NURSE 1805-1881
illustration/design Michael simpson
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Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish soldier and her mother was a black Jamaican. Mary's mother was very skilled in nursing the sick, using traditional natual cures and medicine. As a young girl, Mary learnt many of these skills from her mother.
When cholera broke out in Jamaica in 1850 Mary worked with Brittish doctors helping to cure the sick. Later on she travelled to Panama, Cuba and America selling her medicines and nursing soilders and nursing soldiers and sailors who became ill from cholera and yellow fever. In 1854, when many of the soldiers she knew had been sent to fight in the Crimea, Mary travelled to England to offer her services as a nurse to the Brittish Army. She was turned down because she was a 'black' woman. Undeterred, she used her own money to go to the Crimea and set up a hostel to nurse and feed hundreds of wounded and dying soldiers. When the war was over Mary returned to England penniless but, with the help of afew friends, she was able to make a new life for herself. She died in 1881 and was buried in London. |