HAVING written about Louisa Jordan of the eponymous hospital fame earlier this month, I received several suggestions that I look into the story of Mary Seacole, the Scots-Jamaican woman who cared for British soldiers in the Crimean War.

For example, Susan FG Forde wrote to me as follows: “Mary Seacole, (1805-1881) – Scotland’s “Black Florence” – is someone worthy of much greater recognition.”

Susan is absolutely right, which is why I am going to write about Mary Seacole over the next two editions of the Sunday National. Not everything I write will please the many people who are huge supporters of Seacole, but I will also certainly annoy those who, for their own reasons, denigrate her achievements, which I consider to be quite remarkable.

Susan continues: “After considerable nursing experience when, in 1854, she ‘tried to join Florence Nightingale’s vanguard of nursing sisters, she met a rebuff’ despite having been a nursing superintendent at a military camp. At her own expense she went to the Crimea, opened a British hotel in Balaklava which had a good, clean canteen for the troops, and as an independent nurse was able to go to the front every day with pack mules carrying medical supplies, food and wine.

“She attended numerous casualties, healed and sustained the injured, and comforted the dying. Because she was so close to the battles with ‘field hospital’ equipment, probably tents, she was not only more immediate in her assistance but had none of the infection problems which attended Florence Nightingale’s hospital with its drainage and sewage. As a result, Mary Seacole’s record of saving lives was much higher than other hospital facilities.

“Now is a good time to honour Mary Seacole: first by making her story known; then naming a hospital ward after her, presenting a medal/memorial record or similar for those who have lost their lives in tackling Covid-19 in any medical way.”

The problem with tackling the story of this heroine is that there are contrary views about her. Some think she has only recently had the credit she deserves as a result of people pushing a BAME agenda, while others query the actual “facts” as laid out by her numerous supporters.

Still others try to denigrate her by saying she was not actually a nurse – she never claimed to be – and that Florence Nightingale was far greater in her overall achievements, of which there is no doubt.

There are those who dispute the fact that she suffered from the racist views of the British authorities – of that there is also no doubt – and there are numerous revisionist articles to be found on the internet, almost all of which play down her achievements and even question her “blackness”, while they usually ignore something that Mary Seacole never ceased to state, namely her Scottishness.

As usual I will stick to the facts and let the Sunday National’s discerning readership draw their own conclusions.

She was born Mary Jane Grant in Kingston, Jamaica, on November 23, 1805. In that period, Jamaica was part of the British Empire and its main industry, the cultivation of sugar, depended on slavery, which was only abolished a few years later. A large detachment of British troops was stationed on the island, there having been several slave revolts. Mary Jane Grant’s father James was one of these soldiers, a lieutenant who fell in love with Mary’s mother – sadly we do not know her name but we do know that she was a free woman who ran a boarding house in Kingston and also practised as a “doctress” – a traditional healer.

In her entertaining autobiography Adventures Of Mrs Seacole In Many Lands, Mary emphasises her Scottish roots: “I am a Creole, and have good Scotch blood coursing in my veins. My father was a soldier, of an old Scotch family; and to him I often trace my affection for a camp-life, and my sympathy with what I have heard my friends call ‘the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war’. Many people have also traced to my Scotch blood that energy and activity which are not always found in the Creole race, and which have carried me to so many varied scenes: and perhaps they are right.”

Aged 12 she began working to assist her mother while also learning from her the arts of a doctress. Even before then she had practised “medicine” on her pets and dolls. She wrote: “It was very natural that I should inherit her tastes; and so, I had from early youth a yearning for medical knowledge and practice which never deserted me … 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.”

Realising her intelligence and commitment, a local woman became Mary’s patroness as she called her, who ensured a good education for the girl.

Her mother’s boarding house was host to many British soldiers, including sick and infirm officers, and their wives. No doubt under their influence, Mary decided to go to England – there is no evidence that she ever visited her father’s native Scotland. There she encountered racism from teenaged boys: “I am only a little brown – a few shades duskier than the brunettes whom you all admire so much; but my companion was very dark, and a fair (if I can apply the term to her) subject for their rude wit.”

Undaunted, Mary went home but returned to London to sell West Indian spices and pickles which enabled her to stay and augment her Jamaican healing skills with medicinal studies. Find out what happened to her next week.