Posts by Lynn McDonald

To all Westminster MPs

To all Westminster MPs

July 17, 2013

Dear MP,

We are writing with concern about the decision of the Department for Education to remove Florence Nightingale from the National Curriculum, but to continue recognition of Mary Seacole. We are concerned as well with the Department of Health’s announcement that Mary Seacole should be honoured as one of four new “Pioneers of Health Care,” excluding Nightingale, who was very much a pioneer of health care, a visionary advocating quality care for all, as well as being the major founder of the modern profession of nursing.We do not oppose honouring Seacole, but rather the exaggerated claims made for her, often with derogatory statements about Nightingale. Seacole is now given credit for work that Nightingale did.

The Early Day Motion of January 2013 urging the continued inclusion of Seacole in the National Curriculum is wrong from beginning to end. She was a decent, generous person, a businesswoman serving officers. Information on what she actually did, with rebuttals of misinformation, is available on www.maryseacole.info. That website also provides a Timeline, which gives the activities of both Nightingale and Seacole. Seacole’s own memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (and a good read) contradicts many of the points made in your motion.

“That this House is aware of history which records the many heroic and compassionate acts carried out unselfishly by renowned war nursing heroine Mary Seacole for innumerable wounded soldiers injured on the Crimean War’s bloody battlefields.”

Seacole was unselfish and on three occasions gave first aid on the battlefield, after selling food and drink to spectators and officers. Since she missed the first three, major, battles, the “innumerable wounded” point is excessive.
Seacole was recognized at the time for her warmth and generosity, not as a war heroine or health care advocate.

Recognition “of her contribution shortly to be revealed by the unveiling of a large bronze statue in her memory to be erected in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital facing the Houses of Parliament.”

Unfortunately the statue is slated to name her “Pioneer Nurse,” which she was not, nor did she ever claim to be a nurse at all. She called herself a “doctress,” used traditional herbal remedies, but also added toxic substances, notably lead and mercury.
St Thomas’ Hospital was the home for more than a century of Nightingale’s school of nursing, the first secular training school for nurses in the world, and which for decades influenced nursing throughout the world. Seacole in fact held no grudge against Nightingale. According to her memoir they met once, for about 5 minutes, a cordial meeting when Seacole asked for a bed for the night, which Nightingale found for her. (Seacole was en route to the Crimea to start her business.)

Seacole helped “establish a centre to administer the sick and tended to the wounded on the battlefield throughout much of the time under bombardment.”

The “centre” was a hut, which served as a restaurant/bar/store/takeaway/catering service for officers. The “bombardment” is fiction; everyone near the front was at risk of an odd stray shell, and joked about being “under fire.”

Seacole was “little rewarded for all of her distinguished service in the field…and had to declare bankruptcy.”

True, Seacole and her business partner had to declare bankruptcy, the result of a bad business decision. After the fall of Sebastopol, they expanded their stock and did a roaring trade for many months, “my restaurant was always full,” said Seacole. When the peace treaty was signed and the officers left, the stock could not be sold. Seacole herself took a hammer to cases of red wine, rather than let the Russians get them for free.
Seacole was supported after the bankruptcy by money raised for her, mainly by officers. She was able to retire in ease.

Nightingale’s achievements show her national and international significance. Her superb work in statistics and research methodology make her an especially useful model also for girls. In 1864 she called for quality health care for the poor as well as the better off, a principle later enshrined in the 1948 National Health Service. Aneurin Bevan is (rightly) honoured as one of the four “Pioneers of Health Care.” Nightingale deserves to be there, too. As scandals in hospital care emerge, the need for her principles of compassion in patient care, and insistence on high standards of supervision and monitoring to check results all seem even better and better as ideas. What a time to exclude her!

This is not an either-or argument. People should be honoured for their merits. Nightingale’s are clear. Seacole should be honoured for hers, not Nightingale’s, nor the fictional claims made for her by her over-enthusiastic supporters.

We have written the Secretaries of State for Education and Health, as well as other supporters of the Seacole campaign, but as yet have received no reply as to what Seacole’s nursing and health care achievements actually were. Please tell us!

Yours sincerely

[14 members of the Nightingale Society]

To Ed Miliband, Leader of the Opposition

Rt Hon Ed Miliband, MP
Leader of the Opposition
milibande@parliament.uk

June 7, 2013

Dear Mr Miliband

We send you a copy of a letter we sent to the Secretary of State for Health on the nomination of Mary Seacole as one of four “health care pioneers” to be honoured in new leadership awards, with concern that Florence Nightingale, who clearly was a health care pioneer, was omitted.

