Mary Seacole update

Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica. Her father was a Scottish soldier and her mother was of mixed race. During the Crimean War, Mary helped to look after the troops by feeding them and treating their wounds. She also went to the front line to tend to the wounded. In 1856 she returned to England penniless and remained this way until 1867 when the Seacole Fund was set up, supported by Queen Victoria. This provided her with enough money to continue practising as a ‘doctress’ until her death in 1881.

An interesting article in the Spectator about Mary Seacole. She was in the Crimea although no official records exist about her achievements there apart from her journal entries. She has university libraries names after her such as at University of Central England Nursing and Wolverhampton Nursing University. She has paintings hung up in colleges and now young kids learn about her in junior school.

The problem is however as Rob Liddle (spectator) points out, she didn't like 'niggers'.As the Black Voice newspaper also recently commented, So, there we have it, the most popular black hero in the UK would refer to her darker people as ‘ni***rs’. And she wasn’t doing it like some rap star hailing his bredrin. Here was a light-skinned woman who would never want to socialise with the black masses. An attitude that still continues in modern Jamaica.

http://www.voice-online.co.uk/content.php?show=16719

Dear oh dear, it seems the white liberals have got it wrong again. People find it patronizing when it is suggested that, it is so rare for a black person to excel in an area that when one does, we should build statues of them and name libraries in their honor. This is how it looks to me and it seems that black people in Britian feel the same way.

Obviously it should be Florence Nightingale if we are to have an iconic image of a British nurse. Florence Nightingales achievements include: Nightingale discovered that soldiers during peacetime, aged between 20 and 35 had twice the mortality rate of civilians. Using her statistics, she illustrated the need for sanitary reform in all military hospitals. While pressing her case, Nightingale gained the attention of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as well as that of the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston.

Her wishes for a formal investigation were granted in May 1857 and led to the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army. Nightingale hid herself from public attention, and became concerned for the army stationed in India. In 1858, for her contributions to army and hospital statistics Nightingale became the first woman to be elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

The following year, the Crimean War began and soon reports in the newspapers were describing the desperate lack of proper medical facilities for wounded British soldiers at the front. Sidney Herbert, the war minister, already knew Nightingale, and asked her to oversee a team of nurses in the military hospitals in Turkey. In November 1854, she arrived in Scutari in Turkey. With her nurses, she greatly improved the conditions and substantially reduced the mortality rate.

She returned to England in 1856. In 1860, she established the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital in London. Once the nurses were trained, they were sent to hospitals all over Britain, where they introduced the ideas they had learned, and established nursing training on the Nightingale model. Nightingale's theories, published in 'Notes on Nursing' (1860), were hugely influential and her concerns for sanitation, military health and hospital planning established practices which are still in existence today. She died on 13 August 1910.

In my opinion there should be no Mary Seacole statue because she didn't achieve enough. Nelson Mandela shouldn't have a statue either (sanctioned murder) but the liberals haven't accused him of terrorism yet. As for Obama's Nobel peace prise... enough said.

Original Spectator article below.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/rodliddle/5635428/mary-seacole-update.thtml