Pictures of mary seacole biography

As a child, the young Mary was fascinated with medicine, and from her mother, she began learning many traditional Caribbean and African medicines. Mary gained a wide knowledge in treating endemic illnesses such as yellow fever. Inshe visited London for a year and was exposed to some of the racial prejudices of the time. In the Caribbean, slavery was still legal until it was partly abolished in and fully abolished in The Victorians had a diverse range of attitudes to racial issues.

Some, like those campaigning to abolish slavery, believed in the equality of races, others sought to prove the Negro race were scientifically inferior. Mary undoubtedly experienced a range of different attitudes, especially when seeking employment as an official nurse in the Crimean War. However, Mary did notice that because her skin colour was lighter brown being of mixed race stock she was subject to less racism.

In one experience, inMary was travelling between Panama and the United States when she spent time in the company of American traders. It was a reflection of the racist attitudes of the time, but, Mary was always proud of her mixed race origin. Unfortunately, the marriage lasted only eight years, as her husband died in October Her mother died shortly later, plunging her into a period of grief.

Pictures of mary seacole biography: Mary Seacole was born Mary Joan

At the time, Jamaica was a British Colony and along with other Caribbean colonies, became a focus of the slave trade for the ever-expanding British Empire. Read more about Women's history. Being of mixed-race, Mary was technically born 'free', however, her family enjoyed few civil rights. From an early age, she showed a great interet in medicine, learning her skills from her mother who ran a well-respected boarding house called Blundell Hall, which cared for injured soldiers.

And I was very young when I began to make use of the little knowledge I had acquired from watching my mother, upon great sufferer — my doll… and whatever disease was most prevalent in Kingston, be sure my poor doll soon contracted it. Read more about British History. After making two trips to London, where she spent a total of three years acquiring knowledge of modern European medicine, Mary ventured to the Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti.

Inshe returned to Jamaica to nurse her patroness, an elderly woman who had given her financial support. Inshe married Englishman Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole and the pair set up a provision store in southwest Jamaica, a venture that would ultimately fail to prosper. A series of disasters then befell Mary. Inmost of Blundell Hall burnt down in a fire and inEdwin passed away after becoming ill.

InJamaica relied on her skills as the country suffered a great cholera outbreak that saw some 32, lose their lives to the deadly disease. A year later, Mary travelled to Panama to visit her brother Edward who lived in a town called Cruces. Shortly after arriving, the town suffered its own outbreak of cholera. Mary, in fact, treated the town's very first patient back to full health and subsequently garnered quite the reputation amongst the locals.

Pictures of mary seacole biography: Photograph: Amoret Tanner/Alamy. The

She treated them with a mixture of mustard emetics, mustard plasters and the laxative calomel. Read more about Battles. Mary would eventually succumb to the disease, forcing her to rest up for several weeks. Inshe arrived home in Jamaica, having been given a fond send-off by the Panamanian locals. Sadly, Edwin died infollowed closely by the death of her mother.

These deaths devastated Mary.

Pictures of mary seacole biography: Mary Seacole, Jamaican businesswoman who provided

It was contained within an elegant private campaign scrapbook compiled by former Coldstream Guards officer Ely Duodecimus Wigram Init was presented to the Library of Winchester College by the then Headmaster. But inshe nursed victims of the Kingston cholera epidemic. InMary returned to Kingston, caring for victims of a yellow fever epidemic.

Mary had no children of her own, but the strong maternal attachments she formed with these soldiers, and her feelings for them, would later drive Mary to the Crimea. The Crimean War lasted from October until February It was fought by a coalition including Britain, against the Russian Empire. 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. He went on to say that "if we could bleach her by any means we would [ If it had been as dark as any nigger's, I should have been just as happy and just as useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value.

In Gorgona, Seacole briefly ran a females-only hotel. In lateshe travelled home to Jamaica. Already delayed, the journey was further made difficult when she encountered racial discrimination while trying to book passage on an American ship. She was forced to wait for a later British boat. Her memoirs state that her own boarding house was full of sufferers and she saw many of them die.

Although she wrote, "I was sent for by the medical authorities to provide nurses for the sick at Up-Park Camp ," she did not claim to bring nurses with her when she went.

