MARY SEACOLE (popularly known as Mrs or Mother Seacole) was an A-list celebrity in Victorian England as a result of her exploits in Jamaica, Panama, and, most notably, during the Crimean War (1853-57).
She gained fame as a shrewd businesswoman, entrepreneur, lodging housekeeper, herbalist, and “doctress”. She served as a volunteer in Crimea and garnered admiration, respect and affection from the wounded troops whom she tended there. High-ranking officers gave her patronage. Her status was cemented by the publication of her personalised account of these travels, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands.
Seacole’s pioneering work was remarkable, in that she achieved popularity and acclaim as a woman of colour at a time when the British Empire’s ruling elite would normally have precluded a mixed-heritage Jamaican-born woman from significant status in society.
Today, Seacole has become something of a cultural icon, owing to her identification as a nursing pioneer, plying this craft at a time when its formalised practice was just emerging. She was a contemporary of Florence Nightingale at Crimea, but they never worked together. When their paths did cross, their relationship was complex. Mary’s positivity towards Miss Nightingale was not reciprocated. The former worked alone and was perceived to be rather too disreputable to attract the latter’s support.
In Search of Mary Seacole is a carefully researched piece of scholarship, balanced and informative (Feature, 11 March). Helen Rappaport deals with many areas of controversy, uncertainty, and debate surrounding Seacole’s life with a vigorous ambition to uncover the person behind the celebrity. She expresses genuine affection for her subject, with a frustration that many aspects of her life remain obscure. She deals sensitively with the racist and discriminatory undertones that pervaded society at the time and to which Mary was often exposed.
There are many thought-provoking facets to this book. It contains a critical appraisal of the way in which internet sources can hamper and compromise as well as aid historical research through the promulgation of inaccuracy and guesswork. The author cites a prime example: Mary’s date of birth. She was unable to find incontrovertible evidence of her true birth date — but dates of birth are often quoted incorrectly on websites without any evidence.
I was also struck by an insightful analysis of the impact that Seacole’s pioneering work has had on the development of the nursing profession and the way in which some parties have subsequently sought to exploit and skew her legacy to meet a 21st-century agenda.
This book will serve specialists in the field and casual readers equally well, and opens a window into the life of a unique and remarkable woman about whom there is still much to be discovered.
The Revd Nick Goulding is Professor Emeritus of Pharmacology and Medical Education at Queen Mary University of London.
In Search of Mary Seacole: The making of a cultural icon
Helen Rappaport
Simon & Schuster £20
(978-1-39850-443-1)
Church Times Bookshop £18