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Mary Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant in Kingston, Jamaica,[10] the daughter of a Scottish[11] soldier[12] in the British Army and a free Jamaican woman. Seacole's mother was a "doctress", a healer who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal remedies. She ran Blundell Hall, a boarding house at 7 East Street, considered one of the best hotels in all Kingston.[13] Here Seacole acquired her nursing skills. Her autobiography says her early experiments in medicine were based on what she learned from her mother while ministering to a doll, then progressing to pets, before helping her mother treat humans.[14] Seacole was proud of her Scottish ancestry and called herself a Creole,[12] a term that was commonly used in a racially neutral sense or to refer to the children of white settlers.[15] In her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole, she records her bloodline thus: "I am a Creole, and have good Scots blood coursing through my veins. My father was a soldier of an old Scottish family."[11][16] Legally, she was classified as a mulatto, a multiracial person with limited political rights;[17] Robinson speculates that she may technically have been a quadroon.[18] Seacole emphasises her personal vigour in her autobiography, distancing herself from the contemporary stereotype of the "lazy Creole",[12][19][20] She was proud of her black ancestry, writing, "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."[21] The West Indies were an outpost of the British Empire in the late 18th century, and in the 1790s one-third of Britain's foreign trade was with the British West Indies.[22] Britain's economic interests were protected by a massive military presence, with 69 line infantry regiments serving there between 1793 to 1801, and another 24 between 1803 to 1815.[23] Seacole spent some years in the household of an elderly woman, whom she called her "kind patroness",[12] before returning to her mother. She was treated as a member of her patroness's family and received a good education.[24] As the educated daughter of a Scottish officer and a free black woman with a respectable business, Seacole would have held a high position in Jamaican society.[25] In about 1821, Seacole visited London, stayed for a year, and visited relatives, the merchant Henriques family. Although London had a number of black people,[26] she records that a companion, a West Indian with skin darker than her own "dusky" shades, was taunted by children. Seacole herself was "only a little brown",[12] nearly white according to Ramdin.[27] She returned to London approximately a year later, bringing a "large stock of West Indian pickles and preserves for sale".[12] Her later travels would be as an "unprotected" woman, without a chaperone or sponsor—an unusual practice.[28] Seacole returned to Jamaica in 1825.[29] In the Caribbean, 1826–51 A watercolour painting of Mary Seacole (c. 1850) After returning to Jamaica, Seacole nursed her "old indulgent patroness" through an illness,[12] finally returning to the family home at Blundell Hall after the death of her patroness a few years later. Seacole then worked alongside her mother, occasionally being called to assist at the British Army hospital at Up-Park Camp. Dure Caribbean, visiting the British colony of New Providence in The Bahamas, the Spanish colony of Cuba, and the new republic of Haiti. Seacole records these travels, but omits mention of significant current events, such as the Christmas Rebellion in Jamaica of 1831, the partial abolition of slavery in 1834,[30] and the full abolition of slavery in 1838.[31] She married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in Kingston on 10 November 1836.[32] Her marriage, from betrothal to widowhood, is described in just nine lines at the conclusion of the first chapter of her autobiography.[12] His middle names are intriguing: Robinson reports the legend in the Seacole family that Edwin was an illegitimate son of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson and his mistress Emma, Lady Hamilton, who was adopted by Thomas, a local "surgeon, apothecary and man midwife"[33] (Seacole's will indicates that Horatio Seacole was Nelson's godson: she left a diamond ring to her friend, Lord Rokeby, "given to my late husband by his godfather Viscount Nelson", but there was no mention of this godson in Nelson's own will or its codicils.[34]) Edwin was a merchant and seems to have had a poor constitution. The newly married couple moved to Black River and opened a provisions store which failed to prosper. They returned to Blundell Hall in the early 1840s. During 1843 and 1844, Seacole suffered a series of personal disasters. She and her family lost much of the boarding house in a fire in Kingston on 29 August 1843.[21] Blundell Hall burned down, and was replaced by New Blundell Hall, which was described as "better than before".[21] Then her husband died in October 1844, followed by her mother.