The Marvellous Adventures of Mary Seacole

By Cleo Sylvestre

Mary Seacole was a medical practitioner from Jamaica whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Her offer to volunteer as a military nurse was refused, but Seacole travelled to the Crimea nevertheless, where she tended the wounded both on the battlefront and at the 'British Hotel'.
In this acclaimed one-woman play, the true story of Mary Seacole is brought vibrantly to life, revealing how this fearless medical practitioner used traditional remedies to treat the sick and wounded, challenged racism in high places and won the hearts and minds of those she helped across the globe.
Considered the greatest of all Black Britons, discover why and how she came to be so highly regarded, although she was an immigrant and a woman of colour in Victorian England.

REVIEWS

“You brought the spirit of Mary to life.”  – Zoe Gilbert, Florence Nightingale Museum

“Thank you for such an excellent rendition of Mary. It was truly brilliant.” – Clive Soley

“Be prepared, Cleo Sylvestre will transport you back to the Victorian age and leave you thinking
that you had actually met Mary Seacole.”  – Dame Elizabeth Anionwu

CLEO SYLVESTRE

Theatre: Cleo made her West End debut in Wise Child by Simon Gray with Sir Alec Guinness for which she was nominated Most Promising New Actress. She then went on to be the first Black British actress to have a leading role at the National Theatre in The National Health by Peter Nichols followed by seasons at The Young Vic
including tours to Broadway and Mexico. She has performed in a wide range of theatre productions including touring with Northern Broadsides and Oxford Playhouse. For twenty years until June 2016, Cleo was joint Artistic Director of the award-winning Rosemary Branch Theatre.

Film: Cleo was in Ken Loach’s films Cathy Come Home, Up The Junction and Poor Cow and has acted in
numerous tv shows from Grange Hill, to presenting Playschool, and guesting in the Christmas 2020 special of All Creatures Great And Small. She made several shorts for Isaac Julien including Vagabondia (Turner Prize shortlist), was in Kidulthood and Tube Tales (dir. Jude Law) and Paddington. In 2019 Cleo received the Screen Nation Trailblazer Award.

Music: Having made a record with the (then unknown) Rolling Stones while at school, she recently returned to her first love, music, forming the blues band, Honey B Mama & Friends, who have appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Ealing Blues Festival among many other venues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aurora Metro Books
• Release date: Dec 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781912430604

Book preview

Introduction

Cleo Sylvestre

In 1984 I was a member of the acting company at the Oxford Playhouse which rehearsed in London. One weekend, I paid a visit to Centreprise, my local bookshop in Kingsland Road, Hackney, whose loss today is much lamented. I loved going there to browse among the many titles which were never available in mainstream bookshops – books from and about the African diaspora.

One title in particular caught my eye that day. It was called The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, an autobiography, edited by Ziggi Alexander and Audrey Dewjee and reprinted by Falling Wall Press. The cover depicted an imposing woman of indeterminate age, wearing pearls and earrings, with her hair tied back. From her dress it was obvious she belonged to another era. I was immediately intrigued and so I bought a copy for £3.95. I had never heard of Mary Seacole but was determined to find out more about her.

Little did I realize, when I started reading her story, what an effect it would have on me, both as an actor, and as a person.

In the 1980s, the name Mary Seacole was not universally known in Britain, and her contribution to nursing and to tending patients suffering from tropical diseases had been airbrushed from history. However, as I read the book, I discovered that over a century earlier, she had trained as a doctress in Jamaica where her mother had nursed military patients in the family convalescent home called Blundell Hall.

Refused permission to work officially as a nurse in the Crimean War, she went there anyway at her own expense and set up a hotel to nurse wounded soldiers. She was greatly esteemed by the veterans of that war and on her return, falling on hard times, a public benefit was held on her behalf at The Royal Surrey Gardens which was attended by thousands of people including many army veterans. Punch magazine also published a poem in her honour called A Stir For Seacole in 1856.

As I read her autobiography I was fascinated by her intrepidness, entrepreneurship and her wanderlust – not to mention her ancestry. She was the daughter of a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army and a Jamaican doctress, saying of herself, I am Creole and have good Scottish blood coursing in my veins.

From today’s vantage point of the Black Lives Matter movement, her attitude to race can be considered ambiguous. For example, on describing her first visit to London and the experience of street boys poking fun at her and her companions, she says, "I am only a little brown – a few shades duskier than the brunettes whom you all admire so