Pictures of mary seacole biography: A portrait of Seacole.

She left her sister with some friends at her house, went to the camp about a mile, or 1. Seacole returned to Panama in early to finalise her business affairs, and three months later moved to the New Granada Mining Gold Company establishment at Fort Bowen Mine some 70 miles km away near Escribanos. Seacole had read newspaper reports of the outbreak of war against Russia before she left Jamaica, and news of the escalating Crimean War reached her in Panama.

She determined to travel to England to volunteer as a nurse with experience in herbal healing skills, [ 49 ] to experience the "pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war" as she described it in Chapter I of her autobiography. A part of her reasoning for going to Crimea was that she knew some of the soldiers that were deployed there.

In her autobiography she explains how she heard that soldiers whom she had cared for and nursed back to health in the 97th and 48th regiments were being shipped back to England in preparation for the fighting on the Crimean Peninsula. The majority of the conflict took place on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea and Turkey. Many thousands of troops from all the countries involved were drafted to the area, and disease broke out almost immediately.

Hundreds perished, mostly from cholera. Hundreds more would die waiting to be shipped out, or on the voyage. Their prospects were little better when they arrived at the poorly staffed, unsanitary and overcrowded hospitals which were the only medical provision for the wounded. In Britain, a trenchant letter in The Times on 14 October triggered Sidney HerbertSecretary of State for Warto approach Florence Nightingale to form a detachment of nurses to be sent to the hospital to save lives.

Interviews were quickly held, suitable candidates selected, and Nightingale left for Turkey on 21 October. Seacole travelled from Navy Bay in Panama to England, initially to deal with her investments in gold-mining businesses. She then attempted to join the second contingent of nurses to the Crimea. She applied to the War Office and other government offices, but arrangements for departure were already underway.

In her memoir, she wrote that she brought "ample testimony" of her experience in picture of mary seacole biography, but the only example officially cited was that of a former medical officer of the West Granada Gold-Mining Company. However, Seacole wrote that this was just one of the testimonials she had in her possession.

In my country, where people know our use, it would have been different; but here it was natural enough — although I had references, and other voices spoke for me — that they should laugh, good-naturedly enough, at my offer. Seacole also applied to the Crimean Fund, a fund raised by public subscription to support the wounded in Crimea, for sponsorship to travel there, but she again met with refusal.

She wrote in her autobiography, "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? She gave me the same reply, and I read in her face the fact, that had there been a vacancy, I should not have been chosen to fill it.

Seacole finally resolved to travel to Crimea using her own resources and to open the British Hotel. Business cards were printed and sent ahead to announce her intention to open an establishment, to be called the "British Hotel", near Balaclava, which would be "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers". They assembled a stock of supplies, and Seacole embarked on the Dutch screw-steamer Hollander on 27 January on its maiden voyage, to Constantinople.

He wrote her a letter of introduction to Nightingale. Seacole visited Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari, where she asked for a bed for the night. Seacole wrote of Selina Bracebridgean assistant of Nightingale, "Mrs. What object has Mrs. Seacole in coming out? This is the purport of her questions. And I say, frankly, to be of use somewhere; for other considerations I had not, until necessity forced them upon me.

Willingly, had they accepted me, I would have worked for the wounded, in return for bread and water. I fancy Mrs. B— thought that I sought for employment at Scutari, for she said, very kindly — "Miss Nightingale has the entire management of our hospital staff, but I do not think that any vacancy — " [ 59 ] Seacole informed Bracebridge that she intended to travel to Balaclava the next day to join her business partner.

She reports that her meeting with Nightingale was friendly, with Nightingale asking "What do you want, Mrs. Anything we can do for you? If it lies in my power, I shall be very happy. A bed was then found for her and breakfast sent her in the morning, with a "kind message" from Bracebridge. A footnote in the memoir states that Seacole subsequently "saw much of Miss Nightingale at Balaclava," but no further meetings are recorded in the text.

After transferring most of her stores to the transport ship Albatrosswith the remainder following on the Nonpareilshe set out on the four-day voyage to the British bridgehead into Crimea at Balaclava. The hotel was built from the salvaged driftwood, packing cases, iron sheets, and salvaged architectural items such as glass doors and window-frames, from the village of Kamara, using hired local labour.

