Mary Seacole (1805-1881)
Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston on the island of Jamaica in the British West Indies in 1805. Growing up, she was taught traditional African herbal medicine and midwifery by her mother. In Jamaica she had access to both Caribbean-style traditional medicine and European medicine. Her mother ran a boarding house, mainly catering to the British military. Mary attributed her sense of what she called 'the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war' to her father, an army officer. She was briefly married to Edwin Horatio Seacole, godson of Viscount Nelson, but he died soon after.
She learned to treat cholera, yellow fever and other tropical diseases in her travels to Haiti, Cuba, the Bahamas, the USA and England, where she also learnt about surgical techniques and European medical practice. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1853, she was asked to take on responsibility for the nursing care at the large military camp in Kingston. It was here that she heard from British soldiers about the dreadful conditions faced by the wounded on the Crimean Peninsula. In 1854, she decided to pay her own passage to the scene of the Crimean War, and borrowed money specifically for the purpose.
Seacole set up the British Hotel at Balaclava, close to the front. This was a convalescent home for officers and it provided an income that enabled her to run a free casualty ward at the hotel to provide medical treatment for the rank and file soldiers. She was very experienced in this area and received wide recognition for her work. She also helped to provide food and first aid on the battlefield for the British, French, Turkish and Russian soldiers – all at her own expense. She soon became well known on both sides of the front as Mother Seacole.
In addition to the normal bias regarding the place of women in society and the low status associated with nursing, Mary Seacole also had to battle with ethnic prejudices particularly in her use of traditional Jamaican medicine. She was also frowned upon for carrying out treatment normally restricted to doctors, and for not limiting herself – as did other women – to simply caring for the ill.
Mary Seacole was awarded the Crimean Medal and the French Legion of Honour Medal during her lifetime and the Order of Merit of Jamaica posthumously in 1991.
This stamp was issued by Jamaica for the 1991 International Council of Nurses meeting in Jamaica. Designed by Jennifer Toombs, it shows a bust cast in bronze by Curtis Johnston, which is displayed in Mary Seacole House, the Jamiaican General Trained Nurses Association headquarters. The envelope bears a set of first day covers issued by Jamaica celebrating the 200th anniversary of her birth.
References
- Adapted by Lisa Sampson from the work of Susanne Stevnhoved: Six Hundred Women and One Man: Nurses on Stamps. Danish Museum of Nursing History, Kolding 2004.
- Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, by Mary Seacole, first published 1857. Reprinted by Falling Wall Press, 1984, edited by Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee.