Lies, damned lies and statistics’ has nothing on the campaign (overwhelmingly successful) to depict Jamaican businesswoman and Crimean War celebrity Mary Seacole as a medal-winning, daredevil battlefield nurse, who built a hotel, or a clinic, or a combined hotel and clinic, to nurse wounded soldiers (from battles she never saw) and later went on to become the pioneer nurse practitioner and invent modern nursing; claims made in a nursing journal article and a biography, respectively.
The perpetrators of such misinformation are well meaning: Nursing leaders, NHS officials, the Royal College of Nursing, the Department of Education, the National Portrait Gallery, National Science Museum, National Army Museum and teachers from KS-1 and KS-2 to GCSE teachers and examiners. Their goals are to teach racial equality and provide a model for black minority ethic nurses, pupils and people generally. Laudable objects, but the problem is that Mary Seacole did not do most of the things attributed to her – while some of them Florence Nightingale did do.
Moreover Seacole never claimed any of these feats in her highly readable memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, 1857, available in many editions with grossly inaccurate introductions. That book gives, after briefly describing her early life in Jamaica, her truly wonderful adventures in the Caribbean and Panama. She took over the running of her mother’s élite boarding house (a small hotel) in Kingston, and operated a small hotel in Panama for men travelling across the isthmus (pre-Canal) to join the California Gold Rush. Her father was a Scottish soldier, her mother Creole and her husband (who died young) British. Seacole travelled with two black servants, a maid and a porter. She called herself ‘yellow’ to indicate her light complexion: she was one quarter white and had a white clientele in all her businesses.
Some accounts blame Nightingale’s associates not her – for Seacole’s rejection as a Crimean War nurse, and some blame the British government, again with varying numbers of rejection, from one to four. The difficulty here is that Seacole never applied for a nurse’s job at all. She went to England in September 1854 to look into her failing gold stocks, by coincidence arriving just after the first battle of the Crimean War. By the time she gave up on her gold stocks (she had invested while in Panama), not only had Nightingale and her team left, but so had a second team. Seacole described dropping into various offices informally and asking for a position. She never submitted the required application with references (they are at the National Archives, Kew), nor had she the required hospital experience.
Seacole, in fact, never nursed a day in any hospital before or after the Crimean War. She made her own ‘herbal’ preparations, for sale to walk-in customers. Their success, too, has been boosted from remedies for tummy aches to cures for cholera and yellow fever – again, claims she never made. Indeed, she acknowledged that she had made ‘lamentable blunders’ on cholera, which she shuddered to think about. And so she might, given that she added substances that dehydrate the body when rehydration is needed. She was in this respect, no worse than many doctors of the time, but mercury and lead do not cure cholera or yellow fever. Her mustard poultices (to cause sweating), emetics and purging through the bowels are all known (now) to be harmful.
Seacole gave a whole chapter in her memoir to a yellow fever epidemic in Kingston. She courageously and kindly stayed up all night with the dying victims, putting screens around them, giving comfort until all died. This surely deserves great commendation, but the mythmakers turn her into a miracle worker who saved them.
The NHS, as the major employer of BAME staff in Britain, has reason to seek a black model to celebrate. But they did not look carefully. They ignored an outstanding Nigerian nurse, Kofoworola Abeni Pratt (1915-92), the first BAME nurse in the NHS. Pratt came to London to train at the Nightingale School, seeing Nightingale as a model. It was her husband, a Nigerian pharmacist who had begun medical training in London, at Bart’s, who made the approach to the matron on her behalf. Mrs. Pratt was accepted and started training in 1946.
Pratt was on duty at St Thomas’ Hospital when the NHS officially opened in June 1948. She was an outstanding student (the documentation is available at the London Metropolitan Archives). She passed with honours, took extra certificates (midwifery, tropical diseases, administration) and passed the final state examinations in 1949.
British nursing leaders encouraged her to go back to (pre-independence) Nigeria to assist in founding the nursing profession there. This she did, and went on to give leadership in international organizations. None of this, apparently, is known to the NHS or British nursing leaders.
Nor do NHS leaders, especially the ill-named NHS ‘Leadership Academy’, seem to know that it was Nightingale who articulated the vision of the NHS quality care for all, regardless of ability to pay – and the integration of health promotion and disease prevention with treatment. Nightingale called for this in 1866, and worked mightily over the next decades to effect the first steps, notably by getting trained nurses into the workhouse infirmaries, and, for some infirmaries, better, safer buildings. It is inconceivable that the NHS could have come into being in 1948, as it did, without those earlier, gradual, reforms, for when she started at least 80 per cent of hospital patients were in workhouse infirmaries, not the regular hospitals. Workhouse infirmaries then had no trained nurses, only an occasional medical attendance, and bed sharing was still common.
Yet it is Seacole’s massive statue that is located on the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital, home of the first nurse training school in the world, not Nightingale’s. The statue faces the Houses of Parliament, although it was Nightingale who lobbied Cabinet ministers, prime ministers and MPs for improvements in health care. A peer, Lord Crisp, former chief executive of the NHS, called for Seacole to be added to the 2020 Bicentenary in honour of Nightingale’s birth. Asked what Seacole had done for the NHS or health care, he had no reply.
How many schools teach the Seacole propaganda is not known for, although both Nightingale and Seacole are in the National Curriculum, there is no requirement that they be taught, either separately or together. Typically, from an examination of school websites, the two are taught together and the contrast between them made. Schools that teach misinformation range from regular state schools to Roman Catholic and Church of England schools and fee-paying schools.
In a world of ‘fake facts,’ do we need more? Should students writing GCSE examinations in History be required to regurgitate misinformation about Seacole? Should books for school children portray her as a battlefield nurse, complete with blue-and-white nurse’s uniform (although she never wore one)? Should she be depicted in battle scenes of battles she never saw? Such books do exist, and indeed you can purchase a flagrant example at the Florence Nightingale Museum at St Thomas’ Hospital.
Not the least harm done by avid Seacole supporters in denigrating Nightingale is losing her as a model, for she was not only the founder of nursing, but an effective political activist (she got laws changed) and researcher (the first woman Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society). Are politically effective, mathematically adept women so thick on the ground as to dispense with her?
Lynn McDonald, PhD, LLD (hon), professor emerita, is the author of Mary Seacole: The Making of the Myth, Iguana Books, 2014.
This article is in the current edition of the Salisbury Review (out now)
And *this*, folks, is what you get when universities teach “other ways of knowing” and “black studies” instead of history or logic.
Mary Seacole did apply for posts in nursing, was rejected because she was a woman, in those days women can only practice under their husband or father not independently. She brought women as leaders into medicine and nursing. This enable Kofo Pratt too to attend the all women nursing training and took it to Nigeria, she was a British, remaining remnants of Yoruba nobility of Britain, the founder of Britain. Mary Nightingale was a cleaner never any influence in nursing cannot read nor write. After the Kirijija Karimi, Kiriji (Kirimi, Crimea) the freed white from slavery were given cleaning jobs. After the end of slavery of white people in 1800s, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a nobily of Britain, campaigned for white people to be given good jobs than cleaners, nannies and butlers. Mary Nightinggale became cleaning supervisor. By early 1900s the white were given positions as protectors of land and properties which is called security job today. This was how the white became the British today as the Afrikans, original British left the land and handed over the protection of the land to them. Queen Elisabeth (Elisabi, Olisabi) mother was a daughter of Ottoman Fulani solder and he was only a cook in the army. Olisabi, Elisabi were the Abeokuta monarchy who were still supplying food items up till 1960s to Britain. Sara Aina Forobi (Forbes) Obanitta (Boneta), the Iyalode of Britain was the real Queen Victoria never the fake white actress. The white Victoria was an actress and the crown was photo shoot. King Edward VII was a Dravidian Fulani who claimed the throne after the death of Queen Victoria. The throne was vacant for long time after the death of Queen Victoria and the monarchy returned to Afrika, this is where modern white British royal line started. Afrikans were the ancient Europeans, the Dravidians free slaves later lived in Britain and lastly their children, the white people.
