A MONUMENT FOR MARY: Celebrating the life of Mary Seacole

On the south bank of the Thames in Central London, stands a magnificent, larger-than-life bronze statue of a Jamaican woman, the only monument to a named Black woman to be erected in the United Kingdom.

That woman is Mary Seacole, doctoress, businesswoman, adventuress, who was born in Kingston in 1805 and buried in London in 1881.

In 2004 she was voted “the Greatest Black Briton” of all times and is immortalised in the monument created by sculptor Martin Jennings and unveiled in 2016. The statue is erected on the grounds of St Thomas Hospital, where generations of nurses from Jamaica and the Caribbean have trained, and which is the ‘home’ of the equally, some would contend, even more famous contemporary, Florence Nightingale.

On March 8, 2020 the Mary Seacole Foundation (MSF), a charitable Jamaican organisation, established in 1998 to honour and perpetuate the memory of the courageous, compassionate 19th century Kingstonian, will partner with the UK-based Mary Seacole Trust (MST) to tell the remarkable story of the monument’s creation to a Jamaican audience; and celebrate the legacy of one of the most famous members of the Jamaican diaspora.

The event will be held in the Lecture Hall of the Institute of Jamaica on East Street, in Kingston, on the very site of Mary Seacole’s birth and early life.

Born Mary Grant in Kingston in 1805, a product of the union of a free Black woman and a Scottish soldier, she first set sail from Jamaica at an early age, visiting England with relatives in 1821, and returning there on her own in 1823.

No doubt, these transatlantic journeys, undertaken while she was still a teenager, fueled her wanderlust, and although two centuries ago travelling alone by boat must have been both difficult and dangerous, the young Mary spent the next few years seeking adventure and fortune in foreign lands, including Cuba, Haiti, the Bahamas. Adventure she found aplenty; however, fortune was more elusive.

As much as she loved travel and adventure, nursing (caring for the sick) was for her an enduring passion. Mary’s mother ran a lodging house, Blundell Hall, on East Street; and she was also a healer. She taught Mary many of her skills using traditional Jamaican medicines.

A keen student from early childhood, Mary practised medicine on her doll, dogs and cats, and herself. She writes in her autobiography: “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.” By the time she was 12 Mary was helping to run the boarding house, where many of the guests were sick or injured soldiers.

She had ample opportunity in her personal life at home and in her travels abroad, to deploy her medical knowledge and nursing skills; caring in succession for her ‘patroness’, a sickly husband, and her mother. By 1844, at the age of 39, she was mourning the loss of both husband and mother.

In 1850, she nursed victims of the Kingston cholera epidemic; and in 1851 in Panama, where she had travelled to join her brother in running a hotel, she found that her skills were needed once again.

In the town of Cruces, Mary reports saving her first cholera patient. In 1853, Mary returned to Kingston, caring for victims of a yellow fever epidemic. She was invited by the medical authorities to supervise nursing services at Up-Park in Kingston, the British Army’s headquarters; and she re-organised New Blundell Hall, her mother’s former lodging house rebuilt after a fire, to function as a hospital. Mary had no children of her own, but the strong maternal attachments she formed with these soldiers, and her feelings for them, would later drive Mary to the Crimea.

Service to sick and wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War was Mary Seacole’s final mission of caring and adventure; and her errand of mercy in the camp and on the battlefield, made her famous. The Crimean War which was fought by a coalition, including Britain, against the Russian Empire, lasted from October 1853 until February 1856. Mary travelled to England and approached the British War Office, asking to be sent as an army nurse to the Crimea, where she had heard, that there were poor medical facilities for wounded soldiers. She was refused.

Undaunted, she funded her own trip to Crimea, now part of Ukraine, where she established the British Hotel with Thomas Day, a relative of her husband, Edwin. The hotel provided ‘comfortable quarters for sick and recovering soldiers’. Mary’s hotel near Balaclava was close to the front; therefore, she was able to visit the battlefield, sometimes under fire, to nurse the wounded. When the war ended, Mary went back to Britain with very little money. Soldiers wrote letters to newspapers, praising what she had done.

The Times War Correspondent, Sir William H Russell, wrote about Mary in 1857: “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.” All those who admired her came to her aid, whether soldiers, generals or members of the Royal family. In 1857 a fund-raising gala was held for her over four nights on the banks of the River Thames. More than 80,000 people attended. That same year, she published her autobiography, “The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands,” which became an instant bestseller.

Mary died in London in 1881 and was buried in Kensal Green Roman Catholic Cemetery in North West London where she lay, mostly lost to history for aalmost 100 years. In 1973 her grave was restored by nurses from the Caribbean; and slowly over the ensuing decades, her legacy was reinstated in the public’s memory, thanks mainly to the tenacity of a group of Caribbean women who had served in World War II, Caribbean nurses and their professional sisters.

The nurses recruited an important ally, the local MP, now Lord Clive Soley, who bought into their vision and promised to help raise funds for a statue of Mary. In 2004, the very year that Mary was voted the“Greatest Black Briton,” Lord Soley launched the campaign for a statue, after leaving the House of Commons. Twelve years and more than half a million pounds (£500,000.00) later, on June 30, 2016, the statue of Mary Seacole was finally unveiled on the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital, on London’s Southbank.

Her legacy is continued by the Mary Seacole Trust (MST), UK which, in addition to maintaining the statue, aims to educate and inform the public about her life, work and achievements, ensuring that she is never again lost to history.

Mary Seacole’s story is included in the primary school curriculum in the UK. To several generations of Jamaicans, the name “Mary Seacole,” affixed to a Hall of Residence at The University of the West Indies is the name of an unknown woman. It is, therefore, the intention of the Mary Seacole Foundation (MSF) to renew its mission to resurrect the spirit and legacy of this remarkable 19th century woman; and re-establish Mary Seacole, as a recognisable model of compassion, adventure and enterprise for many generations of Jamaicans to come.

The first of a series of new activities will be launched on March 8, 2020 in partnership with the Mary Seacole Trust. It is a competition, aimed at primary age school children, to identify persons in their community who embody the qualities of the heroic Mrs Seacole. In addition, a varied and continuing programme of education and communication will be implemented, to keep Mary Seacole’s legacy alive, by unearthing and disseminating stories about the lives and achievements of other exceptional Jamaican and Caribbean women.