Mary Seacole: forgotten hero?

When Mary Seacole presented her letter of introduction to Florence Nightingale at Scutari in March 1855, the meeting presented a striking contrast between the two women.

One was a slender, 35-year-old Englishwoman, soberly attired in a plain grey dress, her hair neatly tucked under a nurse's white cap. The other was a stout, 50-year-old Jamaican woman, unmissable in her bright yellow dress and blue bonnet tied with red ribbons.

Mary was already an experienced nurse. As a girl in Kingston, Jamaica, she had helped her mother to nurse the British officers and their families, who were so liable to succumb to tropical diseases such as Yellow Fever and Malaria. Mary's mother was a ‘doctress’, a healer with a knowledge of plant medicine, which was often more effective than the conventional medical treatment of the time. Later, Mary worked on the Isthmus of Panama during the years of the Californian gold rush, running a hotel and store and treating the sick and injured, and there she had gained experience in treating diseases such as cholera and dysentery. In 1854, Mary heard that Britain and Russia were at war and she decided to travel to Britain to offer her services as a nurse in the Crimea.

Mary arrived in England on 18 October, when Britain was still reeling from the shocking news of the Battle of the Alma (20 September). Despatches from William Russell, special correspondent for The Times, stripped away the layers of patriotic pride to reveal the true condition of the British army in the Crimea.

Russell compared the British lack of preparation with the efficiency of the French, who had had recent experience of warfare in Algeria and were more competent in providing for their army. Cantinieres, usually the wives of non-commissioned officers, supplied food and drink to the army. In contrast to the army wives of Britain who were ignored and neglected, the Cantinieres were a recognized part of the French army, with the rank of Corporal and a smart uniform of tight jacket and trousers which scandalized the British. Nursing care was provided by the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, who had a 200-year-old tradition of battlefield nursing. The French government provided a well-organized system of hospitals and ambulances to care for the sick and wounded.

Britain, on the other hand, had not fought a war for 40 years and most of the senior officers had last seen active service at Waterloo in 1815. When presented with a problem, their invariable question was: ‘What would Wellington have done?’ But the Duke of Wellington had died in 1852 and more modern warfare with its railroads, steamships, rifles and telegraph was a far cry from the Napoleonic Wars.

The Commissariat was controlled by the Treasury in London, which had no understanding of the conditions endured by the army at Varna on the Bulgarian coast or in the Crimea. Although Britain had waged a number of colonial campaigns, the army was not prepared for a more lengthy war. ² Consequently, the tents and summer clothing which did reach the army were woefully inadequate for campaigning in the bitter Crimean winter.

Basic services such as cooking, sewing and laundry were left to the army wives, who had been selected to travel with the army rather than face destitution and the workhouse back in Britain. ³

A serious fire at Varna destroyed a large quantity of supplies and a hurricane on 14 November, just nine days after the Battle of Inkerman, wrecked the supply ships waiting to enter the cramped harbour of Balaklava, destroying supplies and equipment sufficient to keep men and animals for 20 days.

The railroad from Balaklava to the frontlines was used only for the transport of ammunition. Supplies as well as the sick and wounded, had to travel by cart or mule over roads that were often made impassable by mud and snow.

Thomas Chenery, also a correspondent for The Times, wrote of the dreadful conditions endured by the sick and wounded on board the transports and the neglect once they reached the great barracks hospital of Scutari. The Chelsea Pensioners sent out to attend them were either too feeble or too drunk to be effective.

In response to demands made by the British public, Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State at War, appointed Florence Nightingale to be Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the English [sic] Hospitals in Turkey, with instructions to recruit a select band of women to be nurses at Scutari.

Confident that her nursing and medical skills would be welcomed, Mary Seacole applied to be among Nightingale's group of nurses. Although she had encountered overt racism on the Isthmus of Panama, Mary was not prepared for the more subtle discrimination which she encountered in England. No one refused her application; she was simply referred to different departments without a decision being made.