[21] After a period of grief, in which Seacole says she did not stir for days,[12] she composed herself, "turned a bold front to fortune",[21] and assumed the management of her mother's hotel. She 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".[12] She absorbed herself into work, declining many offers of marriage.[21] She later became widely known and respected, particularly among the European military visitors to Jamaica who often stayed at Blundell Hall. She treated patients in the cholera epidemic of 1850, which killed some 32,000 Jamaicans.[35] Seacole attributed the outbreak to infection brought on a steamer from New Orleans, Louisiana,[21] demonstrating knowledge of contagion theory.[36] This first-hand experience would benefit her during the next five years. In Central America, 1851–54 In 1850, Seacole's half-brother Edward moved to Cruces, Panama, which was then part of New Granada. There, approximately 45 miles (72 km) up the Chagres River from the coast, he followed the family trade by establishing the Independent Hotel to accommodate the many travellers between the eastern and western coasts of the United States (the number of travellers had increased enormously, as part of the 1849 California Gold Rush[37]). Cruces was the limit of navigability of the Chagres River during the rainy season, which lasts from June to December.[38] Travellers would ride on donkeys approximately 20 miles (32 km) along the Las Cruces trail from Panama City on the Pacific Ocean coast to Cruces, and then 45 miles (72 km) down-river to the Atlantic Ocean at Chagres (or vice versa).[39] In the dry season, the river subsided, and travellers would switch from land to the river a few miles farther downstream, at Gorgona.[38] Most of these settlements have now been submerged by Gatun Lake, formed as part of the Panama Canal. In 1851, Seacole travelled to Cruces to visit her brother. Shortly after her arrival, the town was struck by cholera, a disease which had reached Panama in 1849.[40][41] Seacole was on hand to treat the first victim, who survived, which established Seacole's reputation and brought her a succession of patients as the infection spread. The rich paid, but she treated the poor for free.[42] Many, both rich and poor, succumbed. She eschewed opium, preferring mustard rubs and poultices, the laxative calomel (mercuric chloride), sugars of lead (lead(II) acetate), and rehydration with water boiled with cinnamon.[40][43] While her preparations had moderate success, she faced little competition, the only other treatments coming from a "timid little dentist",[40] who was an inexperienced doctor sent by the Panamanian government, and the Roman Catholic Church. Sketch of Mary Seacole's British Hotel in Crimea, by Lady Alicia Blackwood (1818–1913), a friend of Florence Nightingale's who resided in the neighbouring "Zebra Vicarage" The epidemic raged through the population. Seacole later expressed exasperation at their feeble resistance, claiming they "bowed down before the plague in slavish despair".[40] She performed an autopsy on an orphan child for whom she had cared, which gave her "decidedly useful" new knowledge. Towards the end of the epidemic, Seacole herself sickened but survived. Cholera was to return again: Ulysses S. Grant passed through Cruces in July, 1852, on military duty; a hundred and twenty men, a third of his party, died of the disease there or shortly afterwards en route to Panama City.[41] Despite the problems of disease and climate, Panama remained the favoured route between the coasts of the United States. Seeing a business opportunity, Seacole opened the British Hotel, which was a restaurant rather than an hotel. She 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. She soon added the services of a barber.[44] As the wet season ended in early 1852, Seacole joined other traders in Cruces in packing up to move to Gorgona. She records a white American giving a speech at a leaving dinner in which he wished that "God bless the best yaller woman he ever made" and asked the listeners to join with him in rejoicing that "she's so many shades removed from being entirely black". He went on to say that "if we could bleach her by any means we would [...] and thus make her acceptable in any company[,] as she deserves to be".[45] Seacole replied firmly that she did not "appreciate your friend's kind wishes with respect to my complexion. If it had been as dark as any nigger's, I should have been just as happy and just as useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value." She declined the offer of "bleaching" and drank "to you and the general reformation of American manners".[45] Salih notes the use of American pidgin, against Seacole's clear English, as representational of a supposed white moral and intellectual superiority.[46] Seacole also comments on the positions of responsibility taken on by escaped American slaves in Panama, as well as in the priesthood, the army, and public offices,[40] commenting that "it is wonderful to see how freedom and equality elevate men".