who was mary seacole?
A British-Jamaican nurse, healer and businesswoman who set up the "British Hotel" behind the lines during the Crimean War.
Mary Seacole
Mary Jane Seacole ("née" Grant; 23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a British-Jamaican nurse, healer and businesswoman who set up the "British Hotel" behind the lines during the Crimean War.
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Mary Seacole [SEP] Introduction
In 2004, she was voted the greatest black Briton. Mary Seacole did not have formal British nursing qualifications or training, but relied on her skill and experience as a healer and a doctress from Jamaica. Schools of nursing in England were only set up after the Crimean war, the first being the (Florence) Nightingale Training School, in 1860 at St Thomas' Hospital in London. Seacole was arguably the first nurse practitioner. Hoping to assist with nursing the wounded on the outbreak of the Crimean War, Seacole applied to the War Office to be included among the nursing contingent but was refused, so she travelled independently and set up her hotel and tended to the battlefield wounded.