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Mary Seacole and the Crimean War - Coggle Diagram
Mary Seacole and the Crimean War
Early life
Born in 1805 in Jamaica to black mother and Scottish father. Family had originally been slaves.
Traditional medicine with herbs learnt from mother
Journey to Crimea
Mary travelled to England and approached the British War Office, asking to be sent as an army nurse to the Crimea where she had heard there were poor medical facilities for wounded soldiers. She was refused.
Undaunted, she funded her own trip to Crimea, now part of Ukraine, where she established the British Hotel with Thomas Day, a relative of her husband, Edwin.
The hotel provided a place of respite for sick and recovering soldiers. At the time, Mary was as well-known in Britain as Florence Nightingale.
Mrs Nightingale’s famous military hospital was situated hundreds of miles from the frontline in Scutari (now called Üsküdar, just outside the Turkish city of Istanbul). But Mary’s hotel near Balaclava was much closer to the fighting.
Mary was able to visit the battlefield, sometimes under fire, to nurse the wounded. Indeed, she nursed sick soldiers so kindly that they called her ‘Mother Seacole’.
After Crimea
Back in England
The same year she published her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, which became an instant bestseller.
All those who admired her came to her aid, whether soldiers, generals or members of the Royal family. In 1857 a fund-raising gala was held for her over four nights on the banks of the River Thames. Over 80,000 people attended.
British artist Albert Charles Challen (8 October 1847 – 1 September 1881) is best known as the painter of this portrait of Mary Seacole when she was around 65 years old. The picture is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The Times War Correspondent, Sir William H Russell, wrote of Mary in 1857: “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”.
When the war ended, Mary went back to Britain with very little money. Soldiers wrote letters to newspapers, praising what she had done.
Legacy
Mary died in London in 1881. Unfortunately, she was then lost to history for around 100 years until nurses from the Caribbean visited her grave in North West London, where the local MP, now Lord Clive Soley, promised to raise money for a statue for Mary.
In 2004, Mary was voted the Greatest Black Briton. Lord Soley launched the campaign for a statue after leaving the House of Commons. In 2016, the statue was finally unveiled in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital on London’s Southbank.
The statue was controversial as it was placed in the grounds of St Thomas'. Seacole had no connection to the hospital while Nightingale had founded her school of nursing there.
The statue's sculptor, Martin Jennings couldn't believe how long it took to raise the funds for the sculpture, when it would normally take 2 years. He said in The Guardian newspaper in 2016, "would there really be such energy behind the[..] resistance if the person the statue honours was white-skinned"?
In 2013 The then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, tried to remove mention of Seacole from the English schools National Curriculum
