Dan Snow's History Hit - Mary Seacole: Doctress of the Crimean War

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

Born Mary Jane Grant in the colony of Kingston, Jamaica, in November 1805, Mary would later become a businesswoman, traveller and healer. Posthumously, Mary is best known as a Black British nurse.Gretchen Gerzina is an author and academic who has written mostly historically-grounded biographical studies. Grethen joins Dan to share the story of Mary Seacole— how the traditional Afro-Caribbean medicine she learned from her mother would inform much of her life, her experiences as a Jamaican woman of mixed race and how she nursed the wounded of the Crimean War.This episode was produced by Hannah Ward and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. Mary Seacole is now one of the most famous people probably in British history. She is taught in schools to young people. She regularly features in lists of notable people from the past that young people are familiar with, but there was a time when she was almost completely forgotten. Mary Seacole, born Mary Jane Grant in 1805 in Jamaica. She was the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish lieutenant in the British Army, and her mother, a mixed-race Jamaican woman who was a healer, as you'll hear. She had a fascinating career, which culminated in an extraordinary visit to the Crimea

during the Crimean War, in where she set up the so-called British Hotel, just behind the lines, the idea that it was a comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers. But she ended up providing succour for wounded servicemen of all ranks on and near the battlefields of the Crimean War. She was a slightly more controversial figure than her contemporary Florence Nightingale, who was out there in official capacity working for the British government. And that's perhaps why her reputation faded after her death in Paddington in London in 1881. She was 75 years old. She was very celebrated in the final years of her life, fated across Britain and the Empire. But it took a group of activists and a

Member of Parliament to resurrect her reputation in the early years of this century and put her back on the historic landscape and particularly into schools. She had an extraordinary life and talk all about it is an academic and author, Gretchen Gazina. She's written a book, Black England, Life Before Emancipation, in which Mary Seacole features prominently. So here's my conversation with Gretchen Gazina about that extraordinary woman who served on the battlefields of Ukraine. Enjoy. Gretchen, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Oh, what a pleasure to be here. Mary Seacole, what do we know about the world that she was born into?

Mary Seacole was born in Jamaica, and she was the daughter of a woman who did kind of herbal healing. And she learned from her mother how to use plants and natural remedies to help cure people. use plants and natural remedies to help cure people. So even as a young child, she was able to go out and help to heal people. Even though she was born at a time of slavery and a time of colonialism, she was a very independent young person, even from her earliest childhood. Her mother was mixed race. Her father was Scottish. Yeah. What sort of status would she have had in that world of, as you say, slavery, colonialism? Slavery dependent on the state of the mother.

So if her mother had been an enslaved woman, Mary would have been enslaved under the way the system of slavery worked in the West Indies and in all of the Americas. So she would have been really only probably one quarter black, but still being seen as a person who, although free, seen as definitely a woman of color. And that was a bit of an issue when she described herself. And apart from being a woman of color, just being a woman, what sort of roles would women have performed in terms of whether it's the healing, hospitality, what sort of avenues were open to her? Because she was so independent, she really tried to do as many different things as she could. She would open places where guests could stay, especially soldiers in the West Indies. It wasn't as though you could just go out and get a job on the high street.

She would have had to be very resourceful. But she would have had a time where she did not consider herself enslaved, did not consider herself as constrained by her race as she probably was, in fact. strained by her race, as she probably was, in fact. She was never going to escape the fact that she was a woman of color and, as a woman, had limited roles available to her. But she was not the kind of person who would have said, I'm only going to be working in a field. She was really the kind of person who wasn't working in a household as a servant. She was really entrepreneurial from the beginning. So, I think she was in a bit of a servant. She was really entrepreneurial from the beginning. So I think she was in a bit of a different kind of position than other people who were enslaved at the time. Did she have an education? You say she was able to run establishments and so she was a

sort of a woman of business, would you describe her? Yeah, I think as much as people see her today as a nurse or a doctoress, as she would call herself, she also saw herself as providing hospitality and a place for people to stay, and especially the British, who were quite abundant on the ground. seen today as someone who, I mean, we compare her to Florence Nightingale, but I would see her more as someone who was running hotels and small businesses and restaurants, as well as healing the people who were working with her and who were patronizing her businesses. She ends up going to London as a teenager. Is that unusual? Yeah. Well, especially because she did it on her own. I mean, we have all these stories of people going from Jamaica and other places in the care of someone who owned or mastered or was in charge of them in one way or another. And she just took

herself there, which was startling. And then she set up a little business selling Jamaican products that she had brought with her, foodstuffs and other things, and took herself to London. So really, from the beginning, from when she was nursing her own pets and dolls, she was trying to figure out how to, I won't say monetize, but to have an independent place in the world where she could earn her own way. So yes, she took herself to London and to Panama. She's clearly a remarkable person, even at this point in her life and career, that kind of get up and go, that seizing of opportunities and wanting to live a

life less ordinary. Absolutely. And this is one of the things I admire her most for. I mean, it takes me a long time to think, oh, do I want to go to this place or that? And I wouldn't have, as a teenager, have imagined just saying, okay, I'm packing up all my jars of Jamaican pickles and I'm taking myself to London at a time where slavery and the slave trade were still rampant. And I'm just going to take myself there and sell some things and see what I can do with myself. It was quite remarkable. I'm not sure any teenagers today would be as willing to do that. So she's in London, she's selling produce that she's brought with her.

