by Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ and Director, CREDI
Do you know about Mary Seacole (1805-1881), the Jamaica-born nurse who cared for wounded British servicemen during the Crimean War in the 19th century (1853-1856)?
She was born to a Scottish soldier and a Jamaican woman. Read her memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands originally published in 1857 or any of the other books written about her.
My heart soared when I heard that after a 12-year fundraising campaign by the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal, Martin Jennings’ bronze statue honouring her was unveiled at St Thomas’ Hospital on Thursday, June 30.
It stands in the hospital’s garden, opposite the Houses of Parliament, London, and is inscribed with words written in 1857 by The Times’ Crimean War correspondent Sir William Howard Russell: “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.”
Mary Jane Seacole (1805-1881)
Russell, described her as “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 blessings.”
Mary was a model of selfless service. Yet the journey to honour her was mired in controversy, racism and classism. In 2012, efforts were made to remove her from the National Curriculum. This failed.
Read Patrick Vernon’s article in the UK Guardian on June 21 entitled: Rubbishing Mary Seacole is another move to hide the contributions of black people.
Inter alia, he said: “In February 2004, Mary Seacole was voted by the public as the greatest black Briton of all time. After the results, the Royal College of Nursing readopted Seacole as a key champion for nursing in Britain on the same footing as Florence Nightingale. The Royal Mint and Post Office recognised her in the form of new coins and stamps.
“The National Portrait Gallery acquired a rare picture of Seacole which was strategically placed in the Victorian Gallery next to Queen Victoria and Nightingale. There were books, documentaries, plays and re-enactments of her life in museums and theatres. University medical and humanities departments, and care homes were also renamed in Seacole’s honour. There seems a reservoir of goodwill towards the heroine of the Crimea and rightly so. So ask yourself, why would anyone deliberately seek to denigrate a popular, blameless icon?”
The statue of Mary Seacole at St Thomas’ Hospital. Source: sicklecellsociety.org. Inset: Mary Seacole
“On Monday, a group of historians and Nightingale devotees, furious at the success of the campaign to erect a statue of Seacole at St Thomas’s hospital in London at the end of this month, resharpened their knives and lunged towards the greatest black Briton of all time. They could support a Seacole statue, they say, but not at St Thomas’s, ‘Florence Nightingale’s hospital’.
“To me, what’s happening seems clear, for this campaign of denigration is not happening in isolation. I see it as part of a wider tradition by an elite, particularly in academia and parts of the media, to suppress and hide the black contribution to Britain.”
In 1854, Seacole travelled to England and applied to the war office to be sent to the Crimea to join Florence Nightingale and a team of nurses as an army nurse. Her request was refused. She managed to make her own way there and established the British Hotel near Balaclava to provide “comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers”. She was in the “thick” of the war.
While Florence Nightingale and her nurses were located in a hospital miles from the Front, “Mary Seacole’s independent status ensured a freedom of movement denied the formal nursing service; by June she was a familiar figure at the battle-front, riding forward with two mules in attendance, one carrying medicaments and the other food and wine. She brought medical comfort to the maimed and dying after the assault on the Redan, in which a quarter of the British force was killed or wounded, and she tended Italian, French, and Russian casualties at the Chernaya two months later” (Alan Palmer).
She became known as ‘Mother Seacole’. During her life she travelled widely, for example, to the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, and Panama. Her life was beset with racism, as well as kindness from those who valued her contribution to humanity.
Lord Clive Solely said at the unveiling: “We are proud to finally grant Mary Seacole the acknowledgement she deserves for her selfless support of British soldiers and sailors.”
It is hoped that historians such as Dr Sean Lang, will one day accept that she does qualify as a mainstream figure in the history of nursing.
