Today's person is Mary Jane Seacole
Mary Seacole was born to a Scottish Officer and a free Jamaican Creole mother in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her mother was a healer, who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal remedies to heal the sick. Mary acquired her nursing and healing skills while helping the sick with her mother, who ran a hotel, Blundell Hall, where most of the guests were disabled European soldiers and sailors who often suffered from yellow fever.
Due to her ancestry, she was declared a mulatto and was given very little rights. She was proud of her Creole, Scottish and black heritage, declaring in her autobiography"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."
She received an education from a kind patroness, after living in her house for many years and treated as one of the family. She returned to this patroness to provide care until the woman's death. After this, she went back to assisting her mother who was often called up to help with British Army Hospital. During this time, she traveled to London to visit family and around the Caribbean, even without the requisite chaperone.
She married Edwin Seacole in 1836, and after attempting to open a shop they returned to Blundell Hall. Unfortunately for Mary, she lost her husband and mother in 1844 and the hotel had burned down in a fire. Blundell Hall was rebuilt as New Blundell Hall and Mary absorbed herself in her work. She became a very well respected member of the community and amidst the cholera epidemic proved to be an asset in Jamaica, because she believe that it was spread through other people and took this knowledge to benefit others.
In 1851, she traveled to Cruces, Panama to visit a brother, where they were hit with a cholera outbreak. After the first patient she treated survived, she earned a well deserved reputation for healing, although many patients did not survive. This was part in due to the fact, that she was the only experienced medical practitioner in the area. She would charge the rich, but not the poor. The remarkable thing is that unlike most medical practitioners of the day, she did not use opium in her ministering. She preferred mustard rubs, cinnamon water, lead acetate and poultices. After one of the children that she had cared for died, she performed an autopsy and learned more about the disease. She herself became sickened but thankfully survived.
I am going to skip some of the intervening years between then and the Crimean War for it is too much to discuss at this current juncture.
The Crimean War rings a bell for most of us as the war where Florence Nightingale flourished in her aiding the sick. However, Mary Seacole was there as well.
The outbreak of the Crimean War was a medical disaster. Cholera ravaged through the troops and killed off many soldiers, as the medical hospitals were grossly inadequate. Mary knowing that her experiences in Panama and Jamaica would make her asset sailed to England to apply for a nursing position, however it was to no avail as she was rejected at every turn. It is believed the other black nurses were having as much difficulty. She even applied to the Crimea Fund for traveling expenses so that she may travel there and help the sick, but that was rejected as well.
Finally she decided to use her own funds to start up the British Hotel in Crimea for sick and convalescent British officers. As she was in London, so was an old acquaintance, Thomas Davy. They formed a partnership and bought enough supplies to send Mary to Crimea. On her boat trip to Crimea, she met a doctor who was at Florence Nightingales hospital and wrote a letter of introduction on Mary's behalf to Florence. However, as Mary arrived with the letter to Florence, her help was refused. She went on to Balaclava, and from debris and rubbish built her British Hotel. The hotel was more than a home for sick, she sold goods to British soldiers and sightseers (Yeah, I know). She would often go out of the hotel and visit casualties every day, except for Sundays.
Florence Nightingale would accuse Mary of being nothing more than a brothel, for daring to sell alcohol and charge for its services. Nightingale would refuse to have any association with Mary, whatsoever, even making sure her nurses would be careful to avoid her. Although later, Nightingale would made an anonymous donation after Seacole faced bankruptcy, after realizing perhaps that Mary was healing many of the wounded and was very well respected and affectionately called, "Mother Seacole".
After the war, Mary was unfortunately destitute from her business and unlike Nightingale received no awards and honours for her hard and outstanding work. Her creditors pursued her back to London, where Queen Victoria's nephew took up fundraising efforts on her behalf.
Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, was published in 1857, the first written by a black woman in Britain.
There is much more to be said about her later life, but I figured you guys should just find out for yourself!
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