Cannons roar and the sharp
blasts of gunshots ring. It all seems so far, so very far away. A pale young man lies alone in his stretcher,
a blood soaked blanket thrown across his gut. Beyond him, doctors hunch in silent
concentration over a man they can still save. But there's no hope for him. "Mother..." he calls weakly, picturing
his mom safe back in England. A warm and weathered hand grips his, but when he looks up, the face that
greets him isn't what he'd pictured. It's full of care and kindness
though, and he can almost pretend. And his eyes drift closed. But that's still years to come. Today in 1821, the songs of sailors
soar over the creaking of ships and the groan of ropes as crate after crate
of cargo is hauled onto the London Docks. Captains huddled with customs officers,
arguing in low hushed tones... Amidst it all, a young woman who would
one day be celebrated in London, took her very first
eager step onto its soil. This was Mary Seacole. History may have forgotten her
for over a hundred years, but she would never be forgotten by the
soldiers she nursed during the Crimean War. In the prim and proper
world of Victorian England, she was a sensation and a
study in contradictions. She was both a clever businesswoman who
sold expensive luxuries in a war zone and a generous caretaker who gave
her supplies freely to those in need. She was a proud woman who sometimes
looked down her nose at others, yet she never hesitated to pull up her
sleeves and treat an illness or an injury. And she walked a long road to become one
of the unsung heroes of the Crimean War. The daughter of a Jamaican hotel
owner and the Scottish soldier, Mary inherited her mother's business
sense and her father's wanderlust. She grew up watching her mother, a
doctress in the Jamaican tradition, treating patients who came to her hotel. when she looked at her mother; smart,
caring and - most of all - in charge, Mary wanted to be her. She played doctor on
her long-suffering doll, copying everything she
had seen her mother do. But the ships and the
waves also called to her. Time and again, she would trace one special
route on an old map in her bedroom. Her finger wore down the ink from her
home in Kingston, to her dream of London. So when a relative there invited
her to stay with them for a season, Mary jumped at the chance. Thus, we find her in 1821 arriving
in London at the age of 16. She fell in love with
the place immediately. In London, she developed a taste
for trade that never truly left her. Although she first arrived as a tourist, she soon returned with a cargo
of pickled and preserved food that she sold to a British society
hungry for a taste of the outside world. With friends back home
sending her fresh supplies, Mary turned a small, but steady profit. Enough to launch herrself into new ventures
across New Providence, Cuba and Haiti. After four years, she returned
home a successful businesswoman and took a place running the Blundell
Hall Hotel beside her aging mother. Now, those were some
tense years for Jamaica. Although Mary did her
best to stay out of it. In 1831, what had started as a peaceful
protest among Jamaica's slave population, escalated to an all-out revolt
and was brutally suppressed. Word of this Christmas uprising
spread to abolitionists in Britain. And they used it as a catalyst to
propel their efforts to end slavery, passing partial emancipation in 1834
and then full emancipation in 1838. As a black woman, Mary was
glad to see the end of slavery, but as the daughter of a white man, she
never considered herself part of the struggle. Mary was a British citizen first and
foremost and a very proud one at that. She caused a stir when she married
a white man, Edwin Seacole, in a society that was accustomed to seeing
black women taken only as mistresses, not wives. But she and Edwin were partners.
Together they opened a small general store and together they fought a
losing battle to make it thrive. After six years, defeated they
returned to the Blundell Hall and then disaster truly struck. In 1843, a fire raged through Kingston. It destroyed everything in a thirty
block radius, including the hotel. And then, before Mary could do
so much as get back to her feet, her husband died. Shortly
followed by her mother. In one single year, Mary lost everything
she held dear. She was devastated. But she wasn't the type
to accept defeat easily. She pulled out of her grief and threw
herself into building New Blundell Hall, determined to make it better than before. When the cholera epidemic
came to Jamaica in 1850, Mary bore down on the
disease like a personal enemy. Although she fared no better at curing it then
John Snow or any other doctor of the time, her experience with it
would prove invaluable. Because this would not
be her last time fighting it. Now that she had succeeded in getting
her hotel back in running order, her wayward heart yearned
for adventure once again and her brother gave
her the perfect excuse. He'd gone off to start
his own hotel in Panama. So, Mary left New Blundell Hall in the care
of a trusted cousin and followed after him. She arrived in Panama
not a moment too soon. A guest and a friend of her brother's dropped
dead mere hours after dining with him and the town immediately
suspected foul play. "It was murder!" they claimed.
