Mary Seacole memorial — St Thomas’ Hospital
The first statue of a named Black woman in Britain, unveiled in 2016 in the gardens of St Thomas’ Hospital opposite the Palace of Westminster. Sculpted by Martin Jennings and unveiled in 2016 after a thirteen-year campaign, the bronze of Mary Seacole strides forward against a disc cast from the soil of the Crimean battlefield where she ran the British Hotel.
Seacole — Jamaican-born, of Scottish and Creole descent — was repeatedly refused permission to join Florence Nightingale’s nursing mission. She funded her own passage, set up shop near Balaclava, and tended sick and wounded soldiers from her ‘British Hotel’. She returned to England bankrupt; only an 1857 benefit raised by veterans rescued her finances.
The location — directly opposite Parliament — is deliberate. So is the soil.
People
Themes
Place
Hero image
- File:
/media/people/mary-seacole.jpg - Credit: Albert Charles Challen, 1869
- License: Public domain
- Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASeacole_-_Challen.jpg
Sources
- Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. London, 1857. — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13816
- Mary Seacole Trust — https://www.maryseacoletrust.org.uk/