The Heritage of Mary Seacole

My objective in writing this additional piece about Mary is to express my ideas as to what her legacy should be and how it might differ from current perceptions. To be able to do this we need to be satisfied that we possess an accurate picture of her. In the normal way, a serious researcher will turn to the largest number of sources available, in the hope of producing a balanced picture most likely to represent the truth.

Unfortunately Mary's Crimea activities, unlike military pursuits, were not eligible to be chronicled officially, and contrary to a Fanny Duberly or Florence Nightingale, she had no immediate family with whom she could engage in regular correspondence, later to be made available for publication. There are passing references in individual memoirs and newspaper reports, but although invariably favourable, they are brief. Therefore our sole contemporary detailed source of Mary's activities in the Crimea is her autobiography.

It is sad to report that to this day, there are respected commentators prepared to discount the book as 'ghost written' and by implication unreliable. One wonders whether they have ever bothered to read it. Admittedly, by today's standards, the over-flamboyant title 'The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands' does not hold particular promise of serious historical content. However it must be remembered that it was published at the time when there was a rash of individual war memoirs flooding the market, and an effort was needed to make her book sound exciting enough to persuade the public to buy yet another. Mid-19th Century marketing techniques were much less sophisticated than today's, and what may appear artless to us now was quite the norm then.

To what extent her editor 'E.J.S' was involved in the finished article must of course be a matter of conjecture. We have no clue as to the level of Mary's literary skills, although she was accustomed to making speeches and presumably articulate. But there is nothing conventional about the style of writing or the construction framework. The narrative flows with conversational ease and there is a freshness of expression and quiet humour which uniquely fits the personality and events described. Somewhat anarchically, the book wanders from its chronological structure from time to time to follow a particular topic to its conclusion. In short the reader becomes convinced that Mary has written it herself. This must have been evident to those who knew her, as proved by the book's remarkable success. Against this background, and knowing her stubborn, forceful character, it is hard to believe that she allowed her autobiography to be 'ghost written' and my strong feeling is that she limited the role of the editor to just that - correcting layout grammer and spelling from the script she handed him.

As to the truth of the content, I would suggest that the following points are significant.

1. The text is free from exaggeration or speculation and sets out to relate factual happenings. Most of these could be verified or challenged by those who were present at the time - a high proportion of the readership, as the book came out only a year or so after the end of the events to which it refers. No challenge is on record, and future events proved that Mary retained all her credibility after the book was published.

2. Mary appears to have been conscious that she might be misbelieved, presumably by the civilian readership. As a result she can be criticised for name dropping and for including an excess of 'thank you' letters and testimonials in the book; but she wanted to be certain it was realised that she was telling the truth.

3. Russell of the Times gave the book his personal endorsement by writing the preface. A great crusader for publication of the truth - which repeatedly got him into hot water during his journalistic career - he would never have put his name to anything he suspected of being anything but totally reliable. And Russell was no dewey-eyed apologist admirer - he was quite prepared to be cynical at Mary's expense, as demonstrated in his article on the Sevastopol Spring Meeting which appeared in 'The Times' for 9th April 1856: 'Mrs Seacole was there with a store of thirst-compelling and thirst-assuaging edibles and drinkables.'

So using Mary's book as a reliable basis for evaluation, what should her true legacy be? Current perceptions emphasise her colour - she has been voted the greatest Black Briton in a nationwide poll, and there is a tendency to eulogise her as the 'Black Nightingale' who managed her achievements and gained universal respect at the highest levels in spite of the disadvantages of being black. Rejected by the White Nightingale, she defied the world and was brilliantly successful doing her own thing.

My own feeling is that this interpretation of her legacy is fundamentally flawed, and would not be what Mary would have wanted.

First let us examine her unsuccessful application to join the Nightingale nurses. It is true that in the first moments of despair after her unsuccessful interview, she wondered if she might have been turned down on account of her colour. But we must ask, would she have got a job had she been white? Florence had made it quite clear that she did not want any additional nurses at Scutari - her problems in trying to get the female nurses that were already there accepted by the military medical authorities were difficult enough. The second batch were being recruited without her knowledge and consisted principally of teams of nuns and "ladies of quality" - the few others categorised as 'nurses' were of pre-Nightingale character, basically ward orderlies with little or no proper nursing experience. A white Mary would not have fitted anywhere into the second batch.

Most of us I'm sure have experienced the disappointment of receiving a 'regret' letter at some stage of our career, and the natural reaction is to be defensive and to put the rejection down to some circumstance beyond one's control. 'They are obviously set on hiring a man/woman, a younger/older person, with a university/shop floor background (Delete as inapplicable) - more fool they!!' how often have we experienced similar feelings? The truth was that there were not enough black people around in England in the 1850s to engender any sort of kneejerk attitude from the indigenous population apart from curiosity.

It is true, as Mary wrote of her first visit to London as a young girl, that she and her companion had been poked fun at by the London street boys. But then London street boys would poke fun at anyone of their age who was not a London street boy.

Mary of course was no stranger to racial prejudice, having been exposed to it from US Nationals during her time in Columbia. As a result she unfairly but understandably disliked all white Americans. It is hard to believe that she would have opted to make her home base in London if she had experienced any such racial prejudice there.

