WARTIME PIONEERS
MARY SEACOLE
THE HEROIC BATTLEFIELD NURSE
1805-81 JAMAICA
“AFTER THE BATTLE OF CHERNAYA IN AUGUST 1855, SHE TENDED TO FRENCH, ITALIAN AND EVEN RUSSIAN CASUALTIES”
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Scottish soldier and a mixed-race proprietress of an officer’s boarding house, Seacole (née Grant) had an obscure early life. It is known that she acquired nursing skills through her mother based on Creole medical traditions that largely involved herbal treatments. She married Lord Nelson’s godson, Edwin Horatio Seacole, but was soon widowed. Seacole ran the family boarding house for several years while treating cases of cholera and yellow fever. After briefly serving as a nursing superintendent at Kingston’s Up-Park Military Camp, Seacole sailed to England upon the outbreak of the Crimean War.
She attempted to join Florence Nightingale’s first group of Crimean
