Born Mary Jane Grant in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Scottish father and a Jamaican mother. Not a lot is known about her father, but her mother ran a boarding house where she cared for invalid soldiers and sailors. Her mother was known as a doctress and, in time passed on to Mary the arts of Creole medicine. Mary soon gained her own reputation as a skilled nurse and doctress.
In 1836, Mary married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole, godson of the British naval hero, Lord Nelson. They were married for eight years when he tragically died.
In 1851, Mary, along with her brother Edward, travelled to Panama. Here, she opened her first hotel/boarding house caring for cholera patients and soon gained extensive knowledge of the pathology of the disease. She herself contracted the disease and made a full recovery. Mary was widely praised for her work in treating the disease and returned to Jamaica in 1853 to the yellow fever epidemic. Medical authorities came to her to provide nurses to care for the sick soldiers.
Crimean War
Mary travelled to London after hearing about the Crimean War and how the nursing system there had collapsed. She made applications to the War Office, the army medical department and the secretary of war to be allowed to go to Crimea and treat. She pointed out her extensive experience, excellent references and how she knew many of the soldiers and regiments- she had nursed them in Jamaica.
Mary was turned away from everyone, including Florence Nightingale's assistants. She asked herself, "Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs?"
A distant relative called Day was going to Balaclava on business and agreed to launch a firm over there called Seacole and Day- a general store and hotel near the British camp in Crimea.
So, at fifty years of age, armed with a large stock of medicines, Mary went to the battle zone as a sutler- a person who follows the army and sells provisions to the troops.
Mother Seacole
From the moment she arrived there were sick and wounded to attend to and Mary opened the British Hotel in the summer of 1855 near the beseiged city of Savastopol. Soon the entire British army knew of "Mother Seacole"- the soldiers, her sons and she, their mother.
Some army doctors regarded her a quack but others were less bigoted. The assistant surgeon of the 90th Light Infantry watched with admiration as Mary, numb with cold would administer to soldiers giving them tea, food, words of comfort, often on the front line and frequently under fire.
It was W H Russell, the first modern war correspondent, who made Mary famous. He 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 wounded and has earned many a poor fellow's blessing"
She was the first woman to enter Sevastopol when it fell. The end of the war however left her bankrupt and she returned to England penniless. But her comrades rallied around her. The Times wrote a piece about her and demanded "how could anyone forget the amazing things that Mary had done, and praise Florence Nightingale?"
Lord Rokeby and Lord Paget, both Crimean Commanders, organised a benefit festival to raise money for Mary. There were one thousand performers and Mary's name was shouted by a "thousand voices".
In 1857, Mary published her autobiography; The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands. It was prefaced by W H 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 was awarded the Crimean medal and a bust was made of her by Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, sculptor and nephew of Queen Victoria.
She spent the last twenty five years of her life in obscurity and died on the fourteenth of May 1881. England, it seems, did forget Mary Seacole, a woman who nursed and gave aid to the soldiers of the Crimean war. A woman whose actions were eclipsed by the colour of her skin.
Sources:
maryseacole.com
100greatblackbritons.com
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