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Mary Seacole Biography & Facts

Mary Jane Seacole (née Grant; 23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a British nurse and businesswoman. Seacole was born to a Creole mother who ran a boarding house and had herbalist skills as a "doctress". In 1990, Seacole was (posthumously) awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit. In 2004, she was voted the greatest black Briton in a survey conducted in 2003 by the black heritage website Every Generation . 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." However, chef Alexi Soyer told her that officers did not need overnight accommodation, so she made it instead a restaurant/bar/catering service. It proved to be very popular and she and her business partner, a relative of her late husband, did well on it until the end of the war. Her memoir, Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, 1857, includes three chapters of the food she served and the encounters she had with officers, some of them high ranking, and including the commander of the Turkish forces. Mrs Seacole missed the first three major battles of the war, as she was busy in London attending to her gold investments—she had arrived from Panama where she had provided services for prospectors going overland to the California Gold Rush. She gave assistance at the battlefield on three later battles, going out to attend to the fallen after serving wine and sandwiches to spectators. She is often described as "nursing" on the battlefield, but she never called herself a "nurse", reserving that term for Florence Nightingale and her nurses. In her memoir, Mrs Seacole described several attempts she made to join that team; however, she did not start her informal inquiries until after both Nightingale and her initial team, and a later one, had left. When Seacole left, it was with the plan of joining her business partner and starting their business. She travelled with two black employees, her maid Mary, and a porter, Mac. She was largely forgotten for almost a century after her death. Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), was the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain. The erection of a statue of her at St Thomas' Hospital, London, on 30 June 2016, describing her as a "pioneer", generated some controversy and opposition, especially among those concerned with Florence Nightingale's legacy. Early career and background Mary Jane Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant on 23 November 1805 in Kingston, in the Colony of Jamaica as a member of the community of free black people in Jamaica. She was the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army. Her mother, Mrs Grant, nicknamed "The Doctress", was a healer who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal medicines. Mrs Grant also ran Blundell Hall, a boarding house at 7, East Street. In the 18th century, Jamaican doctresses mastered folk medicine, including the use of hygiene and herbs. They had a vast knowledge of tropical diseases, and had a general practitioner's skill in treating ailments and injuries, acquired from having to look after the illnesses of fellow slaves on sugar plantations. At Blundell Hall, Seacole acquired her nursing skills, which included the use of hygiene, ventilation, warmth, hydration, rest, empathy, good nutrition and care for the dying. Blundell Hall also served as a convalescent home for military and naval staff recuperating from illnesses such as cholera and yellow fever. 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. Because of her family's close ties with the army, she was able to observe the practices of military doctors, and combined that knowledge with the West African remedies she acquired from her mother. In Jamaica in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, neonatal deaths were more than a quarter of total births. However, Seacole, using traditional West African herbal remedies and hygienic practices, boasted that she never lost a mother or her child. Seacole was proud of both her Jamaican and Scottish ancestry and called herself a Creole In her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole, she writes: "I am a Creole, and have good Scots blood coursing through my veins. My father was a soldier of an old Scottish family." Her biographer Jane Robinson speculates that she may technically have been a quadroon. Seacole emphasises her personal vigour in her autobiography, distancing herself from the contemporary stereotype of the "lazy Creole", 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." Mary Seacole spent some years in the household of an elderly woman, whom she called her "kind patroness", before returning to her mother. She was treated as a member of her patroness's family and received a good education. 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. In about 1821, Seacole visited London, staying for a year, and visited her relatives in the merchant Henriques family. Although London had a number of black people, 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"; she was nearly white according to one of her biographers, Dr. Ron Ramdin. She returned to London approximately a year later, bringing a "large stock of West Indian pickles and preserves for sale". Her later travels would be without a chaperone or sponsor – an unusually independent practice at a time when women had limited rights. In the Caribbean, 1826–51 After returning to Jamaica, Seacole cared for her "old indulgent patroness" through an illness, 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 provide nursing assistance at the British Army hospital at Up-Park Camp. She also travelled the 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 abolition of slavery in 1833, and the abolition of "apprenticeship" in 1838. She married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in Kingston on 10 November 1836. Her marriage, from betrothal to widowhood, is described in just nine lines at the conclusion of the first chapter of her autobiography. Robinson reports the legend in the Seacole family that E.... Discover the Mary Seacole popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Mary Seacole books.