At nearly 50 and rather overweight, Mary was not an ideal candidate for the rigours of Scutari. But the rejection of two other women indicates that racial prejudice played a major part in her failure to be selected. Elizabeth Purcell, age 52 and the wife of a ‘respectable soldier’, was considered to be ‘too old and too black’. Miss Belgrave was rejected because ‘Some English patients would object to a nurse being so nearly a person of colour.’ ⁴

Finally, she was informed that the full complement of nurses had already been engaged, and Mary applied to the Crimean Fund, which had been instigated by The Times to provide ‘creature comforts’ to the sick and wounded. When the Fund refused to pay her passage, Mary resolved to go to the Crimea independently.

At this point, Mary was approached by Thomas Day, the manager of the New Grenada Goldmining Company, ⁵ who claimed to have shipping business at Balaklava. Whether this was true or not, he and Mary formed the company of Seacole and Day with the intention of setting up a store in the Crimea. Shortly afterwards, Day left for Balaklava, leaving Mary to organize (and pay for) the supplies necessary to equip a store. Leaving nothing to chance, Mary had cards printed which advertised her imminent departure and announcing the opening of the British Hotel in the Crimea.

Finally, on 15 February 1855, Mary embarked on the Dutch steamer ‘Hollander’. The man in charge of the cargo was the brother of an officer whom Mary had nursed through his final illness in Kingston. He was only too pleased to ensure that Mary's supplies were handled with more care than was customary.

The long and tedious voyage was enlivened for Mary by reunions at Gibraltar and Malta with officers whom she had befriended in Jamaica. All greeted her affectionately and were delighted that ‘Mother Seacole’ would be with them in the Crimea. A doctor with whom she had worked during an epidemic of Yellow Fever at Up-Park Camp near Kingston, wrote Mary the letter of introduction which she presented to Florence Nightingale at that first, and only meeting.

To Florence, still struggling to bring order to the chaos of Scutari's four miles of corridors, 2500 patients and the 200 camp followers who had taken up residence in the cellars, and who spent their time drinking and fighting, Mary's arrival was unwelcome. In the few hours that she had been at the hospital, she had already shown a marked inclination to independence by rearranging bandages and chatting to the patients in a cheerful, familiar way. No doubt the relief was mutual when Mary announced that she intended to be as close as possible to the frontline in the Crimea and required only a bed for the night. This she received, sharing a room with a friendly washerwoman, some invalid nurses and a host of fleas. The following day, Mary departed to embark on the Albatross, a cattle carrier bound for Balaklava.

Mary arrived at Balaklava four days later, drenched and shivering, but to the sick and wounded lying on the wharf with only a tarpaulin sheet to protect them from the vagaries of the Crimean weather, her arrival must have seemed like a miracle. While she waited for permission to build her hotel, she spent her days tending the wounded and selling the merchandise she had brought with her. Although Mary was an entrepreneur, and accepted payment from those who could pay, she never refused to treat anyone who could not afford to pay. In the evening, she returned to her accommodation on board the ammunition ship Medora, and baked sponge cakes and made lemonade to take back to the men on the wharf the next day. Claiming that she had nursed his son in the West Indies, Mary took pains to befriend the irascible superintendent of Balaklva Harbour, Rear Admiral Edward Boxer, who had been sent from England to restore order after the devastating hurricane four months previously. Her efforts paid off when the ship carrying the bulk of Mary's supplies was suddenly ordered out of port. Mary immediately applied to Boxer and the ship's departure was delayed until her stores were unloaded.

Mary makes it clear that she would have cared for the patients exclusively ‘had I been allowed’, ⁶ but she had to earn a living as well. Six weeks after her arrival, she finally received permission to build her hotel.

The site which she chose was situated about two miles away from Balaklava, on the road to Sevastopol, about a mile from the military Headquarters and she called it Spring Hill. Built from flotsam and jetsam gleaned from Balaklava harbour, the British Hotel was more of a restaurant and general store, similar to the one Mary had established during her stay on the Isthmus of Panama. It consisted of one long room with shelves and an upper room for storage, a small kitchen and two wooden houses ‘for myself and Mr Day’. The servants, usually deserters, the wounded or those unfit for other duties, lived in out-houses. The animals were corralled in an enclosed yard. Above all flew a large Union flag. The building was constructed by Turkish workers lent to Mary by the local Pacha, ⁷ in return for her teaching him English. She appears to have got the best of the bargain for she admits that she only managed to teach him to say ‘gentlemen good morning’ and ‘more champagne’.