You, as Labour leader, should be particularly mystified, for it was Nightingale who, in 1864, articulated the vision of quality care for all, including those unable to pay for it, and worked assiduously to raise the standard of care in the worst hospitals, the dreaded workhouse infirmaries, where the poorest were forced to go. She fits in well with Aneurin Bevan, who realized this vision with the launching of the National Health Service in 1948. Mary Seacole, a perfectly decent and generous businesswoman, did nothing on health care! (Do tell us if we are wrong on this.)

The according of Nightingale’s work to Seacole is a mistake made by both Labour and Conservative MPs, and, we suspect, by officials in the Department of Health. We append a Timeline comparing the work of the two women, wondering how anyone could mistake who was the health care pioneer.

We would appreciate your circulating this material to MPs in your caucus.

Yours sincerely

Copy: letter to Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt, PC, MP, Secretary of State for Health, May 20, 2013

To Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party

Rt Hon Nick Clegg, MP
Deputy Prime Minister
70 Whitehall
London SW1A 2AS

June 7, 2013

Dear Mr Clegg

We send you a copy of a letter we sent to the Secretary of State for Health on the nomination of Mary Seacole as one of four “health care pioneers,” to be honoured in new leadership awards, with concern that Florence Nightingale, who clearly was a health care pioneer, was omitted.

You as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party should be concerned that a lifelong Liberal, which Nightingale was, should have been so badly forgotten.

We do not at all oppose honouring Seacole, for her own work (there are already two awards named after her), but for mistaking Nightingale’s work and vision for hers. We append a Timeline which compares the contributions of the two.

We would appreciate your circulating this material to your Parliamentary colleagues.

Yours sincerely

BBC Complaints

BBC Complaints
PO Box 1922
Darlington
DL3 0UR

To whom it may concern:

We are making a number of complaints about your coverage of Mary Seacole on several of your websites. It is too late to complain about your television programmes on Florence Nightingale and Seacole, but the websites are still available and should, therefore, be corrected. This first set of complaints concerns one of your programmes on Horrible Histories, ‘Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole’.

Not only was the public relations consultant fictional, as your description stated, the whole story was false, insulting to Nightingale and giving achievements and attributes to Seacole which she never had, nor ever claimed in her memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, 1857. Seacole could not have done much work for ‘wounded’ soldiers as she missed the first three battles of the Crimean War: the Alma, Balaclava and Inkermann.
Seacole is portrayed as an old-fashioned nurse; she is young and black, although she was never a nurse, in Jamaica or in the Crimean War, and never wore a nurse’s uniform. Her occupation in Jamaica was a boarding house proprietor, and in the Crimean War she ran a restaurant/bar/store/takeaway for officers. She is portrayed as black, when she was, in fact, three quarters white. Moreover, she was proud of her Scottish heritage, but not of her Creole background (she never said she was an African: See her book, Wonderful Adventures, pp.1-2). Instead, she referred to herself as ‘yellow’, to indicate her fair complexion. Like many other people in the nineteenth century, she made rude remarks about ‘niggers’. Many examples can be found on a website: www.maryseacole.info/
Contrary to your statement that Seacole and Nightingale ‘argued about the nursing work each of them did for wounded soldiers’, the two of them only met once, for about five minutes, as described by Seacole in her memoir (Wonderful Adventures, p. 91). On this occasion Seacole asked Nightingale for a bed for the night, which Nightingale found for her. Seacole was en route to the Crimea to open her store/business. They did not discuss nursing at all, according to Seacole’s memoir.
Contrary to your reference to Seacole being “refused entry” into Nightingale’s nursing corps, Nightingale and her nurses had already left London for the East by the time Seacole decided that she wanted to join them. Seacole’s main reason for being in London was to look after her gold mining stocks, as she explained in her memoir (p. 71).
Seacole did not sell her home to go to the Crimea, as your statement suggests, but used the profits from her last business in Panama to fund this trip and start the business in the Crimea.
Seacole never established a hospital, nor ever claimed to. Her business, described in detail in her memoir, provided food, alcohol, takeaway meals and catering services for officers’ parties and sporting events. She described giving first aid on the battlefield, post-battle, on three occasions.
Your statement that ‘Both nurses did pioneering work’ is grossly inaccurate, as Seacole was not a nurse, and did no pioneering work in nursing, nor ever claimed to. She called herself, as her mother had before her, a ‘doctress’, meaning she was a herbalist. Nightingale’s pioneering work was much more extensive than you describe. Seacole’s so-called ‘pioneering work’ in ‘cholera and tropical diseases’ is a mis-statement, in that she claimed few successes, admitted blunders, and is known to have used lethal substances, namely, lead acetate and mercury chloride in her ‘cures’. She was no worse than most doctors of the time, but it would be wildly inaccurate to credit her with ‘pioneering’ work.
In the BBC film clip Seacole claims that Nightingale turned her down four times; she did not do so even once, as explained above. Seacole did not sell her home in Jamaica to fund her trip, but used profits from her Panama business, as she explained in Wonderful Adventures (p. 74). Nightingale never said, and never believed, that nursing was only for ‘British girls’. This is to accuse Nightingale of racism, and is very offensive. The clip shows Nightingale literally pushing Seacole aside; this is a totally fictional and another offensive misrepresentation. In fact, Nightingale’s grandfather, William Smith who was an MP for Norwich, was a leading member of the movement to abolish slavery and the whole family felt strongly about racial injustices.
The clip that has Seacole a ‘penniless black’ is wrong because she was not black; and, moreover, her subsequent bankruptcy was the result of poor business decisions, namely, overstocking of goods expecting the war to continue for months longer than it did.
Calling both women by their first names does them both an injustice. They were adults, not children at the time: Nightingale was 34 and Seacole 50 years old. Do you call adult men in comparable places by their first names?

