Dr Robert Weaver, Associate Dean, Research and Partnerships
Dr Holly Jones-Taggart Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
28 October 2016

Dear Drs Weaver and Jones-Taggart

This letter is sent to you as it was not possible to contact Nancy Slawski, who is listed as the person responsible for creating the material in question.

The Mary Seacole item in your website “Nursing 101″ (https://nursing101.wikispaces.com/) is factually wrong from start to end. Most of the errors could have been avoided if the writer had looked at Seacole’s own memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, which is briefly quoted. Major errors are:

1. That Seacole was a “black Florence Nightingale… equally accomplished,” recognized as “one of the greatest contributors to nursing history.” But she did not call herself a “nurse,” a title she used for Nightingale and her nurses. She was a businesswoman, as she made abundantly clear in her book. She did not nurse one day in any hospital, write anything about nursing, train one nurse. Or say where and when! What did she accomplish that would be remotely equal to Nightingale’s founding of the first nursing school in the world, mentoring of nurses for 40 years and much fine writing on nursing and broader health care issues? Seacole’s book has 3 chapters on the food and drink she sold officers from her business! Those who “recognize” her as a great contributor to nursing history have never given any evidence for the claim.

2. “Mary Seacole was a self-trained nurse who opened the door for ethnic minorities in nursing.” No. She called herself “doctress, nurse and mother,” and did some first aid. Her “patients” were relatively healthy walk-ins, buying her herbal “remedies.” These remedies themselves need another look, for she added mercury and lead to them, and admitted “lamentable blunders” (see her memoir, p 31). The door to ethnic minorities was opened, later, and with nothing to do with Seacole. (See Kofoworola Abeni Pratt, a pioneer Nigerian nurse, possibly the first black nurse in the NHS.)

Seacole volunteered at the hospital closest to her business, taking around magazines and, on New Year’s Day, 1856, bringing plum pudding and mince tarts, all very kind, but not nursing, let alone a major contribution to it.

3. “In 1850 a cholera epidemic occurred and Mary effectively dealt with the disease.” Hardly. She gave what help she could, but, sadly, her use of emetics, purging through the bowels and blistering (mustard poultices) are bad for cholera and any bowel disease. The effective treatment is oral rehydration therapy, not known then. Why pretend?

4. Seacole, on return from Panama “cared for people due to a yellow fever outbreak.” Yes, but unsuccessfully, as she frankly admitted. She deserves credit for being kind, for example, by closing dying people’s eyes. See her Chapter 7.

5. Seacole “travelled to London to aid the British Army; however, her application was rejected although Mary was more than qualified and had many letters of recommendation.” Wrong again; in her book she says she went to London to look after her gold investments (p 74); she included one letter of reference. More importantly, she never applied for a nursing job! She described dropping into offices concerned with the Crimean War, to ask informally for a post, after Nightingale had left with her team. The applications of the many who did apply, and their letters of recommendation, are available at the National Archives, Kew; there is nothing from or about her there.

Nursing 101 implies that Seacole was again turned down, by Nightingale herself. But Seacole’s own book describes an amicable meeting, when Seacole asked her for a bed for the night, as she was on her way to join her partner and start their business. These are Seacole’s own words about Nightingale: “‘What do you want, Mrs Seacole–anything that we can do for you? If it lies in my power, I shall be very happy’” (p 91).

Incidentally, Nightingale did have cholera experience, probably not as much as Seacole, but she is not known to have added toxic substances to any “remedy.” You really have it wrong!

Finally, the picture of Seacole displayed shows her wearing medals, which she did, without any mention that she never was awarded any, nor ever claimed to have been. With all the claims of heroism for her, this should have been noted.

For further information on the misrepresentation of Seacole see www.maryseacole.info/ and a short book, which uses primary sources, not propaganda (Lynn McDonald, Mary Seacole: The Making of the Myth, 2014).

The “Nursing 101″ Seacole item should be withdrawn.

