Mary Seacole, Nurse
Behind the panel Mary Seacole, Nurse · series G, Makers.
Mary Jane Seacole (née Grant, 1805–1881) was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Scottish army officer and a Jamaican mother who ran a boarding house and practised traditional medicine as a "doctress".
Learning care
Seacole learned herbal remedies and nursing from her mother and travelled to Britain, the Caribbean and Central America. In Jamaica and in Panama she treated patients during cholera and yellow-fever epidemics, combining traditional remedies with practical nursing and hygiene.
The Crimean War
In 1854 Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire went to war with Russia in the Crimea. Reports of suffering soldiers led to calls for nurses. Seacole applied to the War Office and to Florence Nightingale's nursing mission and was not accepted. She travelled to the Crimea at her own expense and, with a business partner, built the British Hotel near Balaclava in 1855. It provided meals, supplies and comfort to officers and soldiers; Seacole also visited the battlefield to nurse wounded men.
Later life
The war left her bankrupt; soldiers and supporters raised funds for her. Her 1857 memoir became a bestseller. She died in London in 1881. Her reputation faded and was revived in the late twentieth century; a statue was unveiled at St Thomas' Hospital in London in 2016.
Why she is in the Hall of Makers
Seacole's career shows care work as a skilled trade practised by women outside official institutions. Nursing assistants, LPNs and EMTs share her work: observe, comfort, treat, and act under pressure.
Further reading
Mary Seacole, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857); Jane Robinson, Mary Seacole (2004).