This sorry website should be closed down, and an apology issued for its flagrant misrepresentations of both people, New material should be provided that is factually accurate on both. It behoves your researchers to read Mary Seacole’s book, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, which is now available online: www.digital.library.upenn.edu/
women/seacole/adventures/adventures.html.

For further examples of misrepresentation see the website www.maryseacole.info.

The next set of complaints comes from BBC History. Historic Figures: Mary Seacole (1805-1881):

Your opening statement is a flagrant misrepresentation by calling Seacole a ‘pioneering nurse and heroine of the Crimean War’. She was not a nurse at all, and never claimed to be. She was not recognised as a heroine at the time, but this claim has only recently been made of her. Your picture shows her with three medals, which, however, she was never awarded.

Contrary to your statement that Seacole learned her ‘nursing skills’ from her mother, she learned herbal remedies from her, whom she called an ‘admirable doctress’, in her memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (p. 2). Her mother did not keep a boarding house for ‘invalid soldiers’, as it was meant for army and naval officers, who were not necessarily sick.
Seacole never claimed to have ‘complemented her knowledge of traditional medicine with European medical ideas’. On her travels to Britain, she sold Jamaican pickles and preserves; in the Bahamas she acquired shells and shell-work for sale in Jamaica (pp. 3-5), which demonstrated instances of business activity, with no reference to medical knowledge.
It is not clear how and when Seacole was ‘refused’ by the War Office. According to her own memoir, she did not even decide she wanted to go until late November 1854, after Nightingale and her team had already left. She never submitted an application to the War Office (whose archival material may be seen at the National Archives at Kew).
Seacole announced with a printed card her intention of opening the ‘British Hotel as a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent Officers’, but, in fact, did not open a hotel at all; instead, she opened a hut which served as a restaurant/bar/store/takeway.
Your statement that her battlefield visits were ‘sometimes under fire’ is an exaggeration. She missed the first three battles entirely, but was present for three of them in 1855. On these occasions, described in her Wonderful Adventures, her main function was the sale of food and drink to officers and spectators. She also provided first aid on the battlefield. She referred to being ‘under fire’ in quotation marks, in the same way that many other people did who were in that vicinity.
You provide no historical evidence for your statement that her reputation ‘rivalled’ that of Florence Nightingale. Mrs Seacole was well liked and became a celebrity on her return to London. However it was Nightingale who led the nursing and did the hard quantitative work after the war addressing the causes of the terrible death rates. Nightingale’s reputation was based on her solid accomplishments, which were well recognized at the time, by doctors, medical statisticians, architects and engineers. Her work and ideas remain influential today.

This website should be drastically revised. The picture should state that Seacole did not earn those medals; moreover, in her memoir she never claimed to have won them. She is first known to have worn them back in London in 1856.

