Pioneering nurse and heroine of the Crimean war, Mary Seacole (1805 1881), has today (Thursday 29 November 2007) been commemorated with a Blue Plaque at 14 Soho Square, London, W1, where she lived briefly in the 1850s. This address is the only known surviving residence of Seacole in London. While living on the upper floor of 14 Soho Square, Seacole began writing her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, and it is thought that she was still living here at the time of its publication in July 1857. The Blue Plaque was unveiled by Professor Elizabeth Anionwu CBE FRCN, Vice-Chair of the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal, in the presence of The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Minister for Culture.
Mary Jane Grant was born in Jamaica in 1805, the daughter of a Scottish army officer and a Creole hotel-keeper. Her mother had a reputation as a healer, adept in the use of herbal medicine. Mary took a keen interest in her mother’s work and also showed an early flair for business. In addition to travelling around the Caribbean, she made two visits to England, and on the second, sold West Indian preserves and pickles. In 1836 Mary married Edwin Horatio Seacole, a godson of Lord Nelson, but was widowed eight years later. By that time, she was assisting her mother in the running of her boarding house, helping to reconstruct the building after Kingston’s great fire of 1843. On her mother’s death the following year, Seacole inherited the business.
The opportunity to utilise her medical skills came in the late 1840s and early 1850s, when Seacole nursed patients during cholera epidemics in Jamaica and Panama. During a yellow fever epidemic in Jamaica, the British military authorities turned to her for help in organising medical care in their camp. On hearing of the outbreak of the Crimean War, Mary Seacole decided to leave the Caribbean. She set out for England, where she arrived in late 1854. However, her efforts to be recruited as a nurse were rebuffed by the team who worked under Florence Nightingale largely on account of Seacole’s colour and she set out on her own, determined to draw on her experience as a business woman.
Seacole arrived in Balaklava in February 1855. By April in partnership with Thomas Day, a kinsman of her late husband she had opened the British Hotel’ between Balaklava and Sevastopol. With money paid by officers and those who could afford it, Seacole provided food and medicine and surgical care for all. The Inspector General of Sevastopol noted in particular her care for the London Transport Men, the most deprived of all the auxiliary forces. Seacole’s work was praised by Lord Rokeby, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces, and Alexis Soyer, the chef who had been recruited to organise military catering. From summer 1855 her efforts were brought to public notice in England by William Russell, war correspondent of The Times, who had taken a lead in criticising the military authorities for the inefficiencies which made the services of people such as Mary Seacole crucial.
As the Crimean War drew to a close in 1856, Seacole found herself with outstanding stock, equipment and bills that required payment. In July of that year she left for England, where she spent much of the last part of her life. In November 1856 Seacole was finally declared bankrupt, prompting campaigns by The Times and Punch in particular, and in July 1857 a Seacole Fund Grand Military Festival was held in Kennington. Her achievements in the Crimea were widely recognised and fêted; Seacole was awarded both the Crimean Medal and the French Legion of Honour.
After the publication of her autobiography, Seacole began to fade from public view, and after 1860 travelled back and forth to Jamaica. However, she was certainly back in London by 1869 a recently discovered 1869 portrait by Albert Charles Challen, now in the care of the National Portrait Gallery confirms her residence in the capital - and it is possible that she was drawn to return by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Seacole mixed increasingly with royalty; she was a personal masseuse to the Princess of Wales, and in 1871 was sculpted by Count Gleichen, the nephew of Queen Victoria. Ten years later, she died at her home in Paddington; she is buried in Kensal Green cemetery.
The reforms in medical care which resulted from the chaos of the Crimean War are largely associated with the work of Florence Nightingale, who established nursing as a respectable profession. However, Mary Seacole’s contribution was no less vital; it was perhaps more immediate at the time of the war, and is even more extraordinary given her colour and background. A woman of remarkable bravery and diligence, Mother’ Seacole served near the front William Russell even noted her tending the wounded while under fire and was the first woman to enter Sevastopol when it fell after the Allied siege in September 1855. In his preface to Mary Seacole’s autobiography, Russell wrote: I will have witnessed her devotion and her courage and I trust that England will not forget the one who nursed her sick and who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last office for some of her illustrious dead’. |
