We are celebrating this year’s Black History Month with the theme: Saluting Our Sisters. Black people have always been at the forefront of social justice movements, fighting against oppression and paving the way for change. However, despite their countless contributions to society, the achievements of black women, in particular, have too often been overlooked or forgotten. That is why, this year, we will be celebrating the exceptional achievements of black women. (new)
Mary Seacole
Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her mother was a Jamaican doctress who was skilled in using traditional herbal remedies and her father was a Scottish soldier. Learning her mother’s skills of using Jamaican medicine at an early age, Seacole would practice on dolls and pets until she was old enough (12 years old) to run her mother’s lodging house where many guests were injured soldiers.
Seacole was a keen traveller and visited Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas, Central America and Britain. During these travels she would acquire knowledge about European medicine which added to her knowledge of traditional Caribbean medicine. In 1851, Seacole and her brother, Edward set up a hotel in Panama, where she treated cholera patients and studied the disease but returned to Jamaica in 1853 due to the yellow fever epidemic outbreak there.
During the Crimean war (1853-1856), Seacole approached the British War Office and asked to be a war nurse to care for wounded soldiers, however her request was declined. She was also rejected by one of Florence Nightingale’s assistants. According to Seacole:
“The disappointment seemed a cruel one. I was so conscious of the unselfishness of the motives which induced me to leave England—so certain of the service I could render among the sick soldiery, and yet I found it so difficult to convince others of these facts. Doubts and suspicions arose in my heart. . . . Was it possible that American prejudices against colour had some root here? Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs?”
Seacole instead funded her own trip to Crimea and established the British Hotel as a place of rest for sick and wounded soldiers.
After the war Seacole returned to England with little money and poor health. An article in a newspaper highlighted her help during the war and in 1857, a benefit festival was organised to raise money for her with over 80,000 attendees. Seacole published her autobiography, 'The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands' in the same year.
Mary Seacole died in London in 1881. In 2004 she was voted the Greatest Black Briton.