Everyone has heard of Florence Nightingale the ‘lady with the lamp’ who took her company of nurses out to the Crimea during the war after hearing of the appalling conditions wounded soldiers were enduring.
There have been films, books and programmes and all the stories, myths, legends movies and tv programmes focused on this person, another has been forgotten. This is Mary Jane Seacole.
Mary Jane was a British Jamaican business woman and ‘nurse’ who set up what was called the British Hotel behind the lines during the Crimean War. She described it a ‘mess table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers’ and provided help for wounded servicemen on the battlefield. She was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991 and, in 1994, was voted the greatest Black Briton.
Seacole applied to the War Office for permission to join the British nurses being sent out to Crimea which was refused. So she raised the funds to travel independently and set up the hotel with a business partner Thomas Day. After the war she was declared bankrupt and faced destitution but because of her popularity and affection among servicemen they raised money for her.
After her death she was largely forgotten but today is celebrated as a woman who made a success of her career despite experiencing racial prejudice. She wrote a biography Wonderful adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, published in 1857 and is one of the earliest biographies of a mixed race woman. It should be mentioned that some aspects of its accuracy have been questioned by supporters of Nightingale who were also not happy at a statue of her being erected at St Thomas Hospital in 2016. It seems many of them view her as a charlatan whose fame is entirely due to clinging onto Florence Nightingale’s coat tails.
It is clear that Mary Seacole is a wonderful subject for a biographer and Helen Rappaport, the historian and writer who has long held an admiration for this subject and a desire to write about her, is now planning such a book.
Helen Rappaport is perhaps best known for her book on Victoria and Albert, a Magnificent Obsession and her wonderful trilogy about the Romanov family, Ekaterinburg, The Three Sisters and the Race to Save the Romanovs. She now feels it is time for a change of direction and her next project will be a book on the life of Mary Seacole.
Helen has decided to call this book In search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Cultural Icon and though Seacole is well known in the UK, she is an unfamiliar figure in other parts of the world. The USA is a case in point because, as Helen says ‘I know from past experience that the US market likes titles that really spell out the context’
She is currently working on this conundrum before the book is submitted for that market and this is where I would ask for help from Random Readers many of whom live in the US. Helen is asking for suggestions and feedback in other countries on how well known, or not, Mary Seacole is in your part of the world and what kind of title would sell a book about her to you.
The Romanovs and Queen Victoria need no introduction and their names will guarantee sales and interest all over the world, but Mary Seacole is a story that Helen really wants to tell. She has amassed a huge amount of research material and has been waiting to tell her story since 2003.
So Random Readers can you help with your thoughts and suggestions? I know that Helen would really appreciate it and I would be interested to see what you think as well. Helen is a favourite biographer and historian of mine and I have reviewed her books here on Random Jottings over the years.
I would love to review her book on Mary Seacole as well....