Did she just set up a stall and just went for it? I guess that's extraordinary. She is rather an amazing person, I have to say. And she did that. I mean, it would be today as if you decided that you were going to set up And she did that. I mean, it would be today as if you decided that you were going to set up something in Borough Market and say, all right, I've arrived and I'm going to sell these things and I'm going to make a living and I'll stick around as long as I can. And then if it doesn't work out or I sell everything, I'll go back home and start over again. Yeah, it is quite amazing. And is that what she did? She went home after that, did she? She went back home. I'm trying to get the timeline straight in my head.

She went to London for a bit. She stayed for a while, but then came back. And then she took herself on various travels. She really had restless feet, is the way I would put it. There was always the next place or the next opportunity. So she went to Panama to help out her brother. And then she went back to Jamaica. And I think then she went straight to London. She did a lot of moving about in her younger years before lending back where we remember her in the Crimea.

She does marry, that's where she gets named Seacole. She marries a British merchant. Would that have been unusual in the West Indies? There were people of color, the communities obviously in some ways highly segregated, but then it would have been a liminal space where people could form relationships, I guess. Right. And her husband was a bit of a mystery. We don't know much about this Mr. Seacole who dies. But yes, in America, there were laws against interracial marriage. There were lots of interracial relationships in the Caribbean, but the fact that she could marry a British person does say something about the kind of freedom she could have in choices in her life that would probably not have been available to her.

It would have been available to her in Britain, which never had laws against interracial marriage. It would have been available to her in Britain, which never had laws against interracial marriage. So, yes, she married a Mr. Seacole who disappears from her life quite early on because he doesn't survive. But during the cholera outbreak, she used her skills in nursing and herbal medicine to help to actually cure some of the victims. So she's prime of life now, kind of 45. There's a cholera outbreak in Jamaica. Is this where she starts getting this reputation as a healer as well as a hotelier? People knew her from a young age as someone who was very interested in medicine, who had learned a lot of ways that were more natural medicine. So she was known from a younger age as someone who had learned a lot of ways that were more natural medicine.

So she was known from a younger age as someone who had learned these skills from her mother and then would put them to work. But then she really took it to the next level. She worked a lot with the British soldiers who were stationed there. And I think that helped her reputation because it made the British, mainly men, understand that there was someone here who knew a bit more about things like cholera than their doctors did. And she didn't cure everyone, but she was able to make a difference to some of them. And that helped her reputation quite a bit.

You say her reputation, did she move more into the kind of healthcare world after that? She sort of reorganized her hotel kind of as more of a hospital. Yes. I mean, we call it a hospital. I think there was a lot of overlap in those definitions in earlier years. Hospitals were places of healing, but they were also, she had people who would stay as her guests, her feast, you know, rather rudimentary, I would say, guest houses with hospital capabilities there. So there would be ill people that she would take care of, but there were others.

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Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. I guess that's the experience that she takes with Crimea. Like, what is this woman doing going to Crimea?

I don't even understand. Like, even today, you'd think that was extraordinary. But with the communications back then and the opportunities and things, how does that even happen? She was determined, you know. She went first to London. When the Crimean War broke out, she really saw herself as someone who could help to serve the British soldiers that she'd gotten to know so well in her earlier life. So she took herself to London and offered her services to Florence Nightingale, who was about to change all of nursing and move into the Crimea. Florence Nightingale turned her down,

and Ashley had some rather rude things to say about her. And then she decided to go on her own. She just took whatever she had and moved to a war front area and started setting up what she called a hospital or a hotel, but it was really whatever scraps of things she could find to put a roof and some walls up. And then she started working with the British soldiers. Why? What was her motivation for that? I've often wondered about this, partly because I think she felt very loyal. She had been working

with the British for a long time. She had married someone from England and she decided that these were people she could help. And she wanted a bit of an adventure. And she decided that this was her calling. And she went straight to a place that no one would imagine, but no one in London wanted her. So going to the Crimea was a way to say, I'm independent. I can set up a business, I can help these people whom I've really become very attached to over my years, and I'm going to do whatever I can. And it sounds very altruistic, and I think it was. In fact, I don't think that she had an ulterior motive. I think she certainly wanted to be of as much help as she could while keeping her independence and finding the best ways to serve

people and hopefully make a little money. She didn't do all that well financially, but this was, I think, her real motive was to really assist these people and particularly the men. Yeah, it's interesting, the battle over Mary Seacole's legacy. Some people say, well, actually she had financial reasons for going out, which we gloss over the fact that through every pre-modern army in history, there would have been a whole attendant army of blacksmiths, farriers, victors, ale sellers. That was very normal for armies on the move before the kind of emergence of a modern state, right? There were. And the other amazing things about wars were the fact that there was an audience. It wasn't just the people who were working. There were people who came and went to watch these things happening. In other wars, you know,