Finally, an e-mail written by an 11 year old girl sent to one of us (Dr Lynn McDonald) exemplifies the way in which poorly conceived BBC programmes (i.e., your Horrible Histories on Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole) can misinform the public of all ages (and affect their views into adulthood). This young girl wrote to ask: ‘Is it true Florence turned down Mary Seacole four times because she was black?’ To which the answer was, as you will have read above, ‘of course not’. Nightingale never turned down Seacole and helped her when she requested help.

– Yours sincerely,

Dr M. Eileen Magnello
Chairperson of the History Group of the Royal Statistical Society
Senior Research Fellow
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
London WC1E 6BT

Dr Lynn McDonald
(university professor emerita)
Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Guelph
Guelph ON N1G 2W1
Canada

To Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health

Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt, PC, MP
Secretary of State for Health
Richmond House, 79 Whitehall
London SW1A 2NS
May 16, 2013

Dear Mr Hunt

It is bad enough that the Royal College of Nursing and Unison are promoting the replacement of Florence Nightingale with Mary Seacole as the “real founder” of nursing, but the announcement of your department’s new programme, “Heroes of Healthcare” is yet worse: Mary Seacole for nursing, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, women in medicine; Edward Jenner, medicine and Nye Bevan, the healthcare system. This is not to protest celebrating “heroes of healthcare,” far from it, and we note with approval the gender balance, two men and two women.

Possibly the inclusion of Mary Seacole was intended to give racial balance, as she is typically portrayed as a “black Briton,” although she was three quarters white, had a white husband, business partner and white customers, and was proud of her Scottish heritage but not her “Creole” (“blacks” in her writing refer to others, not herself). A better choice for race balance might be the U.K. trained Nigerian Mrs K.A. Pratt, who truly was a nurse, although her contributions were to nursing proper more than health care as a system.

Mrs Seacole was an honourable and generous businesswoman, as a restaurant/bar/caterer and boarding house proprietress, not a nurse. She called herself “doctress” for her use of traditional herbals. She also used lethal metals in her “remedies,” a point omitted by her promoters. She left a fine memoir and her life does deserve celebration. However as she made no contribution to healthcare in Britain or anywhere, it is grossly misleading to name her a “healthcare hero.” There are numerous errors of fact in your department’s announcement.

The missing person in your awards package is Florence Nightingale, who was the major founder of nursing and a visionary of public health care. She articulated the principle, in 1864, of quality health care for all, including the poorest (as opposed to mere charity wards). The National Health Service in 1948 is unthinkable without her decades of work of reforming the terrible workhouse infirmaries, making them into real hospitals, with training, when bedsharing, and no trained nurses, were the norm.

A timeline comparing the contributions of Nightingale and Seacole is appended for your information, and for your officials. Do please tell use what is missing for Seacole, what contributions your department was thinking of when preparing this announcement. Nightingale’s achievements are only summary in our timeline–she did decades of good work both to establish nursing and improve health care and hospitals generally.

Sincerely yours

Reform of the National Curriculum in England

Reform of the National Curriculum in England, document 7 February 2013, Consultation

We are a group of individuals concerned about the teaching of particular figures in the history of the Nineteenth century. We wish to comment therefore on only a very limited part of your consultation i.e. that concerning the teaching on Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale, as covered in Key Stages 1-4. We note in particular the lack of clarity on the treatment of History in Key Stage 4 and hope that it will be resolved in due course. We will make brief comments on the approach.

1.1 Introduction.

The references to “rigour” and “high standards” are welcome. The major point we wish to make concerns the extremely faulty treatment of both Nightingale and Seacole, especially the latter, when material is used that is not merely factually wrong, but reflects the massive amount of misinformation currently in circulation about her. We refer you to: http:/maryseacole.info/ for numerous examples
and ‘Nursing’s Bitter Rivalry,’ History Today, Sept 12, pp.11-16, McDonald,L.

The point about allowing teachers “greater freedom to use their professionalism and expertise” only makes sense if the teachers are well prepared, but on this subject, that is far from true. Misinformation about Seacole has been taught from the beginning in the National Curriculum, is on numerous websites, including those of apparently reputable bodies like the National Army Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Archives. The BBC has produced and broadcast films with appalling factual lapses on Seacole, coupled typically with unfounded remarks about Nightingale.