Once in the Crimea, Mary's colour and background actually worked in her favour. If she had been English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh, she would have been feted by her home nation soldiery, the rest would have felt less able to relate totally to her. The other great divisive factor at the time was class, still apparent in the UK to this day, with acknowledgement to the famous sketch featuring John Cleese and the Two Ronnies, "I know my place." Mary, a Jamaican Creole from a family of hoteliers - middle class - with close ties to British officers and their families - upper class - and at the same time treating sick soldiers - lower class - was unclassifiable, and this allowed her warm generous and caring nature to break down class barriers and to be regarded as the surrogate mother of the entire British Army, regardless of rank or background.

The sceptics may argue that Mary's long positive association with the British armed forces in Jamaica allowed her reputation to precede her and ensured her instant acceptability. Without that would she have been received as well as a white woman running the hotel might have been?

A hypothetical question of course but it bears considering that skin colour as far as the British Army or Navy of the 19th and first half 20th century was concerned, was just another physical characteristic - a tall soldier would be 'Lofty', a red head 'Ginger', a dark skinned Caribbean 'Blackie'. As Mary writes quite joyously describing the batman exhorting her to bake his Captain's mince pies to his liking; "Sure he likes them well done ma'am. Bake 'em as brown as your own pretty face darlin'."

So if Mary's skin colour was not a factor to be overcome, what about the comparision with Florence Nightingale? This shibboleth appears to have been started by a well meaning letter to the Times drawing attention to Mary's financial problems. "While the benevolent deeds of Florence Nightingale are being handed down to posterity...are the humbler acts of Mrs Seacole to be entirely forgotten?"

Weighty rhetoric in a good cause, but the comparison totally odious. Florence was a hospital administrator, and a very good one too. She owes her fame beyond Scutari, to her founding of the nursing profession and her principles of hygiene and hospital design. Mary was a purveyor of comforts to the troops in the Crimea close to the front line. The two overlapped tenuously only in the area of providing fleeting succour to the wounded - the 'lady with the lamp' in the base hospital, the lady with the first aid bag on the battlefield. Both these roles were subsidiary to their main functions, but both being easy to depict simplistically and to manipulate with emotional overtones suitable for tabloid type coverage, we have the stuff of contention; Florence remembered, Mary forgotten. This treatment, inevitable though it may be in the current environment, is highly unfortunate in that it has polarised positions - if you are for Flo you are against Mary, and vice versa, and predictably the race card gets played.

I have described the only meeting between the two in my article so will only repeat here the fact that she went to Scutari to make her mark with Florence, NOT to ask for a job. The oft quoted passage: 'Willingly had they accepted me, I would have worked for the wounded in return for bread and water.' clearly refers to her job applications in London, not her visit to Scutari, although loose editing at this point may result in such misinterpretation by a page skimmer.

Both heroines seem to have refrained from any public comment about the other. During her brief visits to the Crimea, Florence would have had no reason to visit the British Hotel, although her travelling companion Alexis Soyer was frequently there. In fact Mary light heartedly challenged him to a cooking contest which he skillfully ducked out of on the grounds that it was a no win situation for him! A letter written by Florence fifteen years later acknowledges that Mary had done 'some good'. However she goes on to write that she discouraged nurses from going to the British Hotel because of its 'drunkeness and improper conduct'; this goes against Mary's insistence that drunks and troublemakers were ejected and that the hotel closed regularly at 8pm sharp. As 1855 wore on, speakeasies and dancehalls were springing up in Balaklava, often managed by French 'Madames', of which Mary strongly disapproved; Flo probably based her judgement on these, and she was also no doubt fairly ill-disposed to find that her arch enemy Doctor Hall was a firm supporter of Mary's dispensing of herbal treatments.

If Florence's memory was assured because she founded the Nursing Profession, Mary's fame was ephemeral in that as often happens with wars, it lasted only for the lifetime of the generation directly affected by it. I do feel that this is an injustice and that Mary deserves to be remembered permanently, but not just because she was Black - although Jamaica has every reason to be proud of her daughter - or that Flo is remembered and she isn't. For me Russell holds the key in the words included in his preface to the first edition of her autobiography: "She is the first who has redeemed the name of 'sutler' from the suspicion of worthlessness, mercenary baseness, and plunder; and I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead."

Mary was indeed a mother to her sons and she demonstrated to the army single handedly how morale could be vastly improved by the provision of basic services close to the front. The British Hotel paved the way for NAAFI Clubs, British Legion and Salvation Army Canteens. Her mobile stalls were echoed in later wars by the W(R)VS mobile canteens. The value of her battlefield advanced first aid support, similar to presentday paramedical services, is reflected in the establishment of integral specialised paramedical personnel at field unit level. The War Graves Commission was eventually set up to tend soldiers' graves. Mary's specialised herbal medicine surgeries were perhaps a one off, reliant on her unique experience, but at least today's medics recognise the value of homeopathic treatments for certain illnesses and diseases.

I hope that these reflections are enough to convince that Mary deserves her statue for being 'Mother' in every way to the long suffering Army in the Crimea. The 150th Anniversary is a good time to be going about it, and the current project deserves our fullest support to ensure that it comes to fruition.