Mary Seacole (1805–1881)

Mary Jane Seacole (1805–1881) was a British-Jamaican nurse and businesswoman. During the Crimean War she set up the British Hotel, a place to nurse and to provide for sick and recovering soldiers who had been wounded on the battlefield. In 1857 she published the book Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, an autobiographical account of her travels which had led her to the Carribbean and to Central America. It was also the first autobiography by a black woman in Britain.

Mary Seacole, portrait, oil on panel, 1869, artist: Albert Charles Challen (1847-1881); source: © National Portrait Gallery, London, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw84190/Mary-Seacole, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.