"He poisoned the food!" Mary thought the death seemed suspicious
too, but for a very different reason. She insisted on examining the corpse,
the exam proved her suspicion true. This man had not died of
poison, but of cholera. Her enemy was back. Cholera swept through the town. Mary fought it tooth and nail, but
she knew it was a losing battle. This town was a wet, rundown filthy place and her Jamaican medical knowledge
advocated warm sun and clean spaces. In the end, her remedies had
no effect on the victims. Instead, it was her mothering
that did the most good. She sat by bedsides, she swept foreheads, and once her patients
showed signs of recovery, she demanded that they
stop living in their own filth. In Panama, Mary established the protocol
she would live by for the rest of her days. She would treat everyone who came to her. Relying on those who could pay well, to
make up for those who couldn't pay at all. And it worked. She made enough money
treating cholera patients to open her own business across
the street from her brother. She called it: "The British Hotel", but it was really more of a dining hall. There were no rooms for
guests to spend the night, but she laid out sumptuous banquets
for travelers who had, at this point, resigned themselves to eating
iguana and monkey stews. Then, in a stroke of brilliance,
she hired a barber. Western men desperate
for the rare luxury of a good shave, crowded to her hotel and
thus to her dinner table. Mary's business thrived in Panama, but
she realized it would be short lived. The railroad being built
across the country, mostly to help ferry Americans to
and from the California goldrush, would soon be completed. And when it was, way stations like hers would
have no more reason to exist. And so, when word reached
her that the new British war being raged in Crimea had
a desperate need for nurses, she knew where she was needed. She would cross the Atlantic again to serve England as a
nurse in the Crimean War. The Crimean War was a messy tangled affair fought over the feeble
remains of the Ottoman Empire. It began with a dispute over who would control
holy sites, once the Ottomans crumbled and spiraled into a bitter struggle
for diplomatic supremacy in Europe. France, England and Sardinia
sided with the Ottomans to prevent Russia from extending
her reach down to the Middle East, but in the trenches outside Sevastopol,
and even inside the besieged city, it was disease, not gunfire that proved the
greatest threat to soldiers on all sides. By the end of the war, disease would
claim 3.5 times as many lives as bullets. None of this deterred Mary Seacole. She didn't fear battle and she had
faced down disease time after time. Volunteering in Crimea felt like
the fate she had been made for. If only she could get there... She wrapped up her affairs in
Panama and ventured forth, like always without a backwards glance. She headed straight for London, went
directly to the military headquarters and insisted she speak
with the Secretary at War. His aides were somewhat
flustered by Mary's presumption. She marched from one
department to another, until she finally got the ear of a
surprised, but patient officer who suggested that she apply to Florence
Nightingale's organized expedition of nurses. Again, Mary skipped the formalities
of mailing an application and traveled straight to the source. Florence Nightingale had already
left, 3 days before Mary's arrival. So instead, she spoke to the
organizers in London. Her interview there was
stiff and unwelcoming. This old eccentric woman was not at
all the type of nurse they had in mind. They let Mary know that they had already
recruited enough nurses for the Crimea and left Mary with the impression that
even if there had been any openings, she wouldn't have
been chosen to fill them. Was it the color of her skin? She wondered this as she walked through the
moonlit streets of London, lost in thought. She was no stranger to racial slights, Back in Panama, she'd once been
forced off a ship by white women who'd refused to share a berth with her and not long before that, a group of
hotel patrons had tried to compliment her by saying she'd be perfect if
only she bleached her skin. Truth be told, Mary had always
considered herself special, because of her white
parentage and light skin tone. And finding that others didn't see her as the
true English woman she considered herself, shook her. But still,
when push came to shove, Mary was never one to back down. She had told those hotel patrons exactly
what they could do with their bleach and she wasn't going to be
defeated this time either. If the army wouldn't send her and
the nurses wouldn't accept her, she would just have to send herself. Join us next time, as Mary
ships herself to the Crimea and faces down the worst
ravages of disease and war that the world of the
1850s had to offer. Subtitled by: Louis Lenders
(louislenders@hotmail.com)
"The Crimea"? Isnt it just, Crimea? Its like saying "The Ukraine" instead of Ukraine.