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]

Dear Baronesses Amos, Benjamin and Scotland

We ask, how could three smart baronesses get it so wrong? We refer to your remarks made regarding the unveiling of the Mary Seacole statue at St Thomas’ Hospital. They repeat, uncritically, the usual propaganda of the Seacole campaign.

1. The “pioneer nurse” claim, but no one, from the Dept of Health through the RCN will say what she pioneered or where and when she nursed. During the Crimean War, she gave out Punch magazine to patients at the Land Transport Hospital near her business. She gave them a plum pudding and mince pies on New Year’s Day 1856. This is hardly nursing! Seacole added lead and mercury to her cholera “remedies” and used emetics and purging for bowel patients, which dehydrate, when rehydration is needed.

2. Contrary to the ITV news report, which had interviews with Baronesses Benjamin and Scotland, Seacole made no “towering contribution” to public life. She was kind and generous and she left an excellent memoir. Baroness Scotland is out of line by equating the contributions of the two “great women,” one white and one black. Yes, the contributions of black people should be acknowledged and celebrated, Mrs Seacole was a businesswoman who never nursed at all! She sold fine wines and meals to officers, while Nightingale nursed and got the filthy hospitals cleaned up, laundries and kitchens established for the benefit of British soldiers.

3. We entirely share Baroness Benjamin’s view that blacks should be celebrated for their contribution. The Nightingale Society has proposed a genuine black pioneer nurse, Mrs K.A. Pratt, to the Dept of Health to be honoured. We do not oppose honouring blacks, but oppose the use of misinformation, so blatant in the case of Mrs Seacole. Lynn McDonald’s Mary Seacole: The Making of the Myth, 2014, gives bios of six minority nurses who deserve to be honoured, all with excellent credentials.

4. The remark that we should stop being NIMBYs badly misses the point. St Thomas’ Hospital was for more than a century the home of the Nightingale School, the first nursing school in the world, important for establishing the profession in many countries. To have a statue at it honouring Mrs Seacole, albeit a decent woman, who gave out magazines and treats at a hospital, but who never nursed at one at all, is very wrong.

We would be happy to debate you on these points. We would provide you with a briefing. We think you owe the public retractions for your remarks. Plenty of information on the propaganda campaign is available. See www.maryseacole.info.

[signed by 14 members of the Nightingale Society]

August 7, 2016

Dear MP

It is probably no coincidence that the unveiling of the Mary Seacole statue at St Thomas’ Hospital, June 30, was set to coincide with major attention to Brexit. The unveiling was also the occasion on the awarding of the first History Hoax award, to the Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt, for promoting Mary Seacole as a founder of nursing and a “Hero of Healthcare.” The nominator wrote:

In erroneously omitting Florence Nightingale from her role as founder of nursing, public health visionary and pioneer in statistical analysis to improving public health and save lives, the programme instead honoured Mary Seacole for nursing, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson for women in medicine, Edward Jenner for medicine, and Nye Bevan for the Healthcare system. All deserve credit for their contribution, but not to the exclusion of Florence Nightingale, whose quality and quantity of health impacts were far greater.

Runner-up in the History Hoax awards is Sir Hugh Taylor, chair of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, for justifying the statue site at what was the Nightingale School of Nursing, and issuing a fallacious “research” statement making Seacole a “heroine who gave her life’s work in support” of the early development of nursing (20 July 2011). Yet he can’t give one example of any nursing by Seacole whatsoever.

The announcement of the unveiling resulted in yet another false achievement for Seacole, that she was “mentioned in dispatches,” an honour reserved for gallantry in battle. Her 3 battlefield excursions (she missed the major ones) took place post-battle, after selling wine and sandwiches to spectators. Mrs Seacole was a kind and generous businesswoman, but did not frequent battlefields “under fire” or pioneer nursing.

The Nightingale Society supports honouring her for her own life, but will continue to protest the re-writing of history to give her credit for Nightingale’s work.

Yours sincerely

[signed by 14 members of the Nightingale Society]

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)

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.

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.

