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Incredible Women

by Lynne Wigmore

Incredible women who have done incredible things with little or no recognition at the time

Mary Seacole (23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881)

Born in Jamacia to a black mother and a white, Scottish, army officer father and, unlike many mixed-race children, born a ‘free person’. Her mother ran a respected lodging house in Kingston, but she was also a healer and taught Mary many of her skills using traditional Jamaican medicines.

A keen student from early childhood, Mary practised medicine on her dogs and cats, and on herself. By 1818, aged 12, Mary helped run the boarding house, where many of the guests were sick or injured soldiers. Three years later, she travelled to England with relatives and stayed for about a year. It was here she acquired knowledge about modern European medicine which supplemented her training in traditional Caribbean techniques.

Mary married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in 1836 and they set up a store at Black River, but Edwin sadly died just eight years later. Continuing to minister to the sick, in 1850 she nursed victims of both the Kingston cholera epidemic and also in Panama in 1851. In 1853, Mary returned to Kingston, caring for victims of a yellow fever epidemic. The medical authorities invited her to supervise nursing services in at the British Army’s headquarters, and she re-organised New Blundell Hall, her mother’s former lodging house rebuilt after a fire, to function as a hospital. Mary had no children of her own, but the strong maternal attachments she formed with these soldiers, and her feelings for them, would later drive Mary to the Crimea.

Mary travelled to England and approached the British War Office, asking to be sent as an army nurse to the Crimea where she had heard there were poor medical facilities for wounded soldiers. She was refused. Undaunted, she funded her own trip to Crimea, where she established the British Hotel with Thomas Day, a relative of her husband, Edwin. The hotel provided a place of respite for sick and recovering soldiers. Florence Nightingale’s famous military hospital was situated hundreds of miles from the frontline in Scutari, but Mary’s hotel near Balaclava was much closer to the fighting. Mary was able to visit the battlefield, sometimes under fire, to nurse the wounded. Indeed, she nursed sick soldiers so kindly that they called her ‘Mother Seacole.’

When the war ended, Mary went back to Britain with very little money. Soldiers wrote letters to newspapers, praising what she had done. Soldiers and members of the Royal family supported her and in 1857 a fund-raising gala was held for her over four nights on the banks of the River Thames. Over 80,000 people attended.

After her death in 1881 she was largely forgotten for almost a century, until nurses from the Caribbean visited her grave in Northwest London. In 2004, Mary was voted the Greatest Black Briton and in 2016, a statue of her was finally unveiled in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer (May 27, 1818 – December 30, 1894)

Born in Homer, New York Amelia started working as a teacher, educating students within her community. In 1840, she married David Bloomer and moved to the area of Seneca Falls. Bloomer quickly became active in the local political and social community, joining a church and volunteering with the local temperance society. Noticing his wife’s fervour for social reform, David encouraged her to use writing as an outlet and she began to write a column for his New York newspaper which covered a variety of women’s topics. In 1848, Bloomer attended the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention which drove her to create “The Lily” - a newspaper solely dedicated to women, thus becoming the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women. At first, she only addressed the temperance movement, however due to demand the bi-weekly paper expanded to cover other news and is a model for later periodicals focused on women's suffrage.

Bloomer’s most influential work was in dress reform. After noticing the health hazards and restrictive nature of corsets and dresses, Bloomer pushed for women to adopt a new style of dress. Although not designed by her, the pantaloons, now called Bloomers, not only illustrated a departure from the accepted dress for women but also came to represent activists in the women’s rights movement. The style of dress attracted much ridicule from conservative men and women.

She served as the President of the Iowa Suffrage Association from 1871-1873. However, her relentless dedication to temperance often found her ideas at odds with other activists who wanted to focus on other topics in the women’s rights movement. Nonetheless, she never abandoned her commitment to the movement’s agenda.