Posts by Lynn McDonald

To Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary

Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt, PC, MP
Secretary of State for Health
Richmond House, 79 Whitehall
London SW1A 2NS
September 10, 2012

Dear Mr Hunt

On 2 August we wrote your predecessor (letter attached) with our concerns about the proposed placement of a Mary Seacole statue at St Thomas’ Hospital, with the designation “Pioneer Nurse,” approval for which was given by the board of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. The minister had an email sent to us in reply declining to take any action, but referring us to the current chair of the Trust, Sir Ron Kerr. We will indeed write once more to the Trust in the hope of a serious response to our concerns, one we never received from the last chair.

We wish, however, to gain your views about the criteria set for Trusts in their decision making. We understand the independence of the Trust as a Foundation Trust. However, this concerns decision making prior to its becoming a Foundation Trust, and indeed under a different government and regime. As more transparent analysis of the rationale for discussion comes to hand, we believe that this has the potential for very significant public embarrassment, and therefore are seeking your good offices in addressing the errors made.

We ask you, at the very least, to inform the current board of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust that the purveying of false information and decision making behind closed doors, based on misinformation, are unacceptable.

For information on Seacole see: www.maryseacole.info/
for Nightingale: www.uoguelph.ca/~cwfn
A reply would be appreciated: contact@nightingalesociety.com

Sincerely yours

[attached: letter to Andrew Lansley, Mr Hunt’s predecessor as Health Secretary]

To Janice Murray, director, National Army Museum

Mrs Janice Murray, Director
National Army Museum
Royal Hospital Road
Chelsea
London SW3 4HT
September 10, 2012

Dear Mrs Murray

We are pleased to see that several of the errors on the National Army Museum’s website on Mary Seacole have been removed, a good step, for which our thanks, but we must note that serious mistakes remain. We suggest some alternative wordings:

Place of birth: Kingston, Jamaica (why not give her city and country of birth, instead of “West Indies”?)

I learned to be a “doctress” or herbalist from my mother and provided remedies to many people, in Jamaica, Panama and then at the Crimean War.

Omit “nursed thousands through the cholera and yellow fever epidemics.” Not true, she never claimed it (see her Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands).

Omit the sentence “four out of five men would die not in battle but of disease,” for four out of five men did not die, but roughly one out of five, and of these roughly four out of five died from disease, but Seacole could not have known that at the time, as the data were not published until much later. She went to the war out of a sense of patriotism, as she explained in her book. (See www.maryseacole.info/ for page numbers and quotations)

A group of women led by Florence Nightingale (why be coy?)

When I could not join the official team of nurses I went anyway. My business partner and I started a restaurant and store for officers near Balaclava. I also helped ordinary soldiers who came to me for remedies.

Omit the last section. She and her business partner had laid in expensive stores, and of course their huts could not be sold. The fund that paid for her support got its donations from officers, not ordinary soldiers.

The troops called me “Mother Seacole.” Many came to a large festival in my honour at Surrey Gardens in the summer of 1857, It was supposed to make enough money to help me, but did not. I went back to Jamaica for awhile, then returned to London. Some officers kindly started a fund to support me in my old age.

For information on Seacole see: www.maryseacole.info/
for Nightingale: www.uoguelph.ca/~cwfn
A reply would be appreciated: contact@nightingalesociety.com

To Sir Hugh Taylor

Dear Sir Hugh

I appreciate your giving Wendy Mathews and myself time for a meeting in April this year. Since then, as you know, the Lambeth Planning Committee approved the placing of that massive Seacole statue at St Thomas’. Since then also a group has been formed, The Nightingale Society, to promote understanding of Nightingale’s work and reputation, and to contradict misinformation circulated about them.

You stated at our meeting that the board intended no disrespect to Nightingale with its promotion of Seacole. You seemed to be under the misimpression that the Seacole Memorial Appeal Campaign was as high minded. You mentioned specifically that Lord Soley never spoke against Nightingale, nor are we aware that he has. Other members of the campaign, however, have and do, notably the vice-chair, Professor emeritus Elizabeth Anionwu, the major spokesperson in the Nursing Standard and in the various films and electronic material supporting the campaign.

Prominent in the Seacole campaign is the nursing union Unison, which in 1999 voted to “ditch” Nightingale as the model of nursing. Its spokesperson gave as reasons the fact that Nightingale was “white, middle class and Protestant.” Unison’s president and its head of nursing were named respectively Patron and Ambassador for the campaign.

The BBC “Knowledge” film on Seacole, in which Anionwu is the presenter, makes disparaging remarks about Nightingale and compares her unfavourably with Seacole. For example, Seacole is said to have won 4 medals for bravery, while Nightingale won none, when in fact Queen Victoria gave Nightingale a medal, which she never wore, and Seacole won no medals, although she wore three or four after the war in London–it was not then a criminal offence to wear military medals not your own, although it would be now.

Anionwu’s many articles and interviews in the Nursing Standard also make unfavourable comparisons, such as that Seacole got on well with her “medical colleagues,” while Nightingale did not (Anionwu 2010 18), although Nightingale worked for decades after the war with doctors she first knew there, and there is no evidence that any doctor recognized Seacole as a “medical colleague,” although several acknowledged her kindness, and liked her food at the British Hotel.

In the meeting Mrs Mathews and I had with you, you thought that the hospital website could acknowledge Nightingale’s importance and relevance for the hospital. When? How can we help?

I repeat my offer to give your board a briefing on Nightingale and Seacole, when I am next in London, and several well-informed people are available now who could give you a briefing.