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From Dame Christine Beasley, Chair, Florence Nightingale Museum

Dear Professor McDonald,

Thank you for your letter, which the Board and I read with interest. We always welcome constructive criticism from members of the Nightingale community, or indeed from any of our visitors.

To answer a few of your points:

The museum shop:

We offer a changing range of books, which usually includes those of FN’s own writings which are available and in print, Notes on Nursing and Notes on Hospitals are especially popular. We do not sell any DVDs and have not for five years – in general, people don’t use DVDs anymore, tending to use digital formats instead.

The Workhouse exhibition:

The reason for having this exhibition was specifically because of FN’s wonderful work with pauper nursing. I am surprised you found no Nightingale associations when you visited this exhibition. Nightingale’s work on workhouses and also on statistics are areas of particular interest to our visitors.

Lectures:

We offer a free lecture on FN and her life weekly, something we find very popular with our visitors, as well as guided tours and talks for booked groups. Our changing events programme tends to be themed, so this summer has focussed on the collaboration with Great Ormond Street, another major London hospital with a fascinating collection of Peter Pan memorabilia. Our next season is examining male identity of soldiers in the Crimean war through their facial hair. You might like to look at the website for details.

Thank you in particular for your comments of suggested alterations and additions on the website. You will have realised the website is new, we launched it in April this year, and re-writing and tweaking is still ongoing. I am sure you realise that with a small team, who have many calls on their time, this can be a slow process.

I note that the Nightingale Society posts up its correspondence on their website. The Board of Trustees and I are very happy for this reply to be added alongside your original letter, if you think this would be of interest.

Best wishes, and we hope to welcome you and your colleagues at the museum when you are all next in the UK.

Yours sincerely,

Dame Christine Beasley
Natasha McEnroe, Director

To Florence Nightingale Museum trustees

Dame Christine Beasley, chair
Professor Ian Norman
Jonathan Card
Colin Brough
Alastair Gourlay
Jonathan Rounce, CA
Chloe Sheppard
Janet Vitmayer, OBE
Baroness Mary Watkins
copy: Natasha McEnroe, director

Dear Florence Nightingale Museum Trustees

We write with concerns about the poor coverage of Florence Nightingale at the Museum and its trend of becoming a Mary Seacole Museum. We understand the difficulties, with Sir Hugh Taylor avidly promoting the Mary Seacole myth, and the Museum being dependent on the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust for its space. Nonetheless, it is a Nightingale museum for charitable status purposes; people have given money, time and effort to set it up and maintain it.

Herewith some specifics, beginning with Nightingale:

The FN Museum website. Edith Cavell is on the Museum’s website, but with no mention of her connection with Nightingale (she trained at a hospital whose matron Nightingale mentored; she was night superintendent at one where Nightingale not only mentored the matron, but got professional nursing started and a better building built).

Alexis Soyer is also on the Museum’s website, but with only passing mention of Nightingale, yet he worked with her nearly every day for a year on improving nutrition, and wrote much about her in his memoir.

Since this is a Nightingale museum, should not the connections be made?

The bookstore. Last checked, the only book by Nightingale it had available was a bad edition (the only bad edition) of her Notes on Nursing, nothing on her very strong later work. The bookstore has in the past (is it now still?) even sold the BBC film that badly misrepresented her (even opposing the vote for women, when she supported it). Nightingale did excellent work, which deserves to be celebrated – why fall for the cheap shots?

Children’s presentations: some trivialize Nightingale–“my house had 14 bedrooms”; the BBC “documentary,” which portrays Nightingale as a racist (so fallacious the BBC Trustees required it to be removed) has been shown as entertainment. Instead, the Museum should have protested it! It should not sell or use anti-Nightingale material. If you can come up with legitimate, negative, material, do say what.

Exhibitions: understandably, the Museum has to put on numerous exhibitions and they will not all concern Nightingale. However, when the subject does concern Nightingale, no mention is made. The Workhouse exhibition the Museum put on did not mention Nightingale at all, yet workhouse reform generally, and workhouse infirmary nursing reform particularly, were major Nightingale causes, and she was enormously successful. This is part of NHS history. Why not be proud of it?

Lectures: a lot feature Seacole supporters. When was Nightingale last featured? What plans are there for Nightingale material now?

Website on Seacole: it has much material that is simply, factually, wrong, and can be seen to be wrong by consulting Seacole’s own fine memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands. It credits her with a cure for cholera, but fails to mention that she added lead and mercury to her “remedies” and admitted “lamentable blunders” (see WA, 31). Her “remedies” indeed would have made bowel patients worse off: emetics, purging and blistering all dehydrate, when cholera and other bowel patients need rehydration.