The store was an Aladdin's cave of desperately needed equipment. Mackintoshes, greatcoats, boots, caps, linen, bedding and saddlery, as well as tooth powder, snuff, tobacco, tea and fine wines. In short, all the necessities and home comforts which had been completely lacking in the first year of the war and which were still desperately needed.

Even before the store was properly finished it had become a meeting place for allied officers. French, Sardinians, British, Turks and Greeks regarded each other with mutual suspicion but were unanimous in their respect and admiration for ‘Mother Seacole’. It was just as likely that it was the prospect of a wholesome meal of curry, meat pies, Irish Stew or ‘Welsh Rabbit’ which prompted them to hide their animosity. Only officers could afford such luxuries but the more thoughtful ones took food back to the men shivering and starving in the trenches outside Sevastopol.

Mary's day began before daybreak with the plucking of chickens, jointing and roasting carcases of beef and pork, making jellies and broth and mixing medicines. After a breakfast of coffee laced with butter for lack of milk, she held clinics for the sick. Here she treated frostbite in winter, heatstroke in summer, typhus, scurvy, malnutrition, cholera and the ubiquitous dysentery. Apart from the frostbite, Mary had had plenty of experience in treating all these diseases in Jamaica and on the Isthmus of Panama. Such was her reputation that often the sick and wounded – including injured horses – were brought to her before being sent on to Balaklava and Scutari.

After this, she packed her medicine chest and visited the nearby hospital of the Land Transport Corps who, in response to public outrage at the inefficiency of the Commissariat, had been formed to ensure that supplies landed at Balaklava, reached the army. Returning to the store, she sold her merchandise and chatted to the officers until closing at 8 p.m. To the men she was ‘Mother’; to Mary they were all her ‘sons’ and they often came to say goodbye before returning to the trenches. She admitted that, during a battle, she dreaded the news the morning might bring for inevitably among the dead would be friends whom she had first known in Jamaica and had later loitered in her cramped and busy kitchen at Spring Hill. If Florence Nightingale was ‘The Lady with the Lamp' ⁸ then Mary was the ‘Creole with the Teacup’, representing all the comfort and security of home.

From the beginning, stealing was a serious problem. So much food and equipment disappeared that Mary took to wearing a brace of pistols. It's doubtful that she knew how to fire them but the sight of her brandishing them made the more timid thieves think twice. However, there was one type of thief against whom she was helpless. Rats, ‘with the appetites of London Aldermen’ decimated the food stores, attacked the livestock and terrorized the servants. Mary borrowed a cat from the Coldstream Guards. The creature worked with deadly efficiency for a few days before going absent without leave. The deserter was eventually found snug and satisfied in its former, less demanding quarters. Mary should have applied elsewhere for help; a lifelong cat lover, at one time Florence Nightingale possessed 17 cats.

Since that first meeting at Scutari, there had been no contact between the two women, although Mary would gladly have continued the acquaintance. But Florence firmly kept her distance; even when she visited the hospitals at Balaklava, she did not make the short detour to Spring Hill.

Florence was still struggling to weld her disparate group of women, which included nuns, lady volunteers and hospital nurses into a team working for the patients’ good. Nuns were sent home for paying more attention to the patient's soul than his physical wellbeing; lady volunteers were often not strong enough to cope with the rigorous work; and often resented Florence's control and nurses were dismissed for drunkenness and ‘fornication with the patients’. ⁹ Florence wanted to keep as much distance as possible between Mary's relaxed independence and the rigid discipline it was necessary to impose to create order out of Scutari's chaos. Florence also had other problems to deal with. She insisted that she was in charge of the hospitals at Balaklava, but she had been appointed by the government as Superintendent of Female Nurses in Turkey. Balaklava, as the competent women who ran the hospitals were quick to point out, was in Russia and therefore not under Florence's supervision. It must also be remembered that at Balaklava, Florence became seriously ill with ‘Crimean fever’, probably brucellosis and never fully recovered. Therefore, she had little time or energy to pay social calls even if she had wanted to.

