Mary Seacole (Part II)

Map illustrating Mary Seacole's involvement in the Crimean War

Seacole often went out to the troops as a sutler, 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.  She was widely known to the British Army as "Mother Seacole".

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 3 1⁄2 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.  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 battlefield 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 colored, and highly conspicuous, clothing—often bright blue, or yellow, with ribbons in contrasting colours.  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 ...".

Her peers, though wary at first, soon found out how important Seacole was for both medical assistance and morale. One British medical officers described Seacole in his memoir as “The acquaintance of a celebrated person, Mrs. Seacole, a colored women who out of the goodness of her heart and at her own expense, supplied hot tea to the poor sufferers [wounded men being transported from the peninsula to the hospital at Scutari] while they are waiting to be lifted into the boats…. She did not spare herself if she could do any good to the suffering soldiers. In rain and snow, in storm and tempest, day after day she was at her self-chosen post with her stove and kettle, in any shelter she could find, brewing tea for all who wanted it, and they were many. Sometimes more than 200 sick would be embarked in one day, but Mrs. Seacole was always equal, to the occasion". But Seacole did more than carry tea to the suffering soldiers. She often carried bags of lint, bandages, needles and thread to tend to the wounds of soldiers.

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

After the fall of Sevastopol, hostilities continued in a desultory fashion.  The business of Seacole and Day prospered in the interim period, with the officers taking the opportunity to enjoy themselves in the quieter days. There were theatrical performances and horse-racing events for which Seacole provided catering.

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.[98] 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.

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.  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 unsaleable provisions, new goods were arriving daily, and creditors were demanding payment. 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 ...” Seacole was one of the last to leave Crimea, returning to England "poorer than [she] left it". Though she had left poorer, her impact on the soldiers was invaluable to the soldiers she treated, changing their perceptions about her as described in the Illustrated London News: “Perhaps at first the authorities looked askant at the woman-volunteer; but they soon found her worth and utility; and from that time until the British army left the Crimea, Mother Seacole was a household word in the camp...In her store on Spring Hill she attended many patients, nursed many sick, and earned the good will and gratitude of hundreds”.

Sociology professor Lynn McDonald is co-founder of The Nightingale Society, which promotes the legacy of Nightingale, who did not see eye-to-eye with Seacole. McDonald believes that Seacole's role in the Crimean War was overplayed:

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.

However, historians maintain that claims that Seacole only served "tea and lemonade" do a disservice to the tradition of Jamaican "doctresses", such as Seacole's mother, Cubah Cornwallis and Sarah Adams, who used herbal remedies and hygienic practices in the late eighteenth century, long before Nightingale took up the mantle. 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.  Mark Bostridge points out that Seacole's experience far outstripped Nightingale's, and that the Jamaican's work comprised preparing medicines, diagnosis, and minor surgery.

Back in London, 1856–60

Seacole was bankrupt on her return to London. Queen Victoria's nephew Count Gleichen had become a friend of Seacole's in Crimea. He supported fund-raising efforts on her behalf.

After the end of the war, Seacole returned to England destitute and in poor health. In the conclusion to her autobiography, she records that she "took the opportunity" to visit "yet other lands" on her return journey, although Robinson attributes this to her impecunious state requiring a roundabout trip. She arrived in August 1856 and opened a canteen with Day at Aldershot, but the venture failed through lack of funds.  She attended a celebratory dinner for 2,000 soldiers at Royal Surrey Gardens in Kennington on 25 August 1856, at which Nightingale was chief guest of honour. Reports in The Times on 26 August and News of the World on 31 August indicate that Seacole was also fêted by the huge crowds, with two "burly" sergeants protecting her from the pressure of the crowd. However, creditors who had supplied her firm in Crimea were in pursuit. She was forced to move to 1, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden in increasingly dire financial straits. The Bankruptcy Court in Basinghall Street declared her bankrupt on 7 November 1856.  Robinson speculates that Seacole's business problems may have been caused in part by her partner, Day, who dabbled in horse trading and may have set up as an unofficial bank, cashing debts.

At about this time, Seacole began to wear military medals. These are mentioned in an account of her appearance in the bankruptcy court in November 1856.  A bust by George Kelly, based on an original by Count Gleichen from around 1871, depicts her wearing four medals, three of which have been identified as the British Crimea Medal, the French Légion d'honneur and the Turkish Order of the Medjidie medal. Robinson says that one is "apparently" a Sardinian award (Sardinia having joined Britain and France in supporting Turkey against Russia in the war).  The Jamaican Daily Gleaner stated in her obituary on 9 June 1881 that she had also received a Russian medal, but it has not been identified. However, no formal notice of her award exists in the London Gazette, and it seems unlikely that Seacole was formally rewarded for her actions in Crimea; rather, she may have bought miniature or "dress" medals to display her support and affection for her "sons" in the Army.