when England was fighting France, there was a whole, we can see it in fiction, where people would just be staying in hotels during the wars, the battles. In the American Civil War, people brought chairs and picnics and sat further back where they would be safer to watch these battles. So it's always been the case that the war isn't just run by the armies and the generals and the soldiers. It's always that there, as you said, were all these attendant businesses that had to serve. They were medical people, but they were people who had to really take care of all the needs of the soldiers. So she's there. She is hoping that she will treat people who will pay for her services, but she ends up really becoming famous as a philanthropist and a caregiver in a much broader sense. What happens when she's out there on those battlefields? for her services, but she ends up really becoming famous as a philanthropist and a caregiver

in a much broader sense. What happens when she's out there on those battlefields? I mean, she wasn't in the middle of the battles, but she would go marching out there and treat some of the wounded. She would have people at her, what she called rather grandly, a hotel, which was very rustic. People were sleeping under tables on the floor, and she was serving up dinners and meals and wine. Lots of alcohol, I think, passed around, and she was charging them so she could make money, which she needed to do, but she also sincerely wanted to help these people. I think if you had gone there, you would have probably been among a group, mainly officers, but not entirely, who would come to her hotel, have a hot meal. She

would have bottles of brandy and wine to serve them for which they paid and champagne. And that's how she made some of her money. And they would sometimes stay in these rather, today we would think of as probably not very sanitary, but they weren't the Florence Nightingale Hospital where they were fighting over opening windows in fresh air. But she was trying to help and to make some money as best she could, primarily for officers who did pay for this sort of hospitality, as well as those who needed to be helped medically. You say she was on the battlefield. There were accounts of her getting very close to the battlefield, certainly being under fire, stray projectiles coming near her.

Yes, that's indeed true. She was rather fearless, and she would take herself out there and treat people who had been in battles and those she could get back, she did. But she wasn't hidden away in a town far away. She actually took herself out there. So absolutely, she bandaged the wounded, sometimes really on the battlefield itself. So she was rather fearless and determined in that way. Where does the legend begin? She becomes briefly very famous. How did that start? When the war ends, she salvages as much as she can and goes back to London. The soldiers and all the people she had helped in the Crimea really were very, very grateful for everything she had done.

So they mounted a big celebration to try to raise funds for her, to support her after the war had ended. There were two big events, and one of them went on for several days. They made a lot of money. They did not make as much as they wanted, but they did get some. And then they also gave her, well, she was wearing medals in a lot of her portraits. We're not sure that she was actually earned those medals. They may have just been things that she put on herself, but she was lionized. She was written up in all the newspapers. These celebrations

were saying, yes, yes. And they would cheer her for days. And they took this funds and decided to support her because she, they said, was very public back in Britain, that she had been someone who had been there for them, and they were enormously grateful. So yes, she was very famous for a short time. But then she disappears. So why is that? Is that just the nature of things? She was rescued from obscurity by activists in the early 21st century. What do you think happened to her reputation? You know, it's one of these things where you wonder, somebody goes into obscurity who had been very famous for a time, and then they seem to fade away. But she actually, I don't think she entirely faded away. I mean, her portrait was painted, a bust was modeled of her. There were people who knew who she was. But I really think it wasn't until the 1960s or

70s that we really see a kind of resuscitation of her importance to British history. And people started really thinking this was a person we need to celebrate and we need to find a way to keep her back in the public eye. And somehow that became the battle of the two nurses. So Lawrence Nightingale is the one, of course, who is the celebrated nurse, but somehow there became this idea that Mary Seacole was the other important nurse or doctoress, as she said. And that people just said, we have forgotten about someone like her, a woman of color who traveled, who was important in British history, and that we need said, we have forgotten about someone like her, a woman of color who traveled, who was important in British history, and that we need to resuscitate that. There's a

blue plaque on the building where she lived, but the building's gone. So it's the building that replaced the building where she had lived in London. And she was really someone whose reputation revived in the seventies or so. I used to be a professor at Brunel and their healthcare center is named the Sequel Health Center. There are places like that all around Britain now where people are celebrating her today in ways that were probably unimaginable 50 years ago. How should we look back on Mary Sequel's life? What do you think her legacy is? Oh, she was remarkable. I really do think so. We can quibble with things. She was very careful to How should we look back on Mary Seacrest's life? What do you think her legacy is? that a woman of color who was Black or mixed race could determine her own future, her own life, and trod her own path. Someone who just said, look it, I am a woman of color. I am from a place

where slavery ruled the whole country. I have nevertheless gone forward, carved out my own legacy, helped the British cause, and become someone to admire. I just think she was a remarkable woman. Extraordinary. Thank you very much indeed. Now, tell us what book you've got going out at the moment. Well, you know, it's funny. I wrote a book several decades ago called Black England. It talked about black people in 18th century Britain.

And then several months ago, they decided that it was written before its time and that it had to come back. So I then revised, updated the book with the title Black England, A Forgotten Georgian History. It has a foreword by Zadie Smith and it publishes by John Murray. Lovely. Thank you very much indeed, Gretchen. You're welcome. It was a pleasure, Dan. I feel we have the history upon our shoulders.

All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all work out.