Mary was fifteen years older than Florence Nightingale. She was born; Mary Jane Grant of mixed parentage in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805, her father was a Scottish soldier, her mother, Jamaican. The slave trade was still flourishing in Jamaica at this time, indeed the Emancipation Act was not passed until 1833, but Mary's mother had bought her freedom and established a boarding house where she nursed British soldiers and their wives. During this time her skills as a practitioner of traditional Jamaican medicine were often called upon. And it was clear Mary was destined to follow in her mother's footsteps from an early age, often practicing her nursing skills on her dolls.
Unusually for the time, and especially in light of her mixed parentage, Mary was particularly well travelled for a Jamaican woman. She had made the long journey to Britain on two occasions as well as travelling to the Bahamas, Haiti and Cuba.
At the age of 31 Mary met and married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole, godson of the Battle of Trafalgar hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson. Together they spent much of their short marriage travelling to other islands of the Caribbean where Mary continued to develop her healing skills, learning the practices and cures native to the islands she visited.
Seacole's Skills As a Doctress
Widowed after eight years of marriage, Mary spent time in Panama with her brother, Edward. During her stay an epidemic of cholera broke out. Word spread quickly that Mary was a 'doctress' and as the local medic had fled the area at the outbreak of the epidemic, she was left to care for the sick on her own.
Mary returned to Jamaica in 1853 just as an outbreak of yellow fever occurred. As in Panama, news of her nursing skills quickly spread and she was asked to supervise the nursing services at Up-Port camp in Kingston, which was the headquarters of the British army.
The Crimean War
1853 also saw the start of the Crimean War with Russian advances into the Ottoman Empire. Within weeks of their arrival in the war zone an estimated 8,000 British troops had developed cholera and malaria. (Of the 21,000 soldiers who died in the conflict only 3,000 died from battle injuries.)
Hearing the news of the war and the plight of the British soldiers, Mary made the arduous journey to England where she repeatedly offered her services to the War Office and even, on one occasion, to an assistant of Florence Nightingale. Each time, in spite of letters of recommendation from doctors in Jamaica and Panama, she was turned away.
Mary was not someone to give up easily. Striking up a partnership with a relative of her late husband, Thomas Day, she travelled to the war zone. Here, Seacole and Day established a hotel for invalids just two miles from the headquarters of the British army. At 50 years of age Mary Seacole had become a sutler, a follower of the army, selling provisions and administering medicines to the soldiers.
In September 1855 Mary was the first woman to enter the besieged city of Sevastopol. As had happened on several occasions before, it was not long before the whole army was aware of Mother Seacole as she had been named. The men would call out to her as she led her donkey through the battlefields tending the wounded and dying. Her efforts didn't go unnoticed as she was mentioned in a despatch on 14 September 1955 by The Times special correspondent, William Howard Russell. He wrote 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 battle-field to aid the wounded and has earned many a poor fellow's blessing.'
Peace in the Crimea
1856 saw the War come to a sudden end, catching Mary and her partner, Thomas Day unawares, leaving them with a lot of expensive stock they couldn't sell. Bankrupt, Mary retuned to England, but her reputation followed her. Friends and survivors of the war rallied round in an attempt to alleviate Mary's predicament. The Times newspaper published several letters it had received from well wishers praising the efforts she made during the war. Punch magazine published a poem entitled 'A Stir for Seacole' on 6 December 1856. Several fund raising events were held and Mary was discharged from bankruptcy just a year later.
Mary Seacole published her autobiography entitled 'Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands' which proved so popular it was reprinted twice.
Awarded the Crimean medal, the French Legion of Honour and the Turkish medal, Medjidie, Mary died in relative obscurity on 14 May 1881 aged 71 and is buried in St Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green, London.
Sources:
Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole on Many Lands by Mary Seacole
A Short History of Mary Seacole by Professor Elizabeth Anionwu
BBC Famous People
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