It is essential therefore that the Department for Education examine the sources on both persons and ensure that accurate information is made available to teachers. BBC Radio 3 Night Waves on 2nd April 2013

2.3 Core subjects.

We join with other critics in deploring the proposed dropping of History at Key Stage 4. In the case of Nightingale, only students at this level would be able to deal with some of her core ideas and principles, on public health, the use of statistics in policy making, and the Crimean War itself (which should not be dropped from the curriculum for many reasons of relevance). Nightingale was the first woman Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, thanks to her pioneering work charting the causes of death in war hospitals, and showing the far greater size of preventable causes of death from wounds and non-preventable disease. This could conceivably be covered in science and mathematics, but it is not clear how, given the wording of “information and computing” as opposed to conceptualizing research questions and finding data to answer them.

4.1 “equalities impact of the reforms”

We note that Nightingale was a major thinker and social reformer, a pioneer of public health care (not just nursing) and a data user. Women are badly under-represented in the curriculum, so that giving her more heed would help to redress this inequality. It is good for both girls and boys to see effective world leaders who were women, as she was.

6.3 Teacher freedom to shape own curriculum

On this point, we again note that on the subjects of Nightingale and Seacole, this would be wrong at the present time, given the level of knowledge of current teachers on both of them. It is essential that good sources be developed, which will require reference to reliable material and consultation with experts, as opposed to reliance on websites that promote a campaign, using false claims, for a person.

9.1-4. Equality

This is a valid objective of the curriculum. However the end does not justify the means, and the promotion of a person, Mary Seacole, to provide black pupils with a role model, creates great problems, given that Seacole was three quarters white, married a white man, had a white business partner and all white customers, and made disparaging remarks about people whose skin colour was markedly darker than her own, even using the ‘n’ word when describing them. It is wrong to give children false information, even if the motive is an honourable one. In the case of black role models in nursing, there are valid black role models; such women as the Nigerian pioneer nurse, Mrs K.A. Pratt. There are other persons of colour noted on the website www.maryseacole.info/. Children need role models, but the use of fake models shows disrespect both for the pupils, and indeed for Seacole, who was an honourable and admirable person, surely deserving of respect, but not adulation for bravery or for pioneering nursing.

Examples of flawed, misleading materials.

The BBC. Famous People. See Lesson Plan Mary Seacole. Objectives are to produce an account of her life and make comparisons between her and Florence Nightingale. But the BBC’s own films and online resources are flagrantly wrong. In Activities, children are to write picture and word sentences about Seacole. Examples are available online that show that she is credited with medals (a typical error), pioneering nursing, etc. Seacole called herself a “doctress,” not a nurse, and ran a restaurant/bar/takeaway, and did catering for officers, as opposed to running a hospital, at her own expense, for ordinary soldiers.
BBC Learning Zone Broadband Class Clips. The work of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole, drama. This has Charles Dickens doing a chat show about changes to healthcare and medical science (did you know he sent Nightingale a drying machine to the Crimean War to assist in her laundry? which is not mentioned). The misinformation states: “We learn about new methods in nursing from Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale, who nursed soldiers wounded in the Crimean War.” Neither pioneered nursing methods there, and Seacole did not nurse at all. She is then described as being “equipped with healing knowledge from her Jamaican mother,” although she herself acknowledged that she used acetate of lead and mercury chloride in her remedies, substances which would be deleterious to the cholera patient, and which are not “herbal”. She is said to have “travelled alone to nurse soldiers on the battlefield and set up a rest home for soldiers in the Crimea.” She probably travelled with her two black employees, and she missed the three major battles of the war, as she was busy in London tending to her gold stocks when the war started. She set up a store/restaurant/bar and takeaway, not a rest home, and her meals, etc., were available for purchase, at a high price; her customers were officers. On three occasions she described going on to the battlefield to sell food and drink, when she also took bandages and gave first aid. She was kind and generous, not charging for those who could not pay, but it is a gross exaggeration to call this running a rest home for soldiers. A minor point, FN did not set up the hospital in Scutari; it was established by the Army Medical Department before she arrived, and was woefully defective.
The National Archives has agreed to amend its website, which has numerous errors on it. Claire Horrie at Clare.Horrie@nationalarchives.gsi.gov.uk can provide further examples

Other material showing errors can be found in a 2012 History Today article: http://www.historytoday.com/author/lynn-mcdonald and a newspaper story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255095/The-black-Florence-Nightingale-making-PC-myth-One-historian-explains-Mary-Seacoles-story-stood-up.html