Seacole's plight was highlighted in the British press. As a consequence a fund was set up, to which many prominent people donated money, and on 30 January 1857, she and Day were granted certificates discharging them from bankruptcy ] Day left for the Antipodes to seek new opportunities,  but Seacole's funds remained low. She 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 Punch's 30 May edition, she was heavily criticized 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. After quoting her letter in full the magazine provides a satiric cartoon of the activity she describes, captioned "Our Own Vivandière," describing Seacole as a female sutler, or canteen-carrier, intentionally minimalizing her wartime activities. The article observes, "It will be evident, from the foregoing, that Mother Seacole has sunk much lower in the world, and is also in danger of rising much higher in it, than is consistent with the honour of the British army, and the generosity of the British public." While urging the public to donate, the commentary's tone can be read as ironic: "Who would give a guinea to see a mimic-sutler woman, and a foreigner, frisk and amble about on the stage, when he might bestow the money on a genuine English one, reduced to a two-pair back, and in imminent danger of being obliged to climb into an attic?"

Mary Seacole, depicted as an admirer of Punch along with her British Crimean War patients in "Our Own Vivandière"

Further fund-raising and literary mentions kept Seacole in the public eye. In May 1857 she wanted to travel to India, to minister to the wounded of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but she was dissuaded by the new Secretary of War, Lord Panmure, and her financial troubles.  Fund-raising activities included the "Seacole Fund Grand Military Festival", which was held at the Royal Surrey Gardens, from Monday 27 July to Thursday 30 July 1857. This successful event was supported by many military men, including Major General Lord Rokeby (who had commanded the 1st Division in Crimea) and Lord George Paget; over 1,000 artists performed, including 11 military bands and an orchestra conducted by Louis Antoine Jullien, which was attended by a crowd of circa 40,000.  The one-shilling entrance charge was quintupled for the first night, and halved for the Tuesday performance. However, production costs had been high and the Royal Surrey Gardens Company was itself having financial problems. It became insolvent immediately after the festival, and as a result Seacole only received £57, one quarter of the profits from the event. When eventually the financial affairs of the ruined Company were resolved, in March 1858, the Indian Mutiny was over. Writing of his 1859 journey to the West Indies, the British novelist Anthony Trollope described visiting Mrs. Seacole's sister's hotel in Kingston in his The West Indies and the Spanish Main.  Besides remarking on the black servants' pride and insistence that they be treated politely by guests, Trollope remarked that his hostess, "though clean and reasonable in her charges, clung with touching tenderness to the idea that beefsteak and onions, and bread and cheese and beer, comprised the only diet proper to an Englishman."

Wonderful Adventures

A 200-page autobiographical account of her travels was published in July 1857 by James Blackwood as Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain.  Priced at one shilling and six pence (1/6) a copy, the cover bears a striking portrait of Seacole in red, yellow and black ink.  Robinson speculates that she dictated the work to an editor, identified in the book only as W.J.S., who improved her grammar and orthography.  In the work Seacole deals with the first 39 years of her life in one short chapter.  She then expends six chapters on her few years in Panama, before using the following 12 chapters to detail her exploits in Crimea. She avoids mention of the names of her parents and precise date of birth. A short final "Conclusion" deals with her return to England, and lists supporters of her fund-raising effort, including Rokeby, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of Newcastle, William Russell, and other prominent men in the military. The book was dedicated to Major-General Lord Rokeby, commander of the First Division. In a brief preface, the Times correspondent William Howard Russell wrote, "I have witnessed her devotion and her courage ... and I trust that England will never forget one who has nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead."

The Illustrated London News received the autobiography favorably agreeing with the statements made in the preface “If singleness of heart, true charity and Christian works- of trials and sufferings, dangers and perils, encountered boldly by a helpless women on her errand of mercy in the camp and in the battlefield can excite sympathy or move curiosity, Mary Seacole will have many friends and many readers”.

In 2017 Robert McCrum chose it as one of the 100 best nonfiction books, calling it "gloriously entertaining".

Later life, 1860–81

Seacole had joined the Roman Catholic Church circa 1860, and returned to a Jamaica changed in her absence as it faced economic downturn.  She became a prominent figure in the country. However, by 1867 she was again running short of money, and the 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 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.

By 1870, Seacole was back in London, living at 40 Upper Berkley St., St. Marylebone.  Robinson speculates that she was drawn back by the prospect of rendering medical assistance in the Franco-Prussian War.  It seems likely that she approached Sir Harry Verney (the husband of Florence Nightingale's sister Parthenope) Member of Parliament for Buckingham who was closely involved in the British National Society for the Relief of the Sick and Wounded. It was at this time Nightingale wrote her letter to Verney insinuating that Seacole had kept a "bad house" in Crimea, and was responsible for "much drunkenness and improper conduct".

