Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands

Mary Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1805. She was the daughter of an army officer from Scotland and a Creole woman who ran a hotel called Blundell Hall. Her mother's hotel was popular with officers and it was there that Mary's lifelong relationship with the British Army began. Mary learned traditional African medicine from her mother. An adventurous young woman, Mary travelled to the Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti in her twenties and is also known to have visited London on several occasions. Mary married Edwin Seacole, possibly Lord Nelson's godson, in 1836. After Blundell Hall burnt down in 1843 and Edwin's death the following year, Mary travelled to Cruces in the Republic of New Granada (Panama) where she ran a hotel and nursed victims of a cholera epidemic.

Upon the outbreak of the Crimean War, Mary travelled to London in order to volunteer as a nurse. She applied unsuccessfully to the War Office, the Quarter-Master General's Department and Florence Nightingale's nursing organisation. In her autobiography she attributes this rejection to the colour of her skin, describing herself as a 'yellow' woman. Still determined to help the British soldiers who she called her 'sons', Mary travelled to Balaclava under her own steam. There she set up the British Hotel, in partnership with her husband's relative Thomas Day, at Spring Hill between Balaclava and Sevastopol. Mary provided food and medical care at the 'hotel' which troops affectionately referred to as 'Mother Seacole's Hut'. Mary was distrusted by Florence Nightingale who disapproved of her giving alcohol to wounded soldiers.

After the hasty evacuation of British troops from the Crimea in April 1856, Mary and Thomas were left with surplus stocks of food and equipment and outstanding debts. Mary was declared bankrupt after her return to England. Public appeals organised by The Times and Punch raised money to pay her debts. Veterans of the Crimean campaign contributed to these funds. She also received royal patronage from Queen Victoria.

Mary's autobiography is the first to be published by an Afro-Caribbean woman in Britain and was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1857. Her supporters included The Times' war correspondent, W.H. Russell, who had reported on her Crimean work. He wrote in the preface to her autobiography that 'I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead'. Mary Seacole subsequently fell into obscurity, but has been rediscovered by a modern audience after her autobiography was published again in the 1980s. She is buried at St Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Kensal Green, London.