Yours sincerely
Mark Bostridge MA (Oxon), biographer
Robert Dingwall, PhD, FacSS, HonMFPH, prof emeritus, Nottingham University, founding director, Institute of Science and Society
Rose Dyson, EdD, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Marilyn Gendek, RN, MA, MN, FACN, consultatnt, nursing regulation and education, Australia
Marc Gilbert PhD, National Endowment in the Humanities Chair, Hawaii Pacific University; president, World History Association
Paul Hawkins (Rev), MA (Oxon) MA (Cantab)
Eileen Magnello, DPhil, research fellow, University College London
Wendy Mathews, BA, Grad Dip Phys (ret), former governor Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
Lynn McDonald, CM, PhD, LLD (hon), emerita professor, director, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale
Aroha Page, PhD, assoc professor nursing, Nipissing University
Allyson Pollock, FFPH, FRCGP, FRCP (Ed) professor, Public Health Research and Policy, Queen Mary College, London
Harold E. Raugh, Jr, Lt Col, PhD, FRHistS, FRAS, US Army, ret.
Colin Robins (Major) OBE, MA (Cantab), FRHistS, editor emeritus, War Correspondent: Journal of the Crimean War Research Society
Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg, MES, PhD, lecturer in environmental health, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Pat Smedley MSc (Nurs), BA Hons, RGN, former chair, Friends of the Florence Nightingale Museum
Ronald Trubuhovich, OMNZ, FRCA, FANZCA, FCICMANZ
Alex Whitehead (Rev Canon) MA, Mphil, Dip Ed, Homiletics co-ordinator, Lincoln College of Theology and Ministry

Please reply to contact@nightingalesociety.com

President, CEO, Sigma Theta Tau International
27 October 2016

Dear Drs Catrambone and Thompson

It is troubling to see misinformation on nursing history published by a press under your esteemed name. We refer to Eisler and Potter’s Transforming Interprofessional Partnerships: A New Framework for Nursing and Partnership-Based Health Care, 2014.

Seacole precedes Nightingale in coverage (pp 106-8), and the two are together are called “early nurses.” The Seacole section begins with a quotation from Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses complimenting Seacole, although it does not quote his calling Nightingale a “whore” in Grimus: a Novel. How did he get to be an expert on the Crimean War or nursing history?

Eisler and Potter’s topology, Partnership Principle Illustrated, makes Seacole into a partner of Nightingale — although she was a businesswoman and the two met for only about 5 minutes and never discussed nursing!

Seacole is said to have promoted a “democratic and economically equitable structure of linking and hierarchies of actualization in both family and state, conflict creatively used to arrive at solutions.” Any evidence for this claim? We know of none.

The pair are called “early nurses” who “considered practice and listening to narratives to be important parts of their care.”

Seacole’s mother is incorrectly credited with managing a boarding house for “disabled British soldiers” (p 106) when she ran a small hotel for British officers. She combined “care and cure” in her “healing ministry,” a strange conclusion given that she added lead and mercury to her cholera remedy to make it more effective, and admitted “lamentable blunders” (WA p 31). Any evidence that dehydrating.

Seacole is next said to have treated British soldiers in Panama for dysentery and cholera, but the British Army was not there – her customers and patients were men on their way to the California Gold Rush. Any evidence that her “care and cure,” which entailed dehydrating bowel patients, actually cures? The effective treatment is oral rehydration therapy, the opposite of using emetics, purging from the bowels and blistering fo sweat the patient, as Seacole did.

Seacole is said, when she read newspaper reports “on the terrible conditions and high mortality rate of British soldiers fighting in the Crimea War, she immediately left for London” (p 107). A reference is given to her book, but no page number, perhaps because nowhere does such a statement appear. Rather, she acknowledged arriving in London, shortly after the first battle (September 20), or before any account of high mortality could have appeared.

She is said to have “borrowed money” to get there (p 107), although her own account states that she had capital acquired from her previous business (Wonderful Adventures, p 80). Eisler and Potter’s bizarre account has Seacole deciding to “move to the Crimean peninsula near Sebastopol” after she found out that the Barrack Hospital was in Turkey. But Seacole knew this all along; when she met Nightingale at the hospital, her passage was booked to the Crimea and she only wanted a bed for the night (WA, p 91).

Unless you can provide evidence to support the many unfounded claims made in this chapter, it should be retracted.

[ signed by 17 members of the Nightingale Society ]

NHS Employers
27 October 2016

Dear Sirs/Mesdames

Leadership and Development awards, linked to work for BME communities, is a fine idea. However, such awards should not be associated with misinformation or propaganda, as is now the case in the Mary Seacole Leadership (£12,500) and Development (£6500) awards.

You describe Seacole as a “nurse and businesswoman.” She was indeed a businesswoman, but the “nurse” is problematic, as she never called herself one, but rather used “doctress” and mixed titles like “doctress, nurse and mother” (see her memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands). The plain title “nurse” she used for Nightingale and her nurses.

You mis-date the Crimean War, exaggerating it, presumably in aid of your exaggerated claims for Seacole. Turkey and Russia were at war 1853-56, but Britain joined in only in March 1854; Mrs Seacole arrived in the Crimea only in March 1855, after the worst half of the war was over.