Your website claims that Seacole had a successful cure for yellow fever, with picked medical herbs; any evidence for its success? What was it?

She stated in her memoir that she was asked to provide nurses to the army hospital at Kingston, but she did not. So why credit her with doing something she did not do?

Nor was she “often in attendance at sick wharf.” She generously and kindly did go to the wharf and gave hot tea to soldiers waiting transport, but that was only while she was waiting for her huts to be built (she was living on a nearby boat). She did not continue this when her business opened.

Your website states: “She stayed in Balaclava as long as the troops were there.” No, nor a claim she made; Nightingale stayed at her hospital until the last soldier was discharged.

You have Seacole giving away “any profit she made,” a total fiction, nor did she ever say this. (Where?) She and her business partner both acknowledged a business error–they restocked lavishly expecting the troops (and the officers, their customers) to stay longer in the Crimea. “My restaurant was always full” (p 178), as Mrs Seacole put it. When the peace treaty was signed, the army went home. They lost their officer customers and the Russians would not buy the stock.

We would be happy to meet with you to provide a briefing on Nightingale and Seacole. We would be happy to debate with Seacole issues any Seacole supporters you care to name: Sir Hugh Taylor, Martin Jennings, Lord Soley! How about it?

Sincerely yours

[14 members of the Nightingale Society]

To Sir Hugh Taylor, chair, NHS Foundation Trust

Sir Hugh Taylor, chair, NHS Foundation Trust
September 2, 2016

Dear Sir Hugh

We are concerned about your statement at the Mary Seacole statue unveiling on June 30 2016, not only because of your demeaning treatment of two adult women – Seacole and Nightingale – to whom you referred by their first names, but to the still unexplained “pioneer” status you accord to Seacole. What did she pioneer? How is her work relevant to nurses or other health professionals, as you claim? We have asked several times.

A new problem. You state that the Seacole charity is “educational” in its “primary purpose” and that it will be “working closely with the Florence Nightingale Museum.” However, since the Seacole campaign is responsible for much misinformation on the subject, we do not see how it can contribute anything “educational.” Are you requiring the Museum to change its terms of reference to add Seacole propaganda? It is supposed to support research on Nightingale.

Until and unless you or they can state clearly what Seacole actually contributed to nursing, we have to assume propaganda is the goal, not education. To our knowledge, Seacole did not nurse one day in her life in any U.K. hospital, or in any hospital in Jamaica, Panama or the Crimea for that matter. She did not write one book or paper on nursing, did not teach or mentor one nurse. How then can she be taught along with Nightingale at the Museum?

Yours sincerely

[16 members of the Nightingale Society]

To David Cameron

Prime Minister David Cameron, PC, MP
May 8, 2016

Dear Mr Cameron

We write with concern about the use of a £240,000 grant for a Mary Seacole statue at St Thomas’ Hospital. We do not object to Seacole being celebrated, but for the false description of her as a “Pioneer Nurse” and location of the statue at the hospital where Nightingale pioneered nurse training and professional nursing for the whole world.

Mrs Seacole was an enterprising and kind businesswoman, who ran a (for-profit) club for officers. Champagne, fine wines and catering for their dinner parties should not be confused with nursing care and improved nutrition for ordinary soldiers, Nightingale’s work.

Further, a Seacole statue should not face the Houses of Parliament, for it was Nightingale who wrote briefs and pressed MPs and Cabinet ministers for reforms in nursing, hospitals and health care.

We urge you to make the grant contingent on the use of an appropriate site for the Seacole statue, such as Forum Magnum Square, by the County Hall.

Copy: Caroline, Nokes, MP, Romsey and Southampton North

(also signed by numerous persons attending a Nightingale Memorial)

To David Cameron

Rt Hon David Cameron, PC, MP
Prime Minister
April 7, 2016

Dear Mr Cameron

We write with concern about the use of public money, the £240,000 promised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the Mary Seacole statue. We do not object at all to Seacole being celebrated – she deserves it – but for the false description of her as a “Pioneer Nurse” and its placement at St Thomas’ Hospital, site for more than a century of Florence Nightingale’s first training school for nurses in the world.

Mrs Seacole was an enterprising and kind businesswoman, who ran, in effect, a (for-profit) club for officers. Champagne, fine wines and catering for their dinner parties should not be confused with nursing care and improved nutrition for ordinary soldiers, Florence Nightingale’s work.

Another problem, a Seacole statue should not face the Houses of Parliament, for it was Nightingale who wrote briefs for committees, and pressed MPs and Cabinet ministers for reforms in nursing, hospitals and health care.

We strongly urge you to make the grant contingent on a more appropriate site being used for the Seacole statue. We have recommended Forum Magnum Square, by the County Hall, and there are several other possibilities.

If erected at St Thomas’ Hospital, the site risks becoming a target for ridicule, as a “History Hoax.” Do your ministers want to lead the list? The timing is inordinately embarrassing, for the bicentenary of Nightingale’s birth will be celebrated in 2020, presumably not at her hospital. This would be a shame in the eyes of millions who know, value and respect her achievements.

Yours sincerely

[18 members of the Nightingale Society]

Please reply to contact@nightingalesociety.com.

A press release is available on this site.

From The Rev’d Paul Hawkins to David Cameron

To: The Prime Minister,
10 Downing Street,
London

From: The Nightingale Society
c/o The Rev’d Paul Hawkins
9 Buckingham Place
Clifton
Bristol BS8 1LJ

16th January 2016

Dear Prime Minister,

Further to the letter from the Nightingale Society urging you to make the grant of £240,000 for the statue of Mary Seacole to be contingent on its placement at a different site, one of our members has suggested two further possible suitable venues: Windrush Square, Brixton, or outside Mary Seacole House, Clapham High Street.

But we claim no expertise on what would be the best site, simply that St Thomas’ Hospital, as the home of the Nightingale School and base for her founding the modern profession throughout the world, would therefore not be the appropriate site for the Mary Seacole statue.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Hawkins

To David Cameron

Rt Hon David Cameron, PC, MP
Prime Minister
January 1, 2016

Dear Mr Cameron

The Nightingale Society has written the Chancellor of the Exchequer with concerns about the grant of £240,000 announced for the erection of a Mary Seacole statue at St Thomas’ Hospital, home of the Nightingale School for more than a century. We have received no reply.We do not object at all to Seacole’s life being celebrated, but rather the poor choice of place and misrepresentation of her as a pioneer nurse. She was an enterprising and kind businesswoman, who ran a much appreciated club for officers. Champagne, fine wines and catering for their dinner parties should not be confused with nursing care and improved nutrition for ordinary soldiers, Florence Nightingale’s work.

The Nightingale School of Nursing, founded in 1860, was the first professional training school in the world. From it nursing pioneers went out to take the standards of the new profession to other parts of the U.K. and around the world. The bicentenary of Nightingale’s birth will be celebrated in 2020.

The statue should not face the Houses of Parliament, for it was Nightingale, not Seacole, who wrote briefs for committees, and pressed MPs and Cabinet ministers for reforms in nursing, hospitals and health care.

Your government’s grant is to make up the shortfall from faulty planning and budgeting. The grant should be made conditional on the statue being located in an appropriate place. One proposal is Forum Magnum Square, by County Hall.

Be aware that Mrs Seacole’s portrayal as a “black Briton” will likely be challenged in coming years. She was three quarters white and proud of her Scots heritage; she had a white husband, white business partner and white clientele. She called herself a “yellow doctress,” not a “black nurse.” She employed blacks: two cooks, her porter and maid.

The Memorial Garden proposed to honour nurses who died on duty is a fine idea. However, it should not be associated with Seacole, who went onto the battlefield three times during the war (she missed the first three battles as she was busy in London on her gold investments). Those forays were all post-battle, as noted by the Times correspondent, himself out there to write up his stories.

The statue if erected at St Thomas’ risks becoming the site for making “History Hoax” awards. Do your ministers want to lead the list?

Yours sincerely

[16 members of the Nightingale Society]

Please reply to contact@nightingalesociety.com.

A press release is available on this site.

From Dr Ron Trubuhovich to Sir Ronald Kerr

Sir Ronald KERR C.B.E., Chief Executive
Dr Ian Gibbs, Medical Director
Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS

Concerning the proposed statue of Mary Seacole.

Would you kindly allow me to present to you my personal objection to the proposed siting at St Thomas’ Hospital of a statue of Mary Seacole, this admired heroine of the Crimean War. It does not incorporate any belittling of the statue’s inspirational subject, nor is it an objection to the statue itself. May I mention I am well familiar with the controversy and the numerous for-and-against writings over this issue. I trust you will not disallow me from lodging yet another individual protest with you. And I can state that I have read every word of Mary Seacole’s book.

Mary Seacole’s record has inspired her supporters with great enthusiasm to seek formal recognition of her achievements, so it is their wish to honour her by the proposed statue. However, the statue’s proposed great size and height have dimensions eclipsing those of the Florence Nightingale statue already at the Hospital. And of course, it was at St Thomas’ very hospital that Florence Nightingale founded her training school for nurses, the first for the new profession she pioneered. Further, Mary Seacole had no direct link with your institution. Thus it is inappropriate for the statue to be erected within the grounds of St Thomas’. (Also, it can be noted, the location of Mary’s statue in the hospital grounds would be directly facing the Parliament buildings across the Thames River).

My expectation is that it is likely you could be unaware of the high level of veneration for the reputation of Florence Nightingale which is held today, here in New Zealand, among members of the nursing and medical professions. We are saddened that the cause for Mary Seacole has encouraged some of the statue’s ardent supporters into demeaning Florence’s reputation by denigration, in the naïve anticipation of that strengthening the Seacole credentials, thereby to further the chances of her statue being placed at St Thomas’. Such tactics are deeply upsetting to Florence Nightingale admirers, who appreciate her tremendous influence for numerous outstanding healthcare reforms.

Surely, if the Mary Seacole statue needs to be in London then a suitable site can be located outside St Thomas’ Hospital.

Sincerely

Ronald V Trubuhovich [Dr], ONZM
Honorary Intensive Care Specialist
Dept of Critical Care Medicine (Chairman, 1983-94)
Auckland City Hospital
Pvt Bag 92-024 Auckland
New Zealand, 1142
[ronaldt@adhb.govt.nz]

Is the Seacole statue jinxed?

To the Mayor and Councillors of Lambeth; and
Sir Hugh Taylor and Sir Ron Kerr, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust; and
Cecilia Amin, president, and Janet Davies FRCN, chief executive, Royal College of Nursing; and
Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt, PC, MP, Secretary of State for Health; and
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London
September 2015

Sept. 14, 2015

Is the Seacole Statue Jinxed?

We note the “delay” in unveiling a Mary Seacole statue in the garden of Nightingale’s hospital, St Thomas’, announced by Lord Soley, chair of the Seacole memorial campaign. The cause was a shortfall of nearly £200,000, the result of “soaring” construction costs. Yet the site has already been cleared and was even “blessed”!! before the fundraising was completed. We ask:

  • Who authorized the site clearing, an ongoing eyesore? We understand that planning permission lapses after three years, over last April. Work should not have gone ahead without the full funding in place.
  • Who pays for filling in and fixing up the site? Will NHS health care money be diverted for this purpose?
  • The missing evidence for the “Pioneer Nurse” appellation. We have yet to receive an answer to our questions as to when and at what hospitals Seacole ever nursed, let alone gave her “life’s work” to developing nursing in England.
  • What impact will a statue, or an empty site for one, have on the Bicentenary celebration of Nightingale’s birth, to take place in 2020? Should nurses be told not to come to London for Bicentenary events? Or to avoid Lambeth and St Thomas’?

TIME TO RETHINK!

We suggest that it is time to rethink the project. We do not at all object to celebrating Seacole’s life, as a businesswoman, volunteer and the author of a fine memoir-which never claimed “pioneer nursing”-but not as the founder of nursing.

We note the ties Seacole had with her late husband’s family in Lambeth, notably of Florence Seacole Kent, who married and lived there. Why not a site where Seacole had a real connection? instead of the hospital where Nightingale founded the first nurse training school in the world?

Yours sincerely
[signed]

To the Mayor and Councillors of Lambeth

Dear Mayor and Lambeth Councillors

Re: Site Preparation for Mary Seacole Statue at St Thomas’ Hospital

We have written earlier with concerns about this statue, not about there being one, but its placement and message that someone other than Nightingale was the “Pioneer Nurse” at St Thomas’ Hospital, where her school led in the introduction of professional nursing throughout the world.

Our first question now concerns legal responsibility. Since the money has not all been raised, yet work is going ahead, who will be responsible for paying any missing amount? Lambeth ratepayers? Or will the NHS be expected to reallocate health care money for it?

Has any consideration been given to liability for graffiti, damage, etc? We would expect that the statue, if installed there, would for a time be a place to celebrate “diversity,” as is the plan.

But truth will out. Mrs Seacole was a fine person and worthy of being celebrated, but she was only one quarter black, and never identified herself as black or African. Indeed, she praised her (three quarters) Scottish heritage and disparaged her Creole. “Blacks” and “niggers” in her writing are always other people. See for example, her statement that, if her skin ‘had been as dark as any nigger’s,” she “should have been just as happy and as useful” (Seacole, Wonderful Adventures p. 48) and her references to her “good-for-nothing black cooks” (p. 141) and other not so nice references.

Her business was never a hospital, as is so often claimed, but was in effect an officers’ club. When a writer visited the Crimea years after the war he recalled seeing an “immense heap of broken bottles by the roadside…all that was left behind of Mrs Seacole’s famous store” (Arnold, From the Levant, the Black Sea and the Danube 2:184). The broken bottles may indeed have been the result of Mrs Seacole’s own hammering “case after case” of red wine, when she could not sell it when it was time to go home (p. 196). What happens if the statue site becomes a site for drinking and drunkenness? Who is liable?

Yours sincerely