ABSTRACT
Mary Grant Seacole was a woman of mixed race, born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. She learned nursing skills from her Jamaican mother who kept a home for invalid soldiers. By the time of the Crimean War, Seacole was a widow. She approached the War Office in London, desiring to become an army nurse. When she was turned down, Seacole funded her own passage to the Crimea. She established the British Hotel near Balaclava at a spot she called Spring Hill. Here she provided food and lodging to sick and convalescing officers. Seacole also went onto battlefields frequently in order to tend to wounded soldiers. In 1857, she returned to England bankrupt and sick. The press took up her cause, and thousands contributed to a fund for her. Later that year she published her memoir. Seacole died in 1881.
