Mary Seacole
Led the British Hotel to treat soldiers during Crimean War
Born in Jamaica in 1805, Mary Seacole had a Scottish father in the British army and Jamaican mother, a healer from whom she learned nursing and traditional medicine. As a free Jamaican creole, she became an avid traveler after being widowed in 1844. While visiting her brother in Panama, she found herself in a cholera epidemic where she ultimately treated patients and later traveled to Cuba to do the same. Despite formal nursing schools not being established until 1860 in Britain, she picked up additional European medical skills and competency through her extensive travels.
“I have never been long in any place before I have found my practical experience in the science of medicine useful,” she states in her autobiography. As such, despite being denied formal work at the Nightingale Hospital during the Crimean War, she persisted in self-funding a boarding house called the British Hotel to treat soldiers and sailors for conditions such as yellow fever, cholera, dysentery, and jaundice. Her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, published in 1857, includes testimonials from soldiers and patients she treated and was the first known autobiography to be written by a black woman in Britain.
Sources
We sourced the above information from the BBC, Nursing CLIO, Nursing-Theory.org, and the Mary Seacole Trust.
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