Mary Seacole

 Mary Seacole , who was Awarded the Crimea Medal 

 (1805-81),

Now hailed as a heroine of nursing, was rejected as a nurse by the British government and the official charities because of prejudice against her colour.

She was the free descendant of slaves, the daughter of a lodging house keeper and a British army lieutenant, raised, married and widowed in Jamaica who had worked on the island and in Panama as a health practitioner. She arrived in London to volunteer as a nurse for the British army in the Crimean War but was rejected both by the government and by the official charity, the Crimean Fund.

She thought it was racial prejudice: 'Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs?'

Mary Seacole applied directly to Florence Nightingale's assistant:

‘Once again I tried, and had an interview this time with one of Miss Nightingale's companions. She 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.'

Seacole took passage on a ship to Crimea, where she built her own boarding house from the wreckage of other houses destroyed by shelling in the ruins of a town only a mile from the British headquarters. She nursed wounded soldiers and supported them as they returned from the fighting to be shipped home, providing food and drink for paying officers and for wounded soldiers for free. It was said that you could buy anything from an anchor to a sewing needle from 'Mother Seacole. She had a cool meeting with Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) in Crimea.

Nightingale wrote: I had the greatest difficulty in repelling Mrs Seacole's advances, and in preventing association between her and my nurses (absolutely out of the question!) ... Anyone who employs Mrs Seacole will introduce much kindness - also much drunkenness and improper conduct.

Mary Seacole won a bet that she would be the first English woman into Sebastopol, entering the town with the triumphant British army in September 1855 and serving the soldiers until the end of the war, at a financial loss. She was awarded the Crimea Medal, and several fundraising events were held to celebrate her service and pay her debts.

She published her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, in July 1857, before returning to Jamaica for a visit, eventually making a comfortable home in London, where she died in 1881, leaving £2,500 in her estate. She was proud of her mixed race and her history:

‘I am a Creole, and have good Scots blood coursing through my veins. My father was a soldier of an old Scottish family ... I have a few shades of deeper brown upon my skin which shows me related - and I am proud of the relationship - to those poor mortals whom you once held enslaved, and whose bodies America still owns.’

Source ~ ‘Normal Women ‘ by Phillippa Gregory
Page: 299-301