An early visitor was Alexis Soyera noted French chef who had travelled to Crimea to help improve the diet of British soldiers. He records meeting Seacole in his work A Culinary Campaign and describes Seacole as "an old dame of a jovial appearance, but a few shades darker than the white lily". It included a building made of iron, containing a main room with counters and shelves and storage above, an attached kitchen, two wooden sleeping huts, outhouses, and an enclosed stable-yard.

Seacole sold anything — "from a needle to an anchor"—to army officers and visiting sightseers. Despite constant thefts, particularly of livestock, Seacole's establishment prospered. They were closed at 8 pm daily and on Sundays. Seacole did some of the cooking herself: "Whenever I had a few leisure moments, I used to wash my hands, roll up my sleeves, and roll out pastry.

To Soyer, near the time of departure, Florence Nightingale acknowledged favourable views of Seacole, consistent with their one known picture of mary seacole biography in Scutari. Soyer's remarks—he knew both women—show pleasantness on both sides. When I passed through Scutari, she very kindly gave me board and lodging. Anyone who employs Mrs Seacole will introduce much kindness - also much drunkenness and improper conduct".

Seacole often went out to the troops as a sutler[ 73 ] selling her provisions near the British camp at Kadikoi, and nursing casualties brought out from the trenches around Sevastopol or from the Tchernaya valley. On one occasion, attending wounded troops under fire, she dislocated her right thumb, an injury which never healed entirely. She is always in attendance near the battlefield to aid the wounded and has earned many a poor fellow's blessing.

Seacole made a point of wearing brightly coloured, and highly conspicuous, clothing—often bright blue, or yellow, with ribbons in contrasting colours. Her peers, though wary at first, soon found out how important Seacole was for both medical assistance and morale. One British medical officer described Seacole in his memoir as "The acquaintance of a celebrated person, Mrs.

Seacole, a coloured women who out of the goodness of her heart and at her own expense, supplied hot tea to the poor sufferers [wounded men being transported from the peninsula to the hospital at Scutari ] while they are waiting to be lifted into the boats…. She did not spare herself if she could do any good to the suffering soldiers.

In rain and snow, in storm and tempest, day after day she was at her self-chosen post with her stove and kettle, in any shelter she could find, brewing tea for all who wanted it, and they were many. Sometimes more than sick would be embarked in one day, but Mrs. Seacole was always equal, to the occasion". But Seacole did more than carry tea to the suffering soldiers.

She often carried bags of lint, bandages, needles and thread to tend to the wounds of soldiers. French troops led the storming, but the British were beaten back. By dawn on Sunday 9 September, the city was burning out of control, and it was clear that it had fallen: the Russians retreated to fortifications to the north of the harbour. Later in the day, Seacole fulfilled a bet, and became the first British woman to enter Sevastopol after it fell.

Her foreign appearance led to her being stopped by French looters, but she was rescued by a passing officer. She looted some items from the city, including a church bell, an altar candle, and a three-metre 10 ft long painting of the Madonna. After the fall of Sevastopol, hostilities continued in a desultory fashion. Seacole was joined by a year-old girl, Sarah, also known as Sally.

Soyer described her as "the Egyptian beauty, Mrs Seacole's daughter Sarah", with blue eyes and dark hair. However, there is no evidence that Bunbury met Seacole, or even visited Jamaica, at a time when she would have been nursing her ailing husband. Peace talks began in Paris in earlyand friendly relations opened between the Allies and the Russians, with a lively trade across the River Tchernaya.

Seacole was in a difficult financial position, her business was full of unsaleable provisions, new goods were arriving daily, and creditors were demanding payment. The evacuation of the Allied armies was formally completed at Balaclava on 9 Julywith Seacole " In her store on Spring Hill she attended many patients, cared for many sick, and earned the good will and gratitude of hundreds".

Sociology professor Lynn McDonald is co-founder of The Nightingale Society, which promotes the legacy of Nightingale, who did not see eye-to-eye with Seacole. McDonald believes that Seacole's role in the Crimean War was overplayed: [ 88 ]. Mary Seacole, although never the "black British nurse" she is claimed to have been, was a successful mixed-race immigrant to Britain.

She led an adventurous life, and her memoir of is still a lively read.