The claim of “bravery in nursing soldiers” is a gross exaggeration, beyond even Seacole’s own claims. She gave first aid on the battlefield, post-battle, on precisely 3 occasions (she gave the dates in her memoir), after selling wine and sandwiches to spectators (her business). She visited soldiers at the closest hospital to her business, the Land Transport Corps Hospital, to distribute magazines (Punch magazine shows her in a cartoon doing this, with its magazine). However the nursing was provided, at the request of the commandant, by Nightingale’s nurses. On New Year’s Day, 1856, Seacole gave the patients at it plum puddings and mince pies. She was a generous and appreciated volunteer, in short, but this is not nursing, nor heroism.

We urge you to celebrate genuine black and minority nurses in your awards. We can give you one worthy name (no doubt there are others also deserving), Kofoworola Abeni Pratt (c1910-93), who trained at the Nightingale School and was supported by the Nightingale Fund. She nursed at St Thomas’ 1946-50, hence through the creation of the NHS. On return to Nigeria, she was appointed the first Nigerian matron of University Hospital, Ibadan, and then became the first Nigerian to be appointed chief nursing officer for her country. She was made a fellow of the Royal College of Nursing in 1979, and given an honorary doctorate from the University of Ife in 1981. A biography of her is available: Justus A. Akinsanya, An African ‘Florence Nightingale’: A Biography of Chief (Dr) Mrs Kofoworola Abeni Pratt (Ibadan: Vantage 1987).

Pratt had to overcome racism both in Britain in the NHS and in her own country, pre-independence. She would be an inspiring choice.

Sincerely yours

Mark Bostridge MA (Oxon), biographer
Robert Dingwall, PhD, FacSS, HonMFPH, prof emeritus, Nottingham University, founding director, Institute of Science and Society
Rose Dyson, EdD, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Marilyn Gendek, RN, MA, MN, FACN, consultatnt, nursing regulation and education, Australia
Marc Gilbert PhD, National Endowment in the Humanities Chair, Hawaii Pacific University; president, World History Association
Paul Hawkins (Rev), MA (Oxon) MA (Cantab)
Eileen Magnello, DPhil, research fellow, University College London
Wendy Mathews, BA, Grad Dip Phys (ret), former governor Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust
Lynn McDonald, CM, PhD, LLD (hon), emerita professor, director, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale
Aroha Page, PhD, assoc professor nursing, Nipissing University
Allyson Pollock, FFPH, FRCGP, FRCP (Ed) professor, Public Health Research and Policy, Queen Mary College, London
Harold E. Raugh, Jr, Lt Col, PhD, FRHistS, FRAS, US Army, ret.
Colin Robins (Major) OBE, MA (Cantab), FRHistS, editor emeritus, War Correspondent: Journal of the Crimean War Research Society
Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg, MES, PhD, lecturer in environmental health, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Pat Smedley MSc (Nurs), BA Hons, RGN, former chair, Friends of the Florence Nightingale Museum
Ronald Trubuhovich, OMNZ, FRCA, FANZCA, FCICMANZ
Alex Whitehead (Rev Canon) MA, Mphil, Dip Ed, Homiletics co-ordinator, Lincoln College of Theology and Ministry

Please reply to contact@nightingalesociety.com

The National Archives (TNA)

Dear Sirs/Mesdames

We write with concern about the errors on your website regarding Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. You revised (or retracted?) the material on Mary Seacole, but the old, highly erroneous, material on her is available as “archived.” It springs up late in the entry on Nightingale, where you refer to two other nurses, Seacole, with a link, and Elizabeth Davis. In fact, there were hundreds of nurses, and Seacole was not a nurse at all. See Lynn McDonald, Florence Nightingale: The Crimean War, 2010, for details about many of the other nurses, and there are several other sources. Davis was a nurse, while Seacole’s role was that of a businesswoman, with hospital volunteering and, on precisely 3 occasions, first aid on the battlefield, after selling food and wine to spectators. Her help was doubtless much appreciated, but it does not constitute nursing.

The Seacole material is listed under “Teachers’ notes” > “External links,” thus inviting teachers to use fallacious material you archived! We could send you a list of the factual errors in the archived section, but you may have them in your files.

The problem remains that your website is a source of flagrantly wrong material. People expect the National Archives to have high standards of accuracy and fairness. We urge you to attend to this promptly.

[signed by 15 members of the Nightingale Society]

Sir David Cannadine, FBA

Dear Sir David,

We write with concern about errors in the short entry on Mary Seacole in the ODNB. It is by Alan Palmer, certainly an expert on the period, but it shows uncritical acceptance of Seacole myths all too widely available. This is not to fault him so much the lack of good sources when he wrote it (the entry is very similar to his 1987 book, Banner of Battle, which is particularly good on Nightingale and the other nurses).

