At the time Florence Nightingale was being made into a legend of the establishment classes in the form of the lady with the lamp , an amazing career running counter to all the points and directions of civilised prevailing values as well as accepted social norms was acted out by an extraordinary character born in the plantation colony of Jamaica in circa 1805.History thereafter brought out the life of Florence Nightingale to the apex of standard historical educational curriculum height of discourse , and covered the story of the half-caste illegitimate child from a colonial outpost who rose to the very top of the public social status only to be submerged by the debris of time from the very point she died in 1881.Only now is the special place of Mary being given the recognition it deserves , including a set place in the national educational curriculum for all primary schools in England.This lecture by the feminist orientated historical scholar Jane Robinson helped to put the neglected story of a remarkable industrious Woman into the mainstream place it deserves in the UK today.
Jane Robinson has written a biography of the unsung Mary tale of her tremendous will to achieve her goals despite systematic and stinging rejections from society and influential individuals alike.Seacole wrote a Book at the time that is widely regarded as a superbly crafted story effusing the undaunted spirit of a person that refused to be pigeon-holed or blocked by a society that was blatantly racist and well as inherently restrictive to allowing woman to use their talents to contribute to the greater good of collective society.The story is now published within the Penguin 20th classics series.
Below is a newspiece about the campaign to have a statue made in the honour of Mary Seacole on the banks of the Thames facing the Houses of Parliament.
Some Historians of the Marxist persuasion may raise an eyebrow , or go apeshit , whilst others that prefer to look at a situation from the hindsight vantage point of a century or so may look to the experience of Mary in the slightly false prism and light of her being a helpful cog in the very entity that materially and systematically forced up the very ingrained prejudicial attitude which kept her and her community from progressing to the next level , her desire to go and serve for the military in the brutal and callous suppression of the Indian Mutiny in 1857 being a disconcerting example engendering uncomfortable feelings of one victim of imperialism giving aid to the same imperial entity subjugating another set of victims , but the story of Mary Seacole should be seen in the light of an individual surmounting barriers and severe prejudicial discrimination to achieve their particular calling to the very best of their ability in a difficult restrictive age.
Certainly , as a member of a minority community will relate to very tellingly from their own experience , the journey of Mary having to freelance and privately fund her ambitions , usually from her own entrepreneurial schemes in order to achieve goals without the debilitatingly excruciating glass ceilings of a mainstream career is something all minorities in the UK will understand very deeply.Mary Seacoles contribution to where we are today should be understood and appreciated on that level.
And finally a moving tale on the discovery of the only known portrait of Mary which was unearthed at a car boot sale:
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