Ep 40: Mary Seacole: Nurse, Doctress & Social Entrepreneur

The Hidden History of Business Podcast

There's a reason Mary Seacole was voted the greatest black Briton in history. Long before Silicon Valley coined the term "social entrepreneurship," she was using her business savvy to address society's urgent medical needs and subsidize medical treatments for the poor. Did you know that indigenous people in the Caribbean understood germ theory hundreds of years before Europeans jumped on the band wagon? Mary did! She combined that understanding with modern medical techniques to combat cholera, infection, and disease in the Caribbean, the Crimean War, and England. We'll also discuss the snarky things Karl Marx said about the British and French, why comparing Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale is misguided, and that time Mary sold refreshments to "battle spectators" in the 1850s. Links & Additional Resources In 2004, Mary Seacole was voted the greatest black Briton; you can read a brief biography at www.100greatblackbritons.com. A watercolor painting of Mary Seacole, c. 1850 (unidentified artist). (Credit - public domain) Sketch of Mary Seacole drawn by William Simpson during the Crimean War, 1855. (Credit - public domain) Drawing of Mary Seacole's "British Hotel" in the Crimea by Lady Alicia Blackwood. (Credit - public domain) Seacole describes it in her autobiography: Let me, in a few words, describe the British Hotel. It was acknowledged by all to be the most complete thing there. It cost no less than £800. The buildings and yards took up at least an acre of ground, and were as perfect as we could make them. The hotel and storehouse consisted of a long iron room, with counters, closets, and shelves; above it was another low room, used by us for storing our goods, and above this floated a large union-jack. Attached to this building was a little kitchen, not unlike a ship's caboose – all stoves and shelves. In addition to the iron house were two wooden houses, with sleeping apartments for myself and Mr. Day, outhouses for our servants, a canteen for the soldiery, and a large enclosed yard for our stock, full of stables, low huts, and sties. Everything, although rough and unpolished, was comfortable and warm; and there was a completeness about the whole which won general admiration. The reader may judge of the manner in which we had stocked the interior of our store from the remark, often repeated by the officers, that you might get everything at Mother Seacole's, from an anchor down to a needle. The front cover of Mary Seacole's bestselling autobiography, published in 1857. Here's a passage from the beginning of her life: My mother kept a boardinghouse in Kingston, and was, like very many of the Creole women, an admirable doctress; in high repute with the officers of both services, and their wives, who were from time to time stationed at Kingston. It was very natural that I should inherit her tastes; and so I had from early youth a yearning for medical knowledge and practice which has never deserted me... I saw so much of her, and of her patients, that the ambition to become a doctress early took firm root in my mind; and ...