In London, Seacole joined the periphery of the royal circle. Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (a nephew of Queen Victoria; as a young Lieutenant he had been one of Seacole's customers in Crimea) carved a marble bust of her in 1871 that was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1872. Seacole also became personal masseuse to the Princess of Wales who suffered with white leg and rheumatism.

In the census of 1881, Seacole is listed as a boarder at 2 Cambridge Gardens.  Seacole died in 1881 at her home in Paddington, London; the cause of death was noted as "apoplexy". She left an estate valued at over £2,500. After some specific legacies, many of exactly 19 guineas, the main beneficiary of her will was her sister, (Eliza) Louisa. Lord Rokeby, Colonel Hussey Fane Keane, and Count Gleichen (three trustees of her Fund) were each left £50; Count Gleichen also received a diamond ring, said to have been given to Seacole's late husband by Lord Nelson.  A short obituary was published in The Times on 21 May 1881. She was buried in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, Harrow Road, Kensal Green, and London.

Recognition

While well-known at the end of her life, Seacole rapidly faded from British public memory. At the time though Seacole's work as a nurse was almost as celebrated as Florence Nightingale's, with newspapers describing them jointly as "The Mothers of the Army".  Her work in Crimea was later overshadowed by that of Florence Nightingale. However, in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in her and efforts to properly acknowledge her achievements. Seacole has become a case study of racial attitudes and social injustices in Britain in the nineteenth century. She was cited as an example of "hidden" black history in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1988), like Olaudah Equiano: "See, here is Mary Seacole, who did as much in the Crimea as another magic-lamping lady, but, being dark, could scarce be seen for the flame of Florence's candle."

She has been better remembered in the Caribbean, 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 also named in her memory.[141] More than a century after her death, Seacole was awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991.

Her grave in London was rediscovered in 1973; a service of reconsecration was held on 20 November 1973, and her impressive gravestone was also restored by the British Commonwealth Nurses' War Memorial Fund and the Lignum Vitae Club. Nonetheless, when scholarly and popular works were written in the 1970s about the Black British presence, she was absent from the historical record, and went unrecorded by Edward Scobie and Sebastian Okechukwu Mezu.

The centenary of her death was celebrated with a memorial service on 14 May 1981 and the grave is maintained by the Mary Seacole Memorial Association, an organization founded in 1980 by Jamaican-British Auxiliary Territorial Service corporal, Connie Mark.  An English Heritage blue plaque was erected by the Greater London Council at her residence in 157 George Street, Westminster, on 9 March 1985, but it was removed in 1998 before the site was redeveloped.  A "green plaque" was unveiled at 147 George Street, in Westminster, on 11 October 2005.  However, another blue plaque has since been positioned at 14 Soho Square, where she lived in 1857.

By the 21st century, Seacole was much more prominent. Several buildings and entities, mainly connected with health care, were named after her. In 2005, British politician Boris Johnson wrote of learning about Seacole from his daughter's school pageant and speculated: "I find myself facing the grim possibility that it was my own education that was blinkered."  In 2007 Seacole was introduced into the National Curriculum, and her life story is taught at many primary schools in the UK alongside that of Florence Nightingale.

She was voted into first place in an online poll of 100 Great Black Britons in 2004.  The portrait identified as Seacole in 2005 was used for one of ten first-class stamps showing important Britons, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the National Portrait Gallery.

Ward named after Mary Seacole in Whittington Hospital in North London

British buildings and organizations now commemorate her by name. One of the first was the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at Thames Valley University, which created the NHS Specialist Library for Ethnicity and Health, a web-based collection of research-based evidence and good practice information relating to the health needs of minority ethnic groups, and other resources relevant to multi-cultural health care. There is another Mary Seacole Research Centre, this one at De Montfort University in Leicester, and a problem-based learning room at St George's, University of London is named after her. Brunel University in West London houses its School of Health Sciences and Social Care in the Mary Seacole Building. New buildings at the University of Salford and Birmingham City University bear her name, as does part of the new headquarters of the Home Office at 2 Marsham Street. There is a Mary Seacole ward in the Douglas Bader Centre in Roehampton. There are two wards named after Mary Seacole in Whittington Hospital in North London. The Royal South Hants Hospital in Southampton named its outpatients' wing "The Mary Seacole Wing" in 2010, in honour of her contribution to nursing.

An annual prize to recognize and develop leadership in nurses, midwives and health visitors in the National Health Service was named Seacole, to "acknowledge her achievements". The NHS Leadership Academy has developed a six month leadership course called the Mary Seacole Programme, which is designed for first time leaders in healthcare. An exhibition to celebrate the bicentenary of her birth opened at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London in March 2005. Originally scheduled to last for a few months, the exhibition was so popular that it was extended to March 2007.