[44] She also records an antipathy between Panamanians and Americans, which she attributes in part to the fact that so many of the former had once been slaves of the latter.[45] In Gorgona, Seacole briefly ran a woman-only hotel. In late 1852, she travelled home to Jamaica. The journey was delayed and difficult when she encountered racial discrimination while trying to book passage on an American ship. She was forced to wait for a later British boat.[45] In 1853, soon after arriving home, Seacole was asked by the Jamaican medical authorities to minister to victims of a severe outbreak of yellow fever.[45] She found that she could do little, because the epidemic was so severe. Her memoirs state that her own boarding house was full of sufferers and she saw many of them die. Although she wrote, "I was sent for by the medical authorities to provide nurses for the sick at Up-Park Camp," she did not claim to bring nurses with her when she went. She left her sister with some nurses at her house, went to the camp (about a mile, or 1.6 km, from Kingston), "and did my best, but it was little we could do to mitigate the severity of the epidemic."[45] 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 (110 km) away near Escribanos.[47] The superintendent, Thomas Day, was related to her late husband. 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. She determined to travel to England to volunteer as a nurse,[47] to experience the "pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war" as she described it in Chapter I of her autobiography. Crimean War, 1854–56 Sketch of Mary Seacole by Crimean war artist William Simpson (1823–1899), c. 1855 The Crimean War lasted from October 1853 until 1 April 1856 and was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the United Kingdom, France, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire. The majority of the conflict took place on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea and Turkey. Many thousands of troops from all the countries involved were drafted to the area, and disease broke out almost immediately. Hundreds perished, mostly from cholera. Hundreds more would die waiting to be shipped out, or on the voyage. Their prospects were little better when they arrived at the poorly staffed, unsanitary and overcrowded hospitals which were the only medical provision for the wounded. In Britain, a trenchant letter in The Times on 14 October triggered Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War, to approach Florence Nightingale to form a detachment of nurses to be sent to the hospital to save lives. Interviews were quickly held, suitable candidates selected, and Nightingale left for Turkey on 21 October.[48] Seacole travelled from Navy Bay in Panama to England, initially to deal with her investments in gold-mining businesses. She then attempted to join the second contingent of nurses to the Crimea. She applied to the War Office and other government offices, but arrangements for departure were already underway. In her memoir, she wrote that she brought "ample testimony" of her experience in nursing, but the only example officially cited was that of a former medical officer of the West Granada Gold-Mining Company.[49] She also 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.[50] Seacole finally resolved to travel to Crimea using her own resources and to open the British Hotel. Business cards were printed and sent ahead to announce her intention to open an establishment, to be called the "British Hotel", near Balaclava, which would be "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers".[49] Shortly afterwards, her Caribbean acquaintance, Thomas Day, arrived unexpectedly in London, and the two formed a partnership. They assembled a stock of supplies, and Seacole embarked on the Dutch screw-steamer Hollander on 27 January 1855 on its maiden voyage, to Constantinople.[49][51] The ship called at Malta, where Seacole encountered a doctor who had recently left Scutari. He wrote her a letter of introduction to Nightingale.[52] Seacole visited Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari, where she asked for a bed for the night, because she intended to travel to Balaclava the next day to join her business partner. In her memoirs, she reported that her meeting with Nightingale was friendly, with Nightingale asking "What do you want, Mrs. Seacole? Anything we can do for you? If it lies in my power, I shall be very happy."[52] Seacole told her of her "dread of the night journey by caique" and the improbability of being able to find the Hollander in the dark. A bed was then found for her and breakfast sent her in the morning, with a "kind message" from Mrs. Bracebridge, Nightingale's helper. A footnote in the memoir states that Seacole subsequently "saw much of Miss Nightingale at Balaclava," but no further meetings are recorded in the text. After transferring most of her stores to the transport ship Albatross, with the remainder following on the Nonpareil, she set out on the four-day voyage to the British bridgehead into Crimea at Balaclava.