Mary Jane Seacole (; 23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a British nurse and businesswoman.
Seacole was born to a Creole mother who ran a boarding house and had herbalist skills as a "doctress." In 1990, Seacole was (posthumously) awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit. In 2004, she was voted the greatest black Briton in a survey conducted in 2003 by the black heritage website Every Generation.
Seacole went to the Crimean War in 1855 with the plan of setting up the "British Hotel", as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers." However, chef Alexi Soyer told her that officers did not need overnight accommodation, so she made it instead a restaurant/bar/catering service. It proved to be very popular and she and her business partner, a relative of her late husband, did well on it until the end of the war. Her memoir, Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, 1857, includes three chapters of the food she served and the encounters she had with officers, some of them high ranking, and including the commander of the Turkish forces.
Mrs Seacole missed the first three major battles of the war, as she was busy in London attending to her gold investments—she had arrived from Panama where she had provided services for prospectors going overland to the California Gold Rush. She gave assistance at the battlefield on three later battles, going out to attend to the fallen after serving wine and sandwiches to spectators.
She is often described as "nursing" on the battlefield, but she never called herself a "nurse", reserving that term for Florence Nightingale and her nurses. In her memoir, Mrs Seacole described several attempts she made to join that team; however, she did not start her informal inquiries until after both Nightingale and her initial team, and a later one, had left. When Seacole left, it was with the plan of joining her business partner and starting their business. She travelled with two black employees, her maid Mary, and a porter, Mac.
She was largely forgotten for almost a century after her death. Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), was the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain. The erection of a statue of her at St Thomas' Hospital, London, on 30 June 2016, describing her as a "pioneer", generated some controversy and opposition, especially among those concerned with Florence Nightingale's legacy.
Early career and background
Mary Jane Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant on 23 November 1805 in Kingston, in the Colony of Jamaica as a member of the community of free black people in Jamaica. She was the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army. Her mother, Mrs Grant, nicknamed "The Doctress", was a healer who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal medicines. Mrs Grant also ran Blundell Hall, a boarding house at 7, East Street.
In the 18th century, Jamaican doctresses mastered folk medicine, including the use of hygiene and herbs. They had a vast knowledge of tropical diseases, and had a general practitioner's skill in treating ailments and injuries, acquired from having to look after the illnesses of fellow slaves on sugar plantations. At Blundell Hall, Seacole acquired her nursing skills, which included the use of hygiene, ventilation, warmth, hydration, rest, empathy, good nutrition and care for the dying. Blundell Hall also served as a convalescent home for military and naval staff recuperating from illnesses such as cholera and yellow fever. Seacole's autobiography says she began experimenting in medicine, based on what she learned from her mother, by ministering to a doll and then progressing to pets before helping her mother treat humans. Because of her family's close ties with the army, she was able to observe the practices of military doctors, and combined that knowledge with the West African remedies she acquired from her mother. In Jamaica in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, neonatal deaths were more than a quarter of total births. However, Seacole, using traditional West African herbal remedies and hygienic practices, boasted that she never lost a mother or her child.