Statue of Mary Seacole at St Thomas' Hospital, London, by Martin Jennings

A campaign to erect a statue of Seacole in London was launched on 24 November 2003, chaired by Clive Soley, Baron Soley.  The design of the sculpture by Martin Jennings was announced on 18 June 2009.  There was significant opposition to the siting of the statue at the entrance of St Thomas' Hospital, but it was unveiled on 30 June 2016.  The words written by Russell in The Times in 1857 are etched on to Seacole's statue: “I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.”

A feature film is being made of her life by Seacole Pictures.  A short animation about Mary Seacole was adapted from a book entitled Mother Seacole, published in 2005 as part of the bicentenary celebrations.  Seacole is featured in BBC's Horrible Histories, where she is portrayed by Dominique Moore.

A two-dimensional sculpture of Seacole was erected in Paddington in 2013.

Controversies

Seacole's recognition has been controversial. It has been argued that she has been promoted at the expense of Florence Nightingale.  Sociology professor Lynn McDonald has written that "...support for Seacole has been used to attack Nightingale's reputation as a pioneer in public health and nursing." There was opposition to the siting of a statue of Mary Seacole at St Thomas' Hospital on the grounds that she had no connection with this institution, whereas Florence Nightingale did. Dr Sean Lang has stated that she "does not qualify as a mainstream figure in the history of nursing", while a letter to The Times from the Florence Nightingale Society and signed by members including historians and biographers asserted that "Seacole's battlefield excursions ... took place post-battle, after selling wine and sandwiches to spectators. Mrs Seacole was a kind and generous businesswoman, but was not a frequenter of the battlefield "under fire" or a pioneer of nursing."  An article by Lynn McDonald in the Times Literary Supplement asked "How did Mary Seacole come to be viewed as a pioneer of modern nursing?", comparing her unfavorably with Kofoworola Pratt who was the first black nurse in the NHS, and concluded "She deserves much credit for rising to the occasion, but her tea and lemonade did not save lives, pioneer nursing or advance health care".

However, this criticism belittles the achievements of Jamaican "doctresses" such as Seacole, who used more than "tea and lemonade" to heal the ill and wounded, often using herbal remedies and hygiene decades before Nightingale. Jennings suggested that race plays a part in the resistance to Seacole by some of Nightingale's supporters.  The American academic Gretchen Gerzina has implied that racism was a motivating factor behind a lot of criticism of Seacole from members of the British establishment and media. One criticism made by supporters of Nightingale of Seacole is that she was not trained at an established British hospital.  However, that Eurocentric criticism ignores the fact that Jamaican nurses such as Seacole and Cubah Cornwallis, and even Nanny of the Maroons, developed their nursing skills from West African healing traditions, such as the use of herbs, which became known as obeah in Jamaica. According to the writer Helen Rappaport, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the West African and Jamaican creole "doctress", such as Cornwallis and Sarah Adams, who both died in the late 1840s, often had greater success than the European-trained doctor who practiced what was then traditional medicine. These doctresses of Jamaica practiced hygiene long before Nightingale adopted it as one of her key reforms in her book Notes on Nursing in 1859. It is possible that Nightingale learned about the value of hygiene in nursing from the practices of Seacole.

Seacole's name appears in an appendix to the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum, as an example of a significant Victorian historical figure. There is no requirement that teachers include Seacole in their lessons.  At the end of 2012 it was reported that Mary Seacole was to be removed from the National Curriculum. Opposing this, Greg Jenner, historical consultant to Horrible Histories, has stated that while he thought her medical achievements may have been exaggerated; removing Seacole from the curriculum would be a mistake. While Peter Hitchens has argued that Seacole's accomplishments have been exaggerated because anybody who put a contrary view was afraid to be accused of racism, both Jenner and Hugh Muir have asserted that this is not the case. Susan Sheridan has argued that the leaked proposal to remove Seacole from the National Curriculum is part of "a concentration solely on large-scale political and military history and a fundamental shift away from social history."  A lot of commentators do not accept the disputed Eurocentric view that Seacole's accomplishments were exaggerated. Patrick Vernon opines that a lot of the claims that Seacole's achievements were exaggerated came from English elite that was determined to suppress and hide the black contribution in Britain.  Helen Seaton observes that Nightingale fitted the English ideal of a Victorian heroine more than a dark-skinned Seacole, who battled racial prejudice from English people who had little understanding about Caribbean herbal remedies.   In The Daily Telegraph, Cathy Newman argues that Michael Gove's plans for the new history curriculum "could mean the only women children learn anything about will be queens".

In January 2013 Operation Black Vote launched a petition to request neither Education Secretary Michael Gove to drop neither her nor Olaudah Equiano from the National Curriculum Rev. Jesse Jackson and others wrote a letter to The Times protesting against the mooted removal of Mary Seacole from the National Curriculum.  This was declared successful on 8 February 2013 when the DfE opted to leave Seacole on the curriculum.