Mary Seacole; The Nurse Who Never Was

hello again I'm sure of all of this familiar with Florence Nightingale who revolutionized Nursing in Britain during the Crimean War the Crimean War was incidentally fought between Britain France and Turkey on one side and against Russia in what is now Ukraine in the eighteen fifties she was at one time an almost mythical figure to this country she was in children's books in medieval appeared on British currency the temple note was known for years colloquially as a nightingale back in the 1980s left-wing educationalists and other socialists decided that Florence Nightingale was altogether too much associated with the British Empire they didn't like her for that reason and also because a lot of immigration was taking place in the country at that time they decided that it would be a good idea to have some new figures of British history figures who reflected the multicultural makeup of society rather than just the emotivist white society which existed in Victorian Britain they hit upon a very little-known figure who had also spent time in the Crimea during the war there she wasn't a nurse but that wasn't really a problem she was going to be built as a Bible too and ultimately to supplant the Florence Nightingale this was always the intention she may not have been a nurse but she had the advantage of being a black Jamaican and that was really her selling point as far as these people were concerned past would just have to be rewritten that was that she would have to be turned into a nurse who simply so that she could appear to be something like Florence Nightingale any better and of course more multicultural here is Mary Seacole the woman chosen to supplant Florence Nightingale British history was about to be amazed you florence Nightingale's main problem for the modern world is it she was very middle-class and white and very deeply religious as well and that's not very popular these days either nursing and most of the activities were motivated by her love of God Mary Seacole was a black Jamaican woman whose mother owned a hotel in Kingston Jamaica her mother also used to dispense folk remedies and herbal remedies for various common ailments maybe she called it quite an exciting life she traveled about a lot she went to Panama respected for gold and in Panama she opened a hotel very similar to one that her mother ran in Kingston she had a brother set up a business to promote a gold mine and for that reason in September of 1854 c-cold came to London and the idea was she was trying to get this don't mind this did on the London Stock Exchange there nothing at all Chetan come here because she wanted to be in there anything of that sort - something that you'll sometimes read about in books about things didn't work out in London see if I was running short of money so she applied to the army asking if she could get a job going to the Crimea was in the system there there's a myth which is built up that she applied to be a nurse in the Crimea and was rejected because of the color of her skin that's one nonsense she never actually applied to be a nurse and even if she had done she probably wouldn't have got anywhere for one thing she had no experience of hospitals for another she was 50 which was a lot of them most of the nurses they were looking for really in the end she found a financial backer who would help her set up a restaurant in Crimea the restaurant by the way which was going to be exclusively for officers the idea was that it would serve luxury goods things like champagne a little bit in short supply at that time in the Crimea for obvious reasons so she set off and managed to set up a restaurant there she decided to call it the British hotel but it wasn't really a hotel nobody was able to spend a night there it was really just a restaurant for wealthy people that could afford to pay for what she was offering on the few occasions when there were big battles Mary Seacole used to take some Goods from her restaurant food and drink loaded him up onto mules and take them off and sell the refreshments to spectators to the battle she carried a shoulder bag with a few bandages in as well and she would distribute those if they were needed to wounded soldiers sanely happens three times so this wasn't a big thing for her there seemed little there to create a legend from I mean how can you pretend Robin was a nurse the thing is a lot of nurses working in prison in the 1980s were and they still are black so it was felt that maybe having a black role model for young people would be a handy thing the way it was done was by denigrating a well-known white nurse and then being a having the opportunity to replace her with a black one this was really really successful a few years ago some Thomas's Hospital in central London decided to put a statue of a nurse outside obviously the choice was good but the obvious choice was Florence Nightingale so Nightingale had a long association with and Thomas's museum devoted to resorts and Thomas's maybe c-calm never even went to the place nevertheless the statute when it was erected was of Mary Seacole you can see it here as you can see instead of a famous nurse they decided to put a statue of a black restaurant provider outside their Hospital which was rather an odd thing to do children's book to perpetuate this false story about Mary Seacole they do it by having illustration showing or wearing a nurse's uniform and tending many in hospital which is something she never did these pictures really are fake history today this process is pretty well complete Florence Nightingale has been completely overshadowed by Mary Seacole the original name must be a decent enough one to give young people young black people a role model with whom they can identify but it's taken on a life of its own and it's now part of an attempt general attempts to rewrite British history out go white people and income any random black or Asian people that can be shoehorned in it's part of the multicultural project and that's something that really deserves one or two videos of its own

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Id: zuJ0Th_WYck

Length: 8min 23sec (503 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 06 2020