Kickass Women Mary Seacole Smart Bitches Trashy Books

The Crimean War (1853-1856) was a messy and miserable conflict between Russia and an alliance that included Sardinia, France, the Ottoman Empire, and the United Kingdom. Just to make things extra confusing, it is NOT one of the Napoleonic Wars even though during the war France was ruled by Emperor Napoleon III.

If I have to keep all this straight, by golly, I’m taking you all with me. Here’s how I tell these conflicts apart:

Napoleonic Wars: A series of wars between Napoleon I of France and his allies, versus Great Britain and Britain’s allies, from 1803-1815. Allies sometimes changed sides in mid-conflict just to keep things interesting. These are the wars that Jane Austen was concerned with, and they left us with, among other works, Horatio Hornblower, Waterloo, and War and Peace.

Crimean War: France (under Napoleon III) and Britain, plus other allies, versus Russia. This war left us with “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Also Russia sold Alaska to the United States of America, and Florence Nightingale revolutionized nursing.

“But wait!” I hear you say. “What about Napoleon II?” He was the Emperor of France for a couple of weeks in 1815 but spent most of his life known as Franz, Duke of Reichstadt. He died of pneumonia when he was 21.

With those pesky Napoleons out of the way, let us proceed to our Kickass Woman from the Crimean War: Mary Seacole. Mary Seacole lived from 1805-1881 and was a nurse, fundraiser, activist, and author.

Seacole was born in Jamaica. Her father was Scottish and her mother was either Black or mixed race. She identified as Creole, stating:

“I am a Creole, and have good Scots blood coursing through my veins. My father was a soldier of an old Scottish family…I have a few shades of deeper brown upon my skin which shows me related â€" and I am proud of the relationship â€" to those poor mortals whom you once held enslaved, and whose bodies America still owns.”

Seacole had a formal education but was also educated by her mother, who was called ‘The Doctress’ in Carribean and Jamaican herbal and folk medicine. While Seacole is commonly referred to as a nurse, as a student of The Doctress she would have learned midwifery, massage, herbalism, nutrition, and the importance of hygiene. She also studied military doctors at work. As an adult, Seacole nursed British soldiers in Jamaica and cholera victims in Panama.

Mary Jane Seacole in about 1850

When the Crimean War broke out, Seacole applied to be a nurse with several agencies, including Nightingale’s, but was rejected. She went to Crimea on her own and opened The British Hotel, which was primarily a restaurant and supply depot for soldiers. She was beloved for her habit of serving tea and lemonade and offering medical attention to the wounded soldiers at the hotel, on the battlefield, and especially at the docks who were awaiting transport.

Most of the soldiers who died in the Crimean War died from illness rather than injury, especially from cholera, dysentery, typhus, and typhoid fever. Seacole pioneered practices of good hygiene, fluids, and nutrition, which she learned from her mother and the other doctresses in Jamaica prior to Florence Nightingale’s adoption of similar hygienic practices.

In researching Seacole and other women in the history of medicine, I read The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Women Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine, by Janice P. Nimura, which talks about the easy-to-forget fact that the 19th-century women who were breaking new ground in medicine all knew or had heard of each other, and usually had opinions about each other as well.

Most of these women (including Drs. Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell, Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole, Sister Mary Clare Moore, Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, and many others) spent time in personal and/or professional alliances and rivalries. Many of them met in person; others carried on correspondence. And although I would love to picture a united sisterhood, these women, while they did often support one another, also often did not approve of each other or of each other’s plans one little bit, and said so.

For instance, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and Florence Nightingale spent years arguing through correspondence about whether women should be doctors (Nightingale thought them better suited for nursing). Seacole was not admitted to the ranks of Nightingale’s nurses, possibly because of her color and possibly also because she allowed alcohol at her establishments, which Nightingale thought was an immoral practice.

These rivalries have persisted to the detriment of everyone. Today there is a heated rivalry between the fans of Florence Nightingale and the fans of Mary Seacole. Critics of Nightingale point out (correctly) that Nightingale was racist, colonialist, and adhered strongly to certain conservative ideas about the roles women should fill. Critics of Mary Seacole point out that, unlike Nightingale, Seacole did not effect long-term social or medical change or revolutionise nursing on a large scale.

This is, of course, a simplification of arguments from both sides that underscore issues such as how we document history, the erasure of people of color from history, and the difference between direct care (Seacole provided hands on care for far longer and to far more people than Nightingale) and political/social/scientific change (Nightingale made enormous changes in the public’s perception of nursing, in promoting hygiene, and was a pioneer in the field of statistics).

What no one disputes is that both women worked hard all their lives to alleviate suffering in a physical, social, racial, and political environment that did not welcome them. We seem to have no problem honoring multiple men in history for different kinds of contributions to the same fields. Is it really so difficult to honor multiple women, while also acknowledging their limitations?

Mary Seacole may not have left the same lasting, large-scale mark on nursing that Florence Nightingale did, but she did deliver hands-on care, including medical care, to hundreds of Crimean soldiers as well as people in other parts of the world. She also wrote a memoir, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands.

Seacole was famous during her life and then forgotten. But over the last decade she has been included in examinations of the evolution of medicine as researchers seek to undo the erasure of Black contributions to history.

My sources were:

The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Women Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine, by Janice P. Nimura

Mary Seacole Trust

National Geographic

Florence Nightingale 200 Years

Nursing Theory

Wikipedia

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