Lunatic
Statues are erected and removed often to reflect present-day concerns. When the statue of Mary Seacole was unveiled the communique put out by St Thomas’ emphasised in a series of negatives that the real history of Mary Seacole was irrelevant, as was any comparison with any other – deliberately un-named – person (obviously Florence Nightingale).
It’s obvious that the statue is meant to serve another purpose. What Mary Seacole actually did, what sort of person she was like – although the most interesting part of her or anyone’s life – is completely irrelevant. It’s the hagiography that matters. In good weather parties of small schoolchildren are sat at the foot of the statue to learn whatever political dogmas are required.
Nor would you get a sympathetic audience from those who declare that Mary Seacole was turned down in her application as a nurse by Florence Nightingale because the latter was racist. Nor from those who refer to the statue in hushed and reverent tones as if merely touching the statue’s feet could produce the sort of miracle cures attributed to saints. It’s the iconography that matters, not the historical accuracy.
Is there a statue anywhere to Dame Maude McCarthy?
Top class piece of research Lynn. Hard facts will always trump propaganda in the end.
I suspect that the Seacole myth has been propagated more by gullible, ignorant, virtue-signalling white liberals such as Lord Crisp than by mixed race people such as myself, many of whom find it vaguely amusing, but baffling (and sad), to watch the British Left destroy a once great nation in the space of a couple of generations.
Has any objection been raised to St Thomas’s Hospital for erecting this misleading statue or replacing it with something to honour Koforolowa Pratt? I think there is a statue of Nightingale somewhere, but not, apparently, appropriately at St Thomas’s.
I had never heard of this woman until a few months ago when all this BLM malarcy kicked off. Yesterday I watched a video on You Tube about Mary Seacole and this argument stated here. Today I thought I would look more into this. I watched the Horrible Histories account and thought to myself if this is what kids are being taught today there is hope for a 66 year old uneducated senior. I read the Wikpedia account about Mary Seacole and went along with its explaination of here life. However towards the end of the article I realised that the agenda was building her up more and more. Having visited many carribbean countries I find it hard to believe that back in the time frame it was all tickty boo and bearing in mind the conditions at Nelsons Dockyard Antigua at the time that the statement she had discovered the effects of contagion! when ships would anchor in the bay to quarantine is rather over the top. There was no mention of her mining adventure over in Panama which I get the impression that she was there to make money by what ever means. From what I remember from my school days I think Florence had a hard time trying to get out to the Crimerian conflict. When Mary Seacole got out there with her buisness partner it was as I read it that, that was the sole purpose, a buisness, make money. The accounts of her out watching the battles with the oberervers selling here wears are probably what it was. Then afterwards selling where she could to the returning troops. A tot of rum or a pipe for the walking wounded, then perhaps a bandage or a concoction for the more serious casualties. When all was quite a walk down to the battle field to see what harvest could be acquired from there. The readings don’t specify that she actually took them back to her Hotel for treatment or even to a field hospital, only offering services to the wounded waiting to board ships on the harbour. The more I read the more I see an opportunist which is backed up further when she comes back to Britain broke having to sell off all her goods at a loss. Then some how she becomes a society cause recieving various donations and funds that get her back to kingston to live comfortably with her own home and a large house to rent out with funds of £2500. Then she gives this up for some reason to come back to Britain and again be funded by her societies. So because she had some herbal concoctions and the ability to give comfort to men in need and the dying whilst lining her own pockets perhaps she should have some recognition align with the other battlefield followers and logistical providers, but a statue mmmmm.
She was out there, on those terrible battlefields, doing it. The soldiers loved her so much they did not forget her after the war. And we, sitting at our keyboards, so many years later, seem to know how it all went down.
Oh Corey, how perceptive, how painfully yet deliciously sensitive you are – and somehow we all missed it except you! Per-leeeze write a heart-rending poem about it all;what Mary saw, how the (middle class officer core) ‘lads’ never forgot her, and most especially how feelz trump facts all day long. Clown.