120. Two remarkable women

Mary Seacole, Jamaican and Mixed Race, and Florence Nightingale, White and from the English middle class, both in different ways did extraordinary work in Crimea as nurses. They both opened the doors to a different kind of nursing, in which practical steps such as good hygiene was vital, alongside a caring attitude towards patients. The two met but never worked together.

For the kind of radical change in nursing they ushered in, both showed the necessary qualities to an impressive extent. However, Seacole found that the authorities, and even Nightingale herself, made it far harder for her to be allowed to give all she could to the sick and wounded of Crimea. Which makes it hard not to ask, as she did, whether it might not be because her “blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs”.

Illustration: Mary Seacole by Albert Charles Challen, National Portrait Gallery 6856 (image reversed left-to-right), and Florence Nightingale by Jerry Barrett, National Portrait Gallery 2939
Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.