We are especially concerned because, when we informed English Heritage about the more numerous and more serious errors in its Seacole coverage, on its Blue Plaques website, it replied that it had depended on a reputable source, the ODNB! (It agreed to make a couple of minor alterations, but the worst errors remain.)

The picture shown of Seacole in your entry is the fine bust by Gleichen, which shows her wearing medals. She did not win any, nor did Palmer ever say she did, but it would be better to note that the medals were not her own, or use another illustration.

Herewith the faulty textual material in your entry, with contrary information from Seacole’s own memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (Palmer seems to have relied more on the enthusiastic introduction to this book than to the text itself).

1. The entry title describes her as “nurse,” a term Seacole never used for herself, but for Nightingale and her nurses; she called herself “doctress, nurse and mother” (p 124) and, more often, “doctress.” She would be better described as “businesswoman, adventurer” or “sutler, adventurer” or “businesswoman, doctress” or some such. “Nurse” is misleading.

2. From her mother, she “acquired nursing skills and an understanding of the Creole medical tradition, based on herbal treatment,” yes to the Creole medical tradition, but she also made it clear that she added toxic metals to “herbal” remedies to make them stronger, and admitted “lamentable blunders” (p 31). Doubtless there were – she dehydrated bowel patients, a common mistaken treatment at the time. The “nursing skills” point is an exaggeration; she never explicitly claimed learning nursing from her mother, and their boarding house, a small hotel, was a regular commercial establishment.

3. She was “briefly nursing superintendent at Up-Park military camp.” No. Her memoir states that she was asked to bring nurses to the camp, but, after briefly visiting on her own, went back to her boarding house in Kingston (p 63).

4. “The coming of war with Russia in 1854 prompted Mary Seacole to sail to England.” No, war was declared in March 1854, and she made one last trip to Panama (noted in her Chapters 7 and 8), then left for England in September, from Panama. When “she tried to join Florence Nightingale’s vanguard of nursing sisters she met a rebuff.” No, her memoir is perfectly clear that the Nightingale team had already left when she decided that she wanted to go to the war, too, after some two months activity in London on her gold stocks (pp 73-74). Seacole never formally applied for the post (applications and letters of reference for those who did are at the National Archives, Kew). The “rebuff” occurred when she dropped in informally, too late, at various offices connected with the war, but never the correct one! to seek a post.

5. That she went at “her own expense.” Why not? She had profits from her two years in Panama, and had a plan with a business partner to start a business in the Crimea. Why should the British government fund a sutler’s trip? The expression “own expense” is much used in the Seacole campaign literature, to contrast her treatment with that of Nightingale, but Nightingale in fact led the nursing, and had already left months earlier.

6. Seacole’s “hotel” housed “an officers’ club and a good, clean canteen for the troops”; the club is correct, but she gave no information on the quality of the quarters of the canteen, or what she served at it; it gets one mention: “a canteen for the soldiery” (p 114); three chapters go to the food, drink and catering she did for officers.

7. “She was a familiar figure at the battle-front.” This presupposes a different kind of war. The Russians were behind their fortified walls at Sebastopol – not trench warfare with a clear battle-front. She was only on the battlefield 3 times, in a war of 2 years. She was a familiar figure in the camp, quite a different thing, and not so dangerous.

8. Her “riding forward with 2 mules in attendance,” with “medicaments and other food and wine,” is an over-statement. Seacole described 3 occasions on which she took mules with food and wine, available for some hours first for sale to spectators. Later she went onto the battlefield; what medicaments she did not state. Doubtless this work was kindly and generously done, but it amounts to, in hours, less than one shift in a hospital. Seacole missed the first three, major, battles of the war, busy in London trying to realize a profit from her gold investments, her “gold mining speculation on the river Palmilla (p 74). Yet none of this is mentioned in the entry.

The best source on Seacole’s Crimea experiences, other than her own memoir, is Soyer’s Culinary Campaign, which is listed in the References. However, it seems that no use was made of it. Soyer knew both Nightingale – he worked with her for a year – and Seacole – whom he visited socially. Seacole asked him for advice on her “speculation,” with its “large capital” (p 233), but this key point is nowhere mentioned. No critical sources on Seacole are noted in the References, not available then, but they are now.

For further examples of Seacole misinformation see www.maryseacole.info. A short book exposing frequent myths, with primary sources, is Lynn McDonald, Mary Seacole: The Making of the Myth, 2014.

There is so much fallacious material in circulation on Seacole that we wish for more good, reliable sources. Given the ODNB’s high reputation, we urge you to have your entry reviewed and revised.

[signed by 15 members of the Nightingale Society]