Nightingale’s defenders fi red back, insist-
ing that the criticism was misplaced, and
the attempt failed.
Meanwhile, a group in London re-
cently campaigned to recognize the con-
tributions of a diff erent woman in the
Crimean War : Mary Seacole, a black Ja-
maican entrepreneur who ran a restau-
rant for offi cers in Balaklava during the
war and sometimes prepared medicines
and conducted minor surgery on troops.
Champions of Seacole insisted that she
deserved the same kind of recognition
that Nightingale has enjoyed, and, after
years of lobbying, succeeded in erecting
a statue of Seacole at St. Thomas Hospi-
tal. The monument contains the words
of one of Seacole’s admirers, Times cor-
respondent Sir William Howard Russell:
“I trust that England will not forget one
who nursed her sick, who sought out her
wounded to aid and succour them, and
who performed the last offi ces for some
of her illustrious dead.”
The tribute outraged devotees of
Nightingale, who insist that Seacole de-
serves no such recognition. “British nurs-
es fell for the Seacole line,” says Lynn Mc-
Donald, who wrote a biography entitled
Mary Seacole: The Making of the Myth
that minimized her role as a nurse. Mc-
Donald claims that Seacole even harmed
some troops by treating dysentery with
lead and mercury. “She was feisty, inde-
pendent and set up her own business,”
McDonald says. “But what she mainly
did was provide meals and wine to offi -
cers in her restaurant and takeaway. I’d
be happy to have the statue disappear.”
The controversy would probably have
vexed Nightingale, who had a pleasant
encounter with Seacole in 1856, when the
Jamaican stopped in Scutari on the way
to Balaklava. Though Nightingale would
later express misgivings about reports of
hard drinking at Seacole’s restaurant, she
would mostly have warm words for her.
“I hear she has done a great deal of good
for the poor soldiers,” she would say, even
contributing to a fund for Seacole after
she was forced to declare bankruptcy in- Seacole returned the compliment,
praising Nightingale in her autobiogra-
78 SMITHSONIAN | March 2020Florence
Nightingale
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