Concluding comments

In the Department for Education Response (case reference 2013/0011463) Pauline Shaw, of the Ministerial and Public Communications Division states that “essential knowledge” will include the teaching of British history and significant individuals who have helped shape that history. Florence Nightingale qualifies mightily here, not only as the founder of nursing (who influenced nursing throughout the world and is still actively taught in many countries, but sadly not in the nursing curriculum in the UK!), but also the principles of health care and health promotion, evidence-based health care, graphic presentation of data, hospital reform (again, her work changed hospitals throughout the world) and public administration. She contributed also on status of women issues, suffrage, property rights, access to education and occupations. She was a force on reform in India for 40-years plus, arguing for better health care, sanitation, famine prevention and relief, and the status of women (e.g. child marriage and widowhood). Nightingale was a leading thinker, greatly respected by male political, health care and social reform leaders.

Mary Seacole simply does not qualify as a person who had a significant impact on British history. She gave of her time and energy to give comfort and alleviate suffering during the Crimean War, but her main occupation there was as a businesswoman, running a restaurant/bar/takeaway for officers.

The Crimean War should not be dropped from the curriculum. It was a significant war in British history, one with a high death rate, amazingly enough which was brought down in the second year of the war thanks to the effective use of a sanitary commission. Government in Britain was greatly reformed after the war, and Nightingale played a significant role in this. A royal commission was established, excellent research conducted, recommendations formulated, new departments established, including a statistical department, which then monitored mortality and morbidity data. The Crimean War was distinctive in having war correspondents, who got material back quickly to the population. The government that declared the war and mismanaged its first months was forced to resign. Nursing itself and hospital reform, as well as better public administration, were direct products of that war. In Russia, it is believed that serfdom was abolished as a result of its defeat. The French did not make the reforms the British did, and they were then badly defeated in their next substantial war, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 (Britain stayed out of it). Nightingale also advised on the Geneva Convention and the establishment of what became the British Red Cross, in the post-Crimean period.

This material would be of great interest at Key Stage 4. Its teaching should not be limited to the earlier school years, when these points could not be adequately taught or understood.

When focussing on social history, the fact that Nightingale was instrumental in getting nursing into the dreaded workhouse infirmaries should be taught. She had a vision of the virtual abolition of the old Poor Law, in favour of agencies to care for the sick, aged, children, and people with chronic disabilities. She started the move to making the old workhouse infirmaries into regular hospitals, without which the establishment of the NHS in 1948 would hardly have been possible.

Again we note, as per the statement that “we trust that teachers know what is best for their pupils,” is not justifiable given the current level of misinformation. Teachers themselves have been taught little about Nightingale, and some of that teaching has been distorted to make room for Seacole, and even to compare her unfavourably with Seacole. To teach the full scope of Nightingale’s achievements would require equipping teachers with knowledge of what she did, and the historical context, especially the constraints of gender she had to overcome. This could be very exciting, and would give pupils, male and female, a worthy example of a woman leader far ahead of her time, who yet got things done.

We trust that these comments will facilitate decisions on the reform of the history curriculum and are willing to add to any of the comments if that would be helpful.

To Michael Gentles and Lance Hylton, Postal Corporation of Jamaica

Mr Michael Gentles, Postmaster General/CEO
Mr Lance Hylton, chairman
Postal Corporation of Jamaica
Central Sorting Office
6-10 South Camp Road
Kingston, Jamaica

Dear Mr Hylton and Mr Gentles

We are writing you with concerns about the stamps commemorating Mary Seacole. We do not at all oppose her being honoured with the issuing of commemorative stamps, but the inaccurate information on several of them. She should be celebrated for her own merits, but for some years now flagrantly false information has circulated about her. Several of the false statements are clearly contradicted by what she said herself in her memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, a commendable book still worth reading!

1991 two stamps. One is thoroughly wrong, depicting Seacole in a nurse’s uniform at the bedside of a soldier at the Scutari Barrack Hospital, the main hospital nursed by Nightingale and her team. Mrs Seacole in her memoir described visiting there one day, and having a brief (about 5 minutes) interview with Nightingale, when she asked her for a bed for the night, as she was leaving the following morning for Balaclava. (Her business partner was waiting for her there and their supplies were en route.) Nightingale found a bed for her and had breakfast sent to her. Seacole’s memoir records the encounter (pp 89-91), which clearly shows that she never nursed at that hospital (it is not a mistake in hospital name, but Seacole did no hospital nursing at all, nor ever wore a hospital uniform).