Mary was a novelty and her store provided a desperately needed service but it was by no means the only one. By Spring 1855, government supplies were now reaching the army in the Crimea. In Britain, encouraged by the example of Queen Victoria, her daughters and her household, women all over the country were busying themselves making warm clothing for the soldiers. Others organized committees to provide essential goods to the army. In response to the desperate need, a shanty town of stores and canteens had sprung up at Kadikoi, half way between Spring Hill and Balaklava. Some of these stores were run on disciplined lines similar to Mary's but others earned a reputation for drunkenness and ‘bad behaviour’ from which Mary was quick to dissociate herself. She mistrusted them all, understandably wary of any competition which might threaten her own income. Nevertheless, Mary was unique in her role as sutler, nurse, doctor and mother figure.

In response to the journalists’ despatches, visitors flocked to the Crimea to see war at first hand. Ladies and gentlemen, sightseers, artists and photographers as well as relatives of senior officers congregated on Cathcart's Hill to watch the siege of Sevastopol. Some viewed their presence with distaste but for Mary they were a blessing. Dinner parties, cricket matches, race meetings and theatricals were organized for their entertainment and Mary catered for them all, even lending her voluminous skirts for fancy dress parties.

Mary herself visited Cathcart's Hill, not only to sell refreshments to the sightseers but also courageously descending into the trenches to treat the wounded. Often she came under fire, the men yelling Tie down, Mother! Lie down!’ and helping her to her feet when the danger was past. Her mere presence cheered and encouraged, just as her ministrations soothed and strengthened the exhausted and hungry soldiers.

Finally, in September 1855, after three long and bloody sieges, Sevastopol surrendered. Weeks before, Mary had placed a bet that she would be the first allied woman to enter the city. Now she won her bet; riding through the blazing streets she caused confusion among the allies as well as the Russians. The French tried to arrest her as a spy and only desisted when she hit them with a large brass bell she had picked up as a souvenir. Some mischievous British soldiers persuaded the Russian troops that she was Queen Victoria, a joke which the delighted Mary encouraged until the arrival of a group of kilted Highlanders stole the limelight.

The cessation of hostilities made Mary busier than ever. The sick and wounded continued to pour into Spring Hill and now that there were no more battles to see, the visitors were entertained with picnics, parties and dinners for which Mary was called upon to cater. That Christmas, she even managed to provide a traditional feast, substituting the indigenous bustard – one of which weighed 19 lb – for turkey and devising her own recipe for Christmas Pudding.

It wasn't all parties and celebrations. Now that the allies had no common enemy, the season of goodwill quickly dissipated. The Turks picked fights with the Greeks and the British found it hard to see the French as friends. The word ‘Waterloo’ was heard several times a day. The resulting fights and injuries kept Mary fully occupied.

The celebrated French chef, Alexis Soyer ¹⁰ visited Spring Hill several times and he and Mary became firm friends, although he never accepted her challenge to prove that his field kitchen meals were as wholesome as her West Indian cooking.

Once the Treaty of Paris was signed in March 1856, everyone's thoughts turned to home. Mary had always found it hard to make a profit. She never charged poorer patients for medical care; local tradesmen didn't always pay their debts and stealing was endemic. The officers themselves could be the worst offenders, taking vintage wines without paying and not honouring the I.O.U.s that Mary had accepted at the height of the war.

Now, Mary had a store full of merchandize which she had paid for but couldn't sell. The British Hotel was dismantled and the kitchen which had been the source of so much comfort to the British, was given to the Russians.

She was among the last to leave the Crimea, until then still caring for the sick and wounded, and visiting the trenches and graves which were already thickly colonized with Spring flowers.

Once back in Britain, Mary and Day set up a store at Aldershot but when that failed, they were declared bankrupt. Day left for Australia and Mary moved to London. By 1857, she was in straitened circumstances. The officers whom she had cared for in the Crimea now rallied to help her. Their generosity perhaps tinged with guilt for all their unredeemed I.O. Us, they organized a grand military festival for her benefit. But the Royal Surrey Gardens Company who arranged the benefit, themselves were declared bankrupt. Instead of the expected £228, Mary received just £57. The publication of her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in many Lands, which was a highly selective account of her adventures, provided a further small income.