Rt Hon George Osborne, PC, MP
Chancellor of the Exchequer
November 30, 2015

Dear Mr Osborne

The massive grant to the Mary Seacole statue is misplaced in three important respects: (1) Seacole was not a nurse, let alone a “Pioneer Nurse,” nor ever claimed to be one (in her book, “nurses” are Nightingale and her nurses); (2) the place is wrong, as St Thomas’ Hospital was for more than a century the home of the Nightingale School of Nursing, the first professional training school in the world, from which pioneers went out to bring the standards of the new profession to other countries. (3) It was Nightingale, not Seacole, who prepared briefs for committees, wrote and met with MPs and Cabinet ministers to press for reforms in nursing and health care.The process was flawed from the beginning. The Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust promised consultation on the statue, then made its decision without any (or consultation with an expert), behind closed doors. The high-circulation journal of the Royal College of Nursing, the Nursing Standard, does not permit articles critical of claims made by the campaign.

Mrs Seacole was an admirable, generous businesswoman, who deserves celebration. She should not, however, be credited with the work of another person. You should insist on a different site for the statue. Mrs Wendy Mathews, a Lambeth resident and former governor at St Thomas’ made a proposal at the Lambeth planning committee meetings.

How well she represents “black Britons” will likely be seriously 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 is a fine idea. However, it should not be associated with Seacole, who ran a business for officers, for profit, during the Crimean War, not a hospital for British soldiers, as is often incorrectly claimed. Did she put herself in “harm’s way”? According to her memoir, she went onto the battlefield three times during the war (she missed the first three battles as she was busy in London attending to her gold investments). The dates are in her book, as are the details of her sales of wine and sandwiches to spectators. Her forays onto the battlefield were post-battle, as noted by the Times correspondent, who was also on the battlefield, post-battle, to write up his stories.

Mrs Seacole was an honourable person who does not deserve to made a laughing stock. The statue as currently conceived will become known as a “History Hoax,” site for the giving out of History Hoax awards.

Yours sincerely

[14 members of the Nightingale Society]

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]

Lord Soley, as chair of the Mary Seacole Memorial Fund Appeal, has announced that he has approached the army, not specifying at what level, regarding a memorial garden to be identified with Mary Seacole, with seats named in honour of nurses killed in conflict zones. Since there is a plan to have a Seacole statue in the garden of St Thomas’ Hospital, perhaps the intention is to expand that site-currently an eyesore-for the purpose. Or perhaps he has asked the Army to find a site. Could you clarify if any inquiries are in progress?

You may or not be aware of the close connection of St Thomas’ Hospital with Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), who headed the first team of British women to nurse in war. The nursing school she founded at St Thomas’, the first in the world, and which trained army nurses as well as civilian, was paid for by a fund raised in her honour, largely by the army, late in the Crimean War. That site remained the headquarters of nursing for more than a century, sending out trained nurses to introduce professional standards in hospitals throughout Britain and the world.
Mary Seacole was a businesswoman who ran, in effect, an officers’ club 1855-56. It was not a hospital or clinic, and she did not nurse the sick and wounded on the battlefield, as is so often claimed. She visited the local Land Transport Corps Hospital, near her business, to distribute magazines at it and send the occasional treat. This voluntary work was much appreciated, but to confuse it with the founding of the modern profession of nursing is nonsense.

Mrs Seacole sometimes called a “battlefield nurse,” when her forays onto the battlefield happened on three occasions, post-battle, after selling sandwiches and wine to spectators. She missed the first three, major, battles of the war as she was busy in London attending to her gold-mining investments (she had previously been in Panama with a business for men heading for the California Gold Rush). This is perfectly clear in her memoir, but her campaigners instead claim that she rushed to London to volunteer as a nurse!

We would be happy to furnish further details if any consideration is to be given to this memorial garden proposal. A website is available: www.maryseacole.info/

There is much to be said for the idea of a memorial garden for nurses, but it should be linked to real nurses who did give their lives to nurse in war.

Yours sincerely
(signed by 15 members of the Nightingale Society)

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