 14-year-old girl, Sarah, known as Sally.

Mary Seacole was in a difficult financial position, her business was full of unsaleable provisions, new goods were arriving daily, and creditors were demanding payment.

Mary Seacole attempted to sell as much as possible before the soldiers left, but she was forced to auction many expensive goods for lower-than-expected prices to the Russians who were returning to their homes.

Mary Seacole was one of the last to leave Crimea, returning to England "poorer than [she] left it".

Mary Seacole, although never the "black British nurse" she is claimed to have been, was a successful mixed-race immigrant to Britain.

Mary Seacole led an adventurous life, and her memoir of 1857 is still a lively read.

Mary Seacole made friends of her customers, army and navy officers, who came to her rescue with a fund when she was declared bankrupt.

Mary Seacole deserves much credit for rising to the occasion, but her tea and lemonade did not save lives, pioneer nursing or advance health care.

Social historian Jane Robinson argues in her book Mary Seacole: The Black Woman who invented Modern Nursing that Seacole was a huge success, and she became known and loved by everyone from the rank and file to the royal family.

Mary Seacole arrived in August 1856 and opened a canteen with Day at Aldershot, but the venture failed through lack of funds.

Mary Seacole was forced to move to 1, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden in increasingly dire financial straits.

At about this time, Mary Seacole began to wear military medals.

Day left for the Antipodes to seek new opportunities, but Mary Seacole's funds remained low.

Mary Seacole moved from Tavistock Street to cheaper lodgings at 14 Soho Square in early 1857, triggering a plea for subscriptions from Punch on 2 May However, in Punchs 30 May edition, she was heavily criticised for a letter she sent begging her favorite magazine, which she claimed to have often read to her British Crimean War patients, to assist her in gaining donations.

In researching his biography of Florence Nightingale, the first major biography in fifty years, Mark Bostridge uncovered a letter in the archive at the home of Nightingale's sister Parthenope Verney, which showed that Nightingale had made a contribution to Mary Seacole's fund, indicating that she saw value at that time in Mary Seacole's work in the Crimea.

Mary Seacole then expends six chapters on her few years in Panama, before using the following 12 chapters to detail her exploits in Crimea.

Mary Seacole avoids mention of the names of her parents and precise date of birth.

Mary Seacole joined the Catholic Church circa 1860, and returned to a Jamaica changed in her absence as it faced economic downturn.

However, by 1867 she was again running short of money, and the Mary Seacole fund was resurrected in London, with new patrons including the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Cambridge, and many other senior military officers.

The fund burgeoned, and Mary Seacole was able to buy land on Duke Street in Kingston, near New Blundell Hall, where she built a bungalow as her new home, plus a larger property to rent out.

In London, Mary Seacole joined the periphery of the royal circle.

Mary Seacole became personal masseuse to the Princess of Wales who suffered with white leg and rheumatism.

Mary Seacole died on 14 May 1881 at her home, 3 Cambridge Street in Paddington, London; the cause of death was noted as "apoplexy".

Mary Seacole was buried in St Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Harrow Road, Kensal Green, London.

Mary Seacole has been better remembered in Jamaica, where significant buildings were named after her in the 1950s: the headquarters of the Jamaican General Trained Nurses' Association was christened "Mary Seacole House" in 1954, followed quickly by the naming of a hall of residence of the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, and a ward at Kingston Public Hospital was named in her memory.

Mary Seacole was voted into first place in an online poll of 100 Great Black Britons in 2004 carried out by the website Every Generation.

An annual prize to recognise and develop leadership in nurses, midwives and health visitors in the National Health Service was named Mary Seacole, to "acknowledge her achievements".

Mary Seacole is featured in BBC's Horrible Histories, where she is portrayed by Dominique Moore.

Mrs Mary Seacole was a kind and generous businesswoman, but was not a frequenter of the battlefield 'under fire' or a pioneer of nursing.

Jennings has suggested that Mary Seacole's race has played a part in the resistance by some of Nightingale's supporters.

The American academic Gretchen Gerzina has agreed with this theory, claiming that many of the supposed criticisms leveled at Mary Seacole are due to her race.

One criticism of Mary Seacole made by supporters of Nightingale is that she was not trained at an accredited medical institution.

Mary Seacole's name appears in an appendix to the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum, as an example of a significant Victorian historical figure.

British social commentator Patrick Vernon has opined that many of the claims that Mary Seacole's achievements were exaggerated have come from an establishment that is determined to suppress and hide the black contribution to British history.

Mary Seacole was portrayed by the actress Sara Powell in a 2021 episode of the BBC science fiction drama Doctor Who titled "War of the Sontarans", alongside Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor.