Mayor and Councillors of Lambeth
Lambeth Town Hall
18 Brixton Hill
London SW2 1RD
infoservice@lambeth.gov.uk

April 5, 2015

Dear Mayor and Lambeth Councillors

Re: Mary Seacole Statue intended for St Thomas’ Hospital and Florence Nightingale Bicentenary 2020

We note that the three years will soon draw to a close of the period for which planning permission was granted, after a hearing on April 24 2012. We understand that if the money is not all in place, that planning permission lapses, so that a new application would be required if and when the money is all raised.

We are aware that your permission process is narrowly focused on technicalities, assuming that the broader merits of the matter would have been dealt with elsewhere. In the case of the Seacole statue, this did not happen. The Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust promised consultation on a statue, then made its decision to approve without any, indeed at a closed-door meeting. As we pointed out to the Trust, the document it used to justify acceptance– claiming that Seacole was a dedicated nurse who gave her life to the early development of nursing in England- -was without foundation. The evidence is clear that she did not nurse a day in her life in England, or elsewhere. (She was a businesswoman; during the Crimean War she kindly gave first aid on several occasions, and was a friend to many, but did nothing to develop the profession.)

We entirely agree that Mrs Seacole’s life deserves celebration. Our concern is simply that she should not be credited with Nightingale’s work, or that Nightingale should be denigrated to make space for her.

To name Seacole “Pioneer Nurse” on a statue at Nightingale’s hospital would be seen by many people to be an outrage. St Thomas’ was the home of the first nurse training school in the world, and the base of Nightingale’s decades-long work in mentoring nurses from many countries, and sending out trained nurses to help found the profession in other countries.

The proposed placing of the statue facing the Houses of Parliament is particularly troublesome. Seacole took no interest in the political process, while Nightingale was an astute political activist all her life. She wrote briefs and reports for Parliamentary committees on health care and lobbied Cabinet ministers and MPs.

Placing the statue somewhere else in Lambeth would make sense. There is already a Seacole statue in Paddington, near where she lived. She never worked or lived in Lambeth, but there is a family connection through relatives of her late (English) husband, Edwin Seacole. His sister, Maria Seacole, married a James Kent in 1832, and their son’s marriage in due course produced a granddaughter, Florence Seacole Kent, born in 1861.

The 1881 Census shows her living in Brixton. On 14 April 1883, she married William Frederick Tilt at St Paul, Brixton. In 1901 she was a widow, still living in Brixton.

In 2020 the world will celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. She is still highly respected in most of the world, especially in India, Japan and China, and many will be coming to London to mark the occasion. Are visitors to discover that someone else has replaced her as the “Pioneer Nurse” at her own hospital?

We draw this complex matter to your attention, with two requests:

1.that Lambeth begin to consider how to celebrate the Nightingale bicentenary and

2.to find a more appropriate place for a Seacole statue than at Nightingale’s hospital.

Yours sincerely

Dear Mrs Matthews,

Thank you for your letter (Our Ref LP/2015-04/8170) to Councillor Peck, The Mayor of Lambeth and Cabinet Members in respect of the Mary Seacole Statue proposed for St Thomas’ Hospital. As you may know, Lambeth Council’s role in this process was as the Planning Authority. The Planning Application – 11/04574/FUL has already been approved.

As Lambeth Council is not the proposer or owner of the statute it is not for Lambeth to suggest or promote an alternative site, especially as a site has already been approved after following the proper process. In these circumstances, I would suggest that you present your arguments and requests directly to the Guy’s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust to determine if they are willing to amend either the wording on the Statute or consider an alternative location in line with your representations

In respect, of the celebration of Florence Nightingale’s bicentenary we would of course be interested in in supporting you and others with promoting and developing events in the borough to mark this significant milestone. Our Events team (telephone 020 7926 6207) would be happy to offer advice and assistance on holding events in Lambeth, I would also suggest that you review this guide to holding events in Lambeth – ‘Outdoor events in Lambeth’ In addition, the following websites – http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/leisure-parks-and-libraries/lambeth-events/holding-an-event-in-a-lambeth-park-or-open-space-guide & http://www.londoneventstoolkit.co.uk/ , provide excellent advice. The Council’s archive service may also prove to be a useful resource and contact with planning your arrangements, including the Landmark service – Lambeth Archives Image Collection.

Whilst I know that this was not the answer you were hoping for I hope that the above information is of some use to you.

Michael Warren

PA to Councillor Lib Peck, Leader of Lambeth Council

Dr Peter Carter, chief executive, and
Cecilia Anim, president
Royal College of Nursing
20 Cavendish Sq
London W1G 0RN

April 5, 2015

Dear Dr Carter and Ms Anim

We continue to be concerned with the wildly inaccurate presentation of Mary Seacole by the RCN, in the Nursing Standard, your website and events. We believe that the life of Mrs Seacole deserves celebration, for her own merits. Instead, she has been appropriated as the equal or even superior to Nightingale, something she never claimed: see her delightful memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands.

We note with dismay the continued denigration of Florence Nightingale, the major founder of nursing, a major hospital reformer and the early, great, visionary of public health care.

Her bicentenary will be celebrated in 2020, yet it is difficult to imagine any appropriate celebration in the U.K., given the ongoing disparagement of her life, contributions and character.

Not one nurse or nursing organization protested when the BBC put out an “educational” video on Mary Seacole which had an actress portray Nightingale as a racist, with an entirely fictional anti-black script. We protested and, after a year and a half of runaround by BBC official, the BBC Trustees ruled that the video was “materially inaccurate.”

We received no answer to our enquiries to the RCN in 2012, followed up in 2013, as to what Seacole did to pioneer nursing.

Yet stories published in the Nursing Standard repeatedly call her a “pioneer” nurse, and equate her work with that of Nightingale, without ever mentioning a specific. We are unaware of any work Seacole did to found the nursing profession. She gave first aid on three occasions on the battlefield during the Crimean War, post-battle–after serving sandwiches and wine to spectators.

This was greatly appreciated, but hardly qualifies as “battlefield nursing” or makes her a nursing “pioneer.”

In her memoir, Seacole recounts visiting the Land Transport Corps Hospital (one nursed by Nightingale’s team) to distribute magazines and visit. Again, this shows her to have been a kind volunteer, but has nothing to do with founding a profession.

Seacole’s own book reports her use of lead acetate and mercury chloride in “remedies” for cholera–indeed she considered that adding lead acetate helped with “stubborn” cases (WA p 31).

Doctors, it must be acknowledged, were then using such mistaken “remedies,” and the effective cure for cholera and other bowel diseases, oral rehydration therapy, only came into use in the 1960s. Seacole could hardly have known better, but to credit her with “pioneering” nursing, and even being a leading “nurse practitioner,” is simply wrong. Yet she is routinely held to be “role model” for nurses.

We query Jean Gray’s presentation of Nightingale, Seacole and Cavell as “equal heroes,” who deserve “equal recognition” (Nursing Standard 28,4 p. 28). Cavell, of course, is celebrated for her bravery and patriotism, not nursing–her life was cut short. Cavell, incidentally, trained at a hospital where Nightingale mentored the matron, and was night superintendent at a workhouse infirmary where Nightingale got trained nursing started.

There are many nurses apart from Nightingale who made excellent contributions to early nursing, yet they are ignored.

Gray should have told us exactly what Cavell and Seacole did that of the same significance to Nightingale’s decades of work to build the profession. Why do you continue to ignore significant, authentic pioneers?

Cecilia Anim is quoted as calling for celebration of “Seacole’s uniqueness and commitment to the profession” (Nursing Standard 27,37 p 10). She was certainly unique, and had many fine qualities, but we ask what did she do for the nursing profession?

We note that the Nursing Standard does not permit, or even send out for peer review, articles that take a critical view of Seacole, no matter how well documented they are. This is unworthy of a professional journal.

The contention that Mary Seacole was “rejected” as a nurse by Nightingale, or someone representing her, is all too frequently made, but is contradicted by available primary sources, including her own memoir. Seacole never submitted the required application. Moreover, she was late starting her informal calls on government offices to apply: Nightingale certainly had already left, and probably the second team had left, too. No one in the RCN seems willing to acknowledge that Seacole’s trip to London in autumn 1854 was to attend to her gold stocks, not to become an army nurse, that it was only after 2 months of unsuccessful efforts on those stocks that she decided to try to become an army nurse–too late. Yet this is clear in her memoir (WA, p. 71).

Nightingale called for nurses to honest, truthful and trustworthy in their work. We concur, adding only that this is a good standard for nursing organizations and journals as well.

Yours sincerely