course materials

1. Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale Paper
Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale Paper ON Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale
PaperAPA format.Begin with an introductory paragraph that includes the purpose
statement. The body of the paper should include levels of heading that keep the writer
focused and on track. For example, this paper would have four level one headings not
including the introductory paragraph or conclusion.1. Identify and provide rationale for the
selected nursing leader.2. Describe the historical background of the selected nursing
leader.3. Explain the effect the selected nursing leader had on the practice of profession
nursing today.4. Provide a prediction of the future needs of nursing based on the selected
nursing leader.Use the resources on the attachments for your references.Mary Seacole and
Florence Nightingale Paperattachment_1attachment_2attachment_3Unformatted
Attachment PreviewDEBATE Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole on nursing and health
care Lynn McDonald Accepted for publication 5 October 2013 Correspondence to L.
McDonald: e-mail: lynnmcd@uoguelph.ca Lynn McDonald PhD LLD (Hon) Professor
Emerita University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada M C D O N A L D L . ( 2 0 1 4 ) Florence
Nightingale and Mary Seacole on nursing and health care. Journal of Advanced Nursing
70(6), 1436–1445. doi: 10.1111/ jan.12291 Abstract Aims. The purpose of this article is to
correct inaccurate information about both Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale, material
that promotes Seacole as a pioneer nurse and heroine, while either ignoring Nightingale or
trivializing her contribution. Background. Nursing journals have been prominent in
promoting inaccurate accounts of the contribution of Seacole to nursing. Some have
intermittently published positive material about Nightingale, but none has published
redress. Design. Discussion paper. Data. Primary sources from 1855–2012 were found,
which contradict some key claims made about Seacole. Further sources – not included here
– are identified, with a website reference. Implications for Nursing. It is argued that
Nightingale remains relevant as a model for nurses, with the many crises in patient care and
continuing challenges of hospital safety. Conclusion. Greater accuracy and honesty are
required in reporting about nursing heroes. Without these, great ideas and examples can be
lost to nursing and health care. Keywords: Crimean War, Florence Nightingale, Mary
Seacole, nursing, pioneers of health care Introduction The promotion of Jamaican
businesswoman and ‘doctress’ Mary Seacole (1805–1881) as the pioneer nurse, to replace
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) in that role, was given considerable credence early in
2013, with her being named ‘pioneer of health care’ by the UK Department of Health in its
new Leadership Awards programme. She had already been dubbed ‘pioneer nurse,’ words

2. to be engraved on a bronze 1436 statue of her planned for St Thomas’ Hospital, home, for
more than a century, of the Nightingale School of Nursing, and base of Nightingale’s more
than 40 years of work establishing professional nursing and mentoring nursing leaders
from around the world. Both ‘pioneering’ and ‘heroine’ appear on the plaque for Seacole at
Brunel University’s Mary Seacole Building, opened by the Queen in 2006. In 2006, Seacole
was also named one of ten ‘great Britons,’ along with Winston Churchill, William
Shakespeare and © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd JAN: DEBATE Why is this research needed?
• A great deal of inaccurate information about Mary Seacole has been published in the past
30 years. • Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale PaperThe place of Florence Nightingale
has, concomitantly, been played down in the past 30 years. The contributions of any pioneer
must be judged by a careful assessment of reliable sources. What are the key findings? •
Primary sources show that contentions made about Seacole’s contribution to nursing in
general and also during the Crimean War in the Crimean War do not stand up to scrutiny. •
A careful look at Nightingale’s work shows that it continues to be relevant to current issues
in health care and nursing. How should the findings be used to influence policy/
practice/research/education? • Modern health care would benefit from the application of
Nightingale’s principles of compassion, proper training and supervision in nursing, and
monitoring of actual practice. • The proper place of both Mary Seacole and Florence
Nightingale should be re-examined by scholars of nursing history. Charles Darwin, on a
series of postage stamps in honour of the founding of the National Portrait Gallery. Three
other women were on that list: suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, author Virginia Woolf and
founder of the hospice movement, Cicely Saunders, but Nightingale is conspicuously absent.