The reference work which reproduces the 1991 stamp, “Mary Seacole Nursing in Hospital in Scutari,” explicitly states that Seacole “did not participate in the care of any of the wounded soldiers in Scutari, as portrayed on the Jamaican stamp issued in 1991” (Susanne Stevenhoved, “Mary Grant Seacole,” Six Hundred Women and One Man: Nurses on Stamps 33).

It was Nightingale’s mission to provide care for ordinary soldiers; Seacole was a businesswoman running a restaurant, bar, takeaway and store for officers, with a “canteen for the soldiery” (Wonderful Adventures 114), function not specified, on the side. Mrs Seacole is known for her kindness to soldiers, which is praiseworthy, but should not be confused with providing nursing care, which she did not, nor ever said she did.

2005 four stamps. The $70 stamp has a portrait of Seacole by Challen, wearing 3 medals, with pictures of 4 medals beside it: the French Legion of Honour, the British Crimea Medal, the Turkish Order of the Medjidie, and the Jamaican Order of Merit, this last the only medal she was actually awarded (posthumously). The other 3 are myths. Seacole herself never claimed in her memoir to have won any medals, and the picture of her on the cover shows her without medals. She began to wear medals post-Crimea, for the first time at her bankruptcy court appearance in November 1856, presumably to attract sympathy. It was not then illegal in the U.K. to wear other persons’ military medals, although it has been since 1955. Seacole also had her portrait painted, photographs taken and her bust sculpted wearing medals, again not illegal. However to reproduce those depictions now without explanation is highly misleading.

The simple facts are that Seacole was not eligible for any of the 3 medals she is usually shown with, for she was not in the military. The Crimea medal was a service medal, for officers and soldiers only, present at particular battles (see John Horsley Mayo, Medals and Decorations of the British Army and Navy vol. 2 Crimea). The British Army sent in nominations for the Turkish and French medals, which were awarded by senior officers on behalf of those governments. They were then, in effect, military medals.

The $30 stamp, “Herbal remedies and medicines,” is innocently misleading. Seacole, as well as using herbal remedies, also added toxic substances such as mercury and lead, which she considered effective but which are now known to be harmful.

We would appreciate hearing from you why these erroneous portrayals were decided on. The stamps are history now, and cannot be undone, but we would ask you to modify your website to give an accurate account.

The Jamaican Order of Merit is inscribed, as can be seen on your $70 stamp, “He that does truth comes into the light.” We hope that you will agree with us that Jamaica owes Seacole both truth and light.

Yours sincerely

To Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health

Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt, PC, MP
Secretary of State for Health
Richmond House, 79 Whitehall
London SW1A 2NS

January 20, 2013

Dear Mr Hunt

Brian Mawhinney, a predecessor in your office, launching the Mary Seacole awards in 1994, contributed significantly to the misinformation about Seacole in circulation. Presumably he did not write his own speech, and we accordingly wish to warn you of the bank of misinformation existing about Seacole in your own office.

In his speech the then secretary for health erroneously stated that Seacole had “considerable nursing skills and made a major contribution to nursing the wounded in the Crimean War,” and that she “later worked as a nurse in and around London.” She was “in fact,” he claimed, “an outstanding black British nurse.”

However Seacole did none of these things. She did not nurse the wounded in the Crimean War, and she did not nurse in London, at any time. She was a boarding house keeper in Jamaica, who later ran a restaurant/store in Panama and then in the Crimea. She was known to be kind to soldiers in providing herbal remedies to them-all walk-ins, not the wounded. She missed the three largest battles of the war, but did provide assistance on three days in 1855: 18 June, 23 August and 8 September-in each case a few hours, post-battle. She also gave out hot tea and lemonade to soldiers waiting transport to the Scutari hospitals. No doubt Mrs Seacole acted kindly on these occasions, but her work would hardly count as a “major” contribution.

She spent her last years in Britain, but was never a “British nurse,” for she never nursed in Britain. She is commonly called “black” now, but it should be realized that Seacole was three quarters white, proud of her Scots heritage, but not of her African heritage-the words “black” and “African” never appear in her memoir in connection with her. She was married to a white man, had a white business partner, and all her customers were white. Like white Jamaicans, she hired blacks-indeed she had two black servants with her both in Panama and the Crimea. To call her “black” then is somewhat incongruous, especially when it is realized that her own views of “good-for-nothing” blacks and “niggers” were far from enlightened, if understandable for the time. To name her now as a “black British nurse” is to misrepresent her.