News of the Mutiny in India now arrived in Britain and Mary was determined to go and provide a similar service to that which she had provided in the Crimea. But the harsh Crimean weather, constant hard work and illness had taken their toll even of Mary's robust health and she was refused permission to travel to India. Mary had to content herself with raising funds to provide for the children of the soldiers sent to India.

Religious conversion often accompanies adversity and it was about this time that Mary turned to the Roman Catholic faith. By 1860, she had returned to Jamaica where she sponsored the Catholic baptism of two relatives; Christopher Hendricks Seacole aged 13 and her 10-year-old nephew Edward Ambleton Seacole.

But seven years later, Mary was back in London and once again in straitened circumstances. Another subscription was sponsored by Lieutenant-General Lord Rokeby, whom she had known in the Crimea. Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Cambridge and Florence Nightingale were induced to contribute, although a few years later the latter seems to have regretted her generosity.

This time, the Seacole Fund was a success; donations flooded in and Mary received sufficient funds to build two bungalows in Kingston: one she lived in and one she rented out to provide a regular income.

She might have spent her remaining years living comfortably in Kingston surrounded by admiring friends and family. But at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, she immediately returned to Britain to offer her services as she had at the beginning of the Crimean War. Her enthusiasm met with the same response that it had 16 years previously, although for different reasons.

The times had changed; both she and Florence Nightingale had helped to change them. Nursing was now a respectable profession and there was no shortage of women to staff the hospitals. Mary was now 65, not in good health and could speak neither French nor German. There was another obstacle in Mary's way.

Sir Henry Verney, MP for Buckinghamshire was responsible for organizing humanitarian aid for war casualties. On receipt of Mary's application, he asked for the opinion of his sister-in-law – Florence Nightingale. Her reply reveals why she was reluctant to cultivate the association in the Crimea.

In short, Mary represented all the things which Florence was trying to eradicate from the embryonic nursing profession. The ‘one or more persons’ refers to Thomas Day and a young Jamaican woman called Sally. Mary was always vague about Day's role in her life, describing him as a distant connection of her late husband, Edwin. But she makes it very clear that they had separate living quarters in the Crimea. Sally was probably a young relative but her habit of calling Mary ‘Mother’ (as did everyone else) created some confusion as to her exact relationship.

Mary lived in London for a further 11 years. Then in April 1881 she suffered a severe stroke and died a month later on 14 May, aged 76. She was buried in St Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green, not far from where her friend Alexis Soyer was buried. As her Crimean friends died, Mary's name faded from public memory but she was never entirely forgotten. There was a revival of interest in her at the death of her sister Louisa in 1905. In 1954, at the centenary of the Crimean War, the Headquarters of the Jamaican General Trained Nurses’ Association was named after Mary, as is a hall of residence at the University of the West Indies. Twenty years later, her gravestone was restored by Jamaican women from the Lignum Vitae Club, the London and British Commonwealth Nurses’ War Memorial Fund and the Jamaican Nurses’ Association. A commemoration service was held on the centenary of her death in 1981 and nine years later the Jamaican government posthumously awarded her the Order of Merit. Finally in 2004, Mary Seacole was voted ‘greatest Black Briton’, an accolade which would have delighted her.

If Mary's name is not as well remembered as Florence Nightingale, it is because Nightingale left a legacy of reforms in nursing, hospitals and the army which are as relevant today as they were 150 years ago. Mary, by her own admission, had no interest in reform.

As an entrepreneur without government support, Mary was content to exercise her considerable skills to help those in need. But she did not formally pass on those skills to others. Mary was a pioneer rather than a reformer, a role model for the independent woman at a time when the idea of the independent woman was anathema.

It has been suggested that the nurses who came to Britain in 1948 on the ‘Empire Windrush’ were following in Mary's footsteps. But as trained, professional nurses they were more in the mould of Nightingale's nurses. However, in their independence and wish for adventure they are representative of Mary. They were an amalgam of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole, two of the most outstanding women of the 19th century. There can be no better legacy than that.