[53] Lacking proper building materials, Seacole gathered abandoned metal and wood in her spare moments, with a view to using the debris to build her hotel. She found a site for the hotel at a place she christened Spring Hill, near Kadikoi, some 3½ miles (5.6 km) along the main British supply road from Balaclava to the British camp near Sevastopol, and within a mile of the British headquarters.[54] The hotel was built from the salvaged driftwood, packing cases, iron sheets, and salvaged architectural items such as glass-doors and window-frames, from the village of Kamara, using hired local labour.[54] The new British Hotel opened in March 1855. An early visitor was Alexis Soyer, a noted French chef who had travelled to Crimea to help improve the diet of British soldiers. He 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".[55] 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.[56] The hotel was completed in July at a total cost of £800. It included a building made of iron, containing a main room with counters and shelves and storage above, an attached kitchen, two wooden sleeping huts, outhouses, and an enclosed stable-yard.[57][58] The building was stocked with provisions shipped from London and Constantinople, as well as local purchases from the British camp near Kadikoi and the French camp at nearby Kamiesch. Seacole sold anything -- "from a needle to an anchor"—to army officers and visiting sightseers.[57] Meals were served at the Hotel, cooked by two black cooks, and the kitchen also provided outside catering. Despite constant thefts, particularly of livestock, Seacole's establishment prospered. Chapter XIV of Wonderful Adventures describes the meals and supplies provided to officers. They were closed at 8 pm daily and on Sundays. Seacole did some of the cooking herself: "Whenever I had a few leisure moments, I used to wash my hands, roll up my sleeves, and roll out pastry." When called to "dispense medications," she did so.[59] Soyer was a frequent visitor, and praised Seacole's offerings,[60] noting that she offered him champagne on his first visit.[56] The Special Correspondent of The Times newspaper wrote approvingly of her work: "...Mrs. Seacole...doctors and cures all manner of men with extraordinary success. She is always in attendance near the battle-field to aid the wounded, and has earned many a poor fellow’s blessings."[61] To Soyer, near the time of departure, Florence Nightingale acknowledged favourable views of Seacole, consistent with their one known meeting in Scutari. Soyer's remarks—he knew both women—show pleasantness on both sides. Seacole told him of her encounter with Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital: "You must know, M Soyer, that Miss Nightingale is very fond of me. When I passed through Scutari, she very kindly gave me board and lodging."[62] When he related Seacole's inquiries to Nightingale, she replied "with a smile: 'I should like to see her before she leaves, as I hear she has done a deal of good for the poor soldiers.'"[63] Nightingale, however, did not want her nurses associating with Seacole, as she wrote to her brother-in-law.[64] Map illustrating Mary Seacole's involvement in the Crimean War Seacole often went out to the troops as a sutler,[65] selling her provisions near the British camp at Kadikoi, and attending to casualties brought out from the trenches around Sevastopol or from the Tchernaya valley.[42] She was widely known to the British Army as "Mother Seacole".[1] Apart from serving officers at the British Hotel, Seacole also provided catering for spectators at the battles, and spent time on Cathcart's Hill, some 3½ miles (5.6 km) north of the British Hotel, as an observer. On one occasion, attending wounded troops under fire, she dislocated her right thumb, an injury which never healed entirely.[66] In a dispatch written on 14 September 1855, William Howard Russell, special correspondent of The Times, wrote that she was a "warm and successful physician, who doctors and cures all manner of men with extraordinary success. She is always in attendance near the battle-field to aid the wounded and has earned many a poor fellow's blessing." Russell also wrote that she "redeemed the name of sutler", and another that she was "both a Miss Nightingale and a [chef]". Seacole made a point of wearing brightly coloured, and highly conspicuous, clothing—often bright blue, or yellow, with ribbons in contrasting colours.[67] While Lady Alicia Blackwood later recalled that Seacole had "... personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as could comfort or alleviate the suffering of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pay ...".