The secretary for health was correct in describing Seacole as a “contemporary” of Nightingale’s, but so were millions of people-the two met probably for about five minutes, but at no time worked together, for the obvious reason that Nightingale’s work during the Crimean War was to provide nursing and better nutrition for ordinary soldiers, while Seacole was running a restaurant, bar, takeaway and catering service for officers. That they were both in London 1856-59 and 1865-81 signifies nothing, for Nightingale was then highly occupied in starting training for nurses and sending out nurses to other hospitals, while Seacole was then effectively retired (apart from briefly, in 1856, trying to run a shop at Aldershot).

We would add that there are a number of other genuine black nurses, and nurses of Asian and other non-white backgrounds who deserve attention for their contribution. This inordinate concentration on Seacole has had the unhappy result of ignoring important contributions to nursing by a number of non-white pioneers. Mrs K.A. Pratt, for example, was an early black nurse in the NHS, and a leading figure in nursing when she went back to Nigeria. She would be a worthy person to commemorate in an award. See www.maryseacole.info/

Yours sincerely

To Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education

Rt Hon Michael Gove, PC, MP
Secretary of State for Education
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA

January 20, 2013

Dear Mr Gove

We commend you for the decision to remove teaching of Mary Seacole from the National Curriculum.

We remind you, however, that a great deal of damage was done by the years of false teaching on Seacole, and suggest that your department take at least minimal measures to address this. At the very least a statement should be issued that the teaching of Seacole winning medals for bravery and pioneering nursing was not based on fact. A brief (correct) outline of her life could be given, with her actual occupations.

As well, teaching on Nightingale was affected, for the two were linked in the curriculum, which required the denigration of Nightingale’s work to make it more like Seacole’s. We gave examples in our letter to you of September 10, 2012.

Nightingale’s contribution to British life and history has been enormously important, not only in the emergence of nursing as a modern, reputable profession, but for hospital safety (using an evidence-based approach to reduce death rates), methodology (the first woman Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society), and she was most notably a major pioneer of public health care. These are serious contributions, omission of which would result in poor coverage of major elements of British public life and society.

The suggestion (in a leaked document) that Nightingale could be dropped as well as Seacole we would see as extremely backward. Nightingale and Seacole were not equals-one white, the other black-each doing roughly the same thing. Seacole was a decent and kind person, who deserves better than to be used in a propaganda campaign, but she was not a heroic, medal-winning, pioneer nurse, and her contribution were neither similar to Nightingale’s nor of remotely comparable weight.

To Sir Robert McAlpine

Sir Robert McAlpine
Eaton Court
Maylands Av
Hemel Hempstead, Herts HP2 7TR

January 20, 2013

Dear Sir Robert

We understand that you have agreed to construct the planned statue of Mary Seacole for St Thomas’ Hospital at cost, thereby saving the promoters of the statue a considerable sum. Generous as this is of you, we wonder what you have against Florence Nightingale.

We wish to make clear that we do not oppose the erection of a Seacole statue, but rather to the dishonest portrayal of her. The planned statue is to show her wearing medals, which in fact she never won. True, she wore medals, and had her portrait painted, photographs taken and a bust sculpted wearing them-but none of them were hers.

The statue is to name her “Pioneer Nurse,” at Nightingale’s hospital no less, the site of her school, the first secular nurse training school in the world, and for more than a century the base from which she sent out teams of nurses to bring in new standards of patient care throughout the world. Yet Seacole was not a nurse at all, and never claimed to be. She called herself a “doctress,” meaning herbalist (although she was known to add such toxic substances as lead acetate and mercury chloride to her remedies, which of course were not harmless herbals).

You as a leading figure in the construction industry might be interested to know that Nightingale was a major force in reforming hospital architecture in the late 19th century-when death rates of patients per admissions averaged 10%. She influenced the design of the St Thomas’ opened in 1871, which was a world leader in design. Three of the old pavilions still stand (the others were bombed in World War II). What a curious place to install a statue honouring another person as the “Pioneer Nurse”!

We urge you to make your donation of costs contingent on the statue being honest: no medals and no claim of “Pioneer Nurse,” and placement somewhere other than St Thomas’ Hospital.

Yours sincerely