The announcement called Seacole, ‘the famous Jamaican nurse,’ and ‘a notable
humanitarian, whose ‘hands-on’ approach to nursing has become an inspiration to nurses
today’ (National Portrait Gallery Press Release 2006). Background for the Seacole
campaign has built strongly in the nursing profession, aided by major media outlets. The
2013 Leadership Awards programme is ed by two nursing unions, the Royal College of
Nursing and Unison, both of which promote the placing of her statue at St Thomas’ hospital,
London, where Nightingale established her first school of nursing. Unison has further called
for the removal of Nightingale as founder of nursing (BBC Online News 1999). The
programme brings Seacole into an elite group of four ‘pioneers,’ with Dr Edward Jenner, of
smallpox vaccine fame, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman medical dean and
Aneurin Bevan, the Cabinet minister who © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Real pioneer and
hero brought in the National Health Service in 1948. However, Jenner did produce a vaccine,
Garrett Anderson was a medical dean and Bevan did establish the NHS, while evidence for
Seacole’s role in pioneering health care, or any work in public health, is scarce. Mary Seacole
and Florence Nightingale PaperThe announcement was not specific about what she had
pioneered or done. A Nursing Standard editorial further raised the ‘pioneer’ honour to that
of ‘hero’ of health care, again without specifying what that heroic contribution was (Scott
2013). In the above presentation of Seacole, Nightingale is absent, although she qualifies
eminently as a pioneer, not only for founding the first secular training school for nurses in
the world in 1860 but also for many hospital reforms (when hospitals were notoriously
unsafe), and effective measures for health promotion (when sanitation and nutrition

3. standards were dismal). She was a pioneer research methodologist, adept at presenting
data vividly to persuade UK government officials to make fundamental changes. Perhaps
her most important contribution to public health care was the reform of the workhouse
infirmaries, her goal from the time she first visited them in the 1840s, when her family did
not permit her to nurse. Visiting, however, she explained, only served to ‘break the visitor’s
heart,’ so she put it aside, to wait until she had the opportunity to bring in real reforms
(McDonald 2004 p. 237, p. 248, McDonald 2010 p. 141). Nightingale succeeded in having
trained nursing introduced into the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary in 1865, and also in
many London workhouses in the following few years. She pressed for legislative change,
with limited success. She took the first steps towards mentoring the first trained nurses
appointed matrons of London workhouse infirmaries (McDonald 2009). Given that there
were five patients in the workhouse infirmaries for everyone in a regular, civil hospital,
those reforms were crucial to upgrading the whole hospital system. This happened
gradually over the late nineteenth century, with Nightingale being involved at all points. The
National Health Service of 1948 is unthinkable without those reforms – when she set out
there were no nurses, and bed sharing was common, for example. Nevertheless, Nightingale
is dismissed as representing the past and many nurses promote Seacole as the new pioneer
of nursing. However, Seacole never did anything akin to regular hospital nursing, nor ever
claimed to have. She was a businesswoman, initially a lodging house proprietress and, later,
during the Crimean War, running a restaurant/bar/store/ takeaway and catering service
for officers. She was also a herbalist, a ‘doctress’ in her own terms and generous in giving
away remedies to those who could not pay. She gave such assistance as she could in
epidemics, when no remedies could help. She was kind to many people, officers and 1437 L.
McDonald ordinary soldiers. She gave first aid on the battlefield (postbattle) on several
occasions. She provided hot tea and lemonade to cold soldiers on the wharf awaiting
transport to hospital. She deserves much credit, but not as a pioneer nurse or a hero of
health care. Data sources The primary sources were Seacole’s own memoir, Nightingale’s
vast publications and correspondence, newspaper reports from the time and officers’
correspondence and memoirs. Discussion The Seacole promotion campaign An editorial by
James P Smith, founding Editor of JAN, in 1984 identified Seacole as a ‘Black British Nurse’
(Smith 1984), words not previously used for her, and ones she herself would have
vehemently rejected; she called herself ‘yellow’ (Seacole 1857 p. 27, p. 78, p. 79) and
‘brunette’ (p. 4); ‘blacks’ (p. 12, p. 19, p. 21, p.37, p. 38, p. 39, p. 45, p. 58, p. 66, p. 72, p. 138,
p. 141), ‘negroes’ (p. 42, p. 43, p. 44, p. 52, p. 69, p. 72) and ‘niggers’ (p. 20, p. 45, p. 48) were
other people, often her employees. These references, and many others shortly, from her
Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, refute most of the claims made for her
on nursing and medical skills, heroism, pioneering and race. Mary Seacole and Florence
Nightingale PaperThe JAN editorial contains such inaccuracies as the statement that Seacole
was ‘proud of her black blood,’ when, in fact, she disparaged those roots, differentiating
herself from ‘lazy’ Creoles (Seacole 2), while announcing her pride in her Scots blood (p. 1).