[68] In late August, Seacole was on the route to Cathcart's Hill for the final assault on Sevastopol on 7 September 1855. French troops led the storming, but the British were beaten back. By dawn on Sunday 9 September, the city was burning out of control, and it was clear that it had fallen: the Russians retreated to fortifications to the north of the harbour. Later in the day, Seacole fulfilled a bet, and became the first British woman to enter Sevastopol after it fell.[69] Having obtained a pass, she toured the broken town, bearing refreshments and visiting the crowded hospital by the docks, containing thousands of dead and dying Russians. Her foreign appearance led to her being stopped by French looters, but she was rescued by a passing officer. She looted some items from the city, including a church bell, an altar candle, and a three-metre (10 ft) long painting of the Madonna.[69][70] After the fall of Sevastopol, hostilities continued in a desultory fashion.[71] The business of Seacole and Day prospered in the interim period, with the officers taking the opportunity to enjoy themselves in the quieter days.[72] There were theatrical performances and horse-racing events for which Seacole provided catering.[73] Seacole was joined by a 14-year-old girl, Sarah, also known as Sally. Soyer described her as "the Egyptian beauty, Mrs Seacole's daughter Sarah", with blue eyes and dark hair. Nightingale alleged that Sarah was the illegitimate offspring of Seacole and Colonel Henry Bunbury. However, there is no evidence that Bunbury met Seacole, or even visited Jamaica, at a time when she would have been nursing her ailing husband.[74] Ramdin speculates that Thomas Day could have been Sarah's father, pointing to the unlikely coincidences of their meeting in Panama and then in England, and their unusual business partnership in Crimea.[75] Peace talks began in Paris in early 1856, and friendly relations opened between the Allies and the Russians, with a lively trade across the River Tchernaya.[76] The Treaty of Paris was signed on 30 March 1856, after which the soldiers left Crimea. Seacole was in a difficult financial position, her business was full of unsalable provisions, new goods were arriving daily, and creditors were demanding payment.[76] She 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. The evacuation of the Allied armies was formally completed at Balaclava on 9 July 1856, with Seacole "... conspicuous in the foreground ... dressed in a plaid riding-habit ...".[77] Seacole was one of the last to leave Crimea, returning to England "poorer than [she] left it".[76] Her contribution to the welfare of the British troops in the Crimea is summed up by sociology professor Lynn McDonald:[78] "Mary Seacole, although never the 'black British nurse' she is claimed to have been, was a successful mixed-race immigrant to Britain. She led an adventurous life, and her memoir of 1857 is still a lively read. She was kind and generous. She made friends of her customers, army and navy officers, who came to her rescue with a fund when she was declared bankrupt. While her cures have been vastly exaggerated, she doubtless did what she could to ease suffering, when no effective cures existed. In epidemics pre-Crimea, she said a comforting word to the dying and closed the eyes of the dead. During the Crimean War, probably her greatest kindness was to serve hot tea and lemonade to cold, suffering soldiers awaiting transport to hospital on the wharf at Balaclava. She deserves much credit for rising to the occasion, but her tea and lemonade did not save lives, pioneer nursing or advance health care." Mary Jane Seacole (1805 – 14 May 1881), née Grant,[1][2] was a Jamaican-born woman of Scottish and Creole descent who set up a "British Hotel" behind the lines during the Crimean War, which she described as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers," and provided succour for wounded servicemen on the battlefield.[2] She was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991. In 2004 she was voted the greatest black Briton.[3] She acquired knowledge of herbal medicine in the Caribbean. When the Crimean War broke out, she applied to the War Office to assist but was refused. She travelled independently and set up her hotel and assisted battlefield wounded. She became extremely popular among service personnel who raised money for her when she faced destitution after the war. After her death, she was forgotten for almost a century, but today is celebrated as a woman who successfully combatted racial prejudice.[4] Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), is one of the earliest autobiographies of a mixed-race woman, although some aspects of its accuracy have been questioned. It has been claimed that Seacole's achievements have been exaggerated for political reasons[5] and a plan to erect a statue of her at St Thomas' Hospital, London, describing her as a "pioneer nurse",[6] has generated controversy.[7][8] Further controversy broke out in the United Kingdom late in 2012 over reports of a proposal to remove her from the country's National Curriculum.[9] |
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