The JAN editorial also states that she was rejected ‘for the colour of her skin,’ for which
there is no firm evidence, and her own memoir shows that she never properly applied for a
position (Seacole 76). That she was ‘decorated for her services in the Crimea,’ is clearly

4. false, although this would become a common myth (medals went only to members of the
military). The editorial also accorded her, without giving any evidence, the ambition ‘to
nurse soldiers’ in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, with the rumour that the queen would not let
her – for which the only source is a comment of her sister’s to visitor Anthony Trollope
(Trollope 1868 p. 21), presumably based on what Seacole herself had told her. Seacole was
not only not ‘black,’ she was not British. When she left London for the Crimean War in 1855,
she was on her third UK visit. On the first, she was a child; on the second, old enough to
work, when she ed herself 1438 by selling Jamaican preserves and pickles (Seacole p. 4).
On the last, she had come from Panama to try to realize some profits from her gold mining
investments (p. 71). After some years back in Jamaica, post-Crimea, Seacole returned to
London in 1865, where she retired. She adapted well to British society, to become an early
successful Jamaican immigrant. She died in London in 1881. In 2004, she was named top of
a list of Great Black Britons. However, none of this makes her a ‘black British nurse.’ The
JAN editorial’s ‘Black British Nurse’ designation, however, has become standard language,
making for a sharp contrast with Nightingale as the ‘White British nurse,’ and the obvious
conclusion that the two were not treated equally; one being given due or too much credit,
the other denied it, probably for reasons of race. Sometimes Nightingale is blamed for
Seacole’s exclusion, although the only account of their meeting is Seacole’s, and she
reported it as friendly (Seacole 90–91). Nightingale had left for the war before Seacole had
formed the plan of going – she had gone to London for her gold stocks, not nursing soldiers.
Seacole’s own memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, is a fine book,
although readers must brace themselves for slurs on blacks, ‘niggers,’ Greeks and Turks.
Seacole grew up and continued to live in a prejudiced, White, world: she was herself three-
fourths White, had a White husband, White business partner and wholly White clientele.
She suffered prejudice on account of her one-fourth Black roots. Philosophically, she
believed in racial equality, and spoke well of Blacks who had managed to escape slavery in
America to make new lives for themselves in Panama. Smith (2007) continued to promote
Seacole, next in a letter to the editor of the Nursing Standard on the statue campaign. He
called those opposed to the statue at St Thomas’ ‘somewhat ridiculous’, insisting that
Seacole ‘was undoubtedly a hands-on practitioner.’ He now described her as ‘a mixed-race
British nurse,’ but again without saying where she nursed. Mary Seacole and Florence
Nightingale PaperThe Nursing Standard has become the main nursing publication to
promote Seacole. Examples of claims at variance with primary source data in it, the Nursing
Times, and other sources, are given on a website, with primary sources that show
otherwise. The website invites notification of any errors on its part, and undertakes to
correct them, but, to date, not a complaint has been received
(http://www.maryseacole.info/; accessed 22 August 2013). JAN itself contributed further
inaccuracies in by covering the 1994 launch of the first two sets of Seacole nursing awards,
announced by the then Secretary of State for Health, Brian Mawhiney (the NHS awards of
2013 are a third set). The minister accorded her ‘considerable nursing skills’ – unspecified –
and stated that she had made ‘a major © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd JAN: DEBATE
contribution to nursing the wounded in the Crimean War,’ although she missed the first
three, major, battles. He added a new credit, ‘as a nurse in and around London’ (Anonymous

5. 1994). No detail was given for any of those claims, and none is known. Seacole as ‘doctress,’
not ‘nurse’ The JAN editorial’s claim that Seacole was ‘well versed with the prognosis and
treatment of tropical diseases’ (Smith 1984) is simply unverifiable – we have only her word
for ‘successes’ – and her claims were modest for cholera and she made none for yellow fever
(Seacole pp. 59–63). She frankly admitted ‘lamentable blunders’ and allowed that medicines
she had used later made her ‘shudder’ (p. 31). She used ‘sugar of lead,’ or acetate of lead,
and mercury chloride in cholera remedies (p. 31). In recourse to toxic substances, she was
no worse than doctors of the time, as can be seen in numerous Lancet articles and medical
textbooks. Crimean War doctors also used such substances, although without claiming
success as a result (Smith 1858 vol. 2 pp. 70–71). Unhappily, they and she used substances
that intensified dehydration, when the effective treatment is the opposite: rehydration.
Seacole did no hospital nursing before, after or during the Crimean War. She never called
herself simply a ‘nurse,’ but she did use the combined expressions ‘doctress and nurse’ (p.
125), ‘nurse and doctress’ (p. 7) pre-Crimea and at the Crimea (p. 127), and ‘doctress, nurse,
and “mother”’ (p. 124). However, these instances do not pertain to hospital nursing. When
she said simply ‘nurse,’ during the Crimean War, she was referring to Nightingale or one of
her nurses (p. 76, p. 87, p. 90). She used the verb to ‘nurse’ in referring to home care she
gave in Jamaica in the last days of her patroness and her husband (p. 5), once in Panama for
a relative of her husband, later her business partner (p. 69); and once in the Crimean War
for an Artillery officer (p. 153). None of them was in hospital and for none did she give
details about the care they received. Seacole did donate ‘100 bottles of anti-cholera
medicine and 100 boxes of pills’ in a cholera epidemic (Mansion House Cholera Relief Fund
1866, p. 6A) in the UK. However, as the ingredients of those medicines were not specified–
and she was known to use harmful substances – it is not clear if her donation helped. During
the Crimean War, she was not nursing, but providing food and drink, for profit, to officers.
For the ordinary soldiers, there was a ‘canteen,’ but her services were unspecified (Seacole
p. 114). She announced, on printed cards, the intention of starting a ‘mess table and
comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers’ (p. 81), but © 2013 John Wiley &
Sons Ltd Real pioneer and hero she did not do this. She proceeded instead, on the advice of
chef Alexis Soyer, to furnish food and drink (Soyer 1857, p. 233). However, the Seacole
campaign literature claims that she started variously a hospital, sick bay, or hostel, to care
for, at her own expense, ordinary soldiers (McDonald 2012). These are at variance with the
primary sources. A timeline (Figure 1) gives Seacole’s occupations and activities, along with
those of Nightingale, all dated, and all based on primary sources. Nightingale’s are only a
selection of what she did on nursing, given space limitations. Mary Seacole and Florence
Nightingale PaperNightingale as pioneer Nightingale’s continuing legacy as a pioneer is set
out in a recent JAN editorial ‘Florence Nightingale – never more relevant than today’ (Lee et
al. 2013). To the many points on health promotion, disease prevention and patient care
made in it, one might add Nightingale’s pioneering work in evidence-based health care
(McDonald 2001). A great deal of inaccurate information continues to be promoted and the
laudable desire to be racially inclusive and provide a ‘black’ role model in health care is
doubtless part of the answer. However, many UK institutions promote this inaccurate story,
notably the National Portrait Gallery, Royal Mail, National Army Museum, Royal College of

6. Nursing, BBC and the Departments of Health and Education. The school system is another
source of incorrect information, on both Seacole and Nightingale, augmented by educational
material provided by the BBC. The BBC’s Horrible Histories is an extreme example, not the
original book, but the BBC YouTube for schoolchildren which uses the same name. A
segment with actors has Nightingale as a White nurse in uniform, literally shoving aside a
youngish, Black Seacole also in uniform, although, in reality, she was older, stout and
dressed as a restaurant proprietress. The Nightingale actress says that nursing is ‘for British
girls’ (http:// www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows/horrible-histories; accessed 22 August 2013),
words the real Nightingale never said and did not believe. Channel 4’s hour-long film, The
Real Angel of the Crimean War, makes its own case for Seacole while, again, discrediting
Nightingale. There was no apparent defence of Nightingale by nurses. Implications for
nursing Nursing leaders seem to be unembarrassed at being unable to provide any evidence
for the claims they make about Seacole. Letters by the Nightingale Society (2012) to both
the RCN and Unison on the incorrect information on their 1439 L. McDonald Figure 1
Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole timeline nursing, health care and other occupations.
1440 © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd JAN: DEBATE Real pioneer and hero Figure 1
(continued). © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1441 L. McDonald Figure 1 (continued). 1442 ©
2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd JAN: DEBATE Real pioneer and hero Figure 1 (continued).
websites simply went unanswered (Nightingale Society). Given Nightingale’s strong for
quality care in a public system, it is strange to see Unison’s failure to see her as an ally.
Indeed, in 1999, in urging that Nightingale no longer be celebrated as the founder of
nursing, it argued for replacing her with Elizabeth Fry, who founded an agency to provide
private care to those who could afford it. Conclusion Great accuracy and honesty are
required in reporting on nursing heroes. Without these, nurses and other healthcare
decision-makers risk losing an ongoing relevant source. High death rates from hospital-
acquired infections and prescription errors show how badly needed still are the careful data
collection and its application that Nightingale pioneered. Access to high-quality health care
remains an issue, even in most developed countries, where, again, Nightingale’s bold vision
sets the standard. Author contrib …Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale Paper