In Search of Mary Seacole

The Making of a Cultural Icon

Helen Rappaport

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781398504455
• eBook ISBN:
  9781398504448
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

'An astonishingly rich story... wonderfully informative' The Times
'Rappaport does a terrific job of bringing respectful rigour to her account of Seacole's extraordinary life' Daily Mail
In Search of Mary Seacole is a superb and revealing biography that explores her remarkable achievements and unique status as an icon of the 19th century, but also corrects some of the myths that have grown around her life and career.

Having been raised in Jamaica and worked in Panama, Mary Seacole came to England in the 1850s and volunteered to help out during the Crimean War. When her services were turned down, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where she earned her reputation as a nurse and for her compassion. Popularly known as ‘Mother Seacole’, she was the most famous Black celebrity of her generation – an extraordinary achievement in Victorian Britain. She regularly mixed with illustrious royal and military patrons and they, along with grateful war veterans, helped her recover financially when she faced bankruptcy. However, after her death in 1881, she was largely forgotten for many years.

More recently, her profile has been revived and her reputation lionised, with a statue of her standing outside St Thomas's Hospital in London and her portrait - rediscovered by the author - is now on display in the National Portrait Gallery. In Search of Mary Seacole is the fruit of almost twenty years of research by Helen Rappaport into her story. The book reveals the truth about Seacole's personal life and her 'rivalry' with Florence Nightingale, along with much more besides. Often the reality proves to be even more remarkable and dramatic than the legend.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Prologue: ‘A Real Crimean Heroine’
• Chapter 1: ‘The Isle of Springs’
• Chapter 2: ‘My Father was a Soldier, of an Old Scotch Family’
• Chapter 3: ‘The Most Broiling Place in the Universe’
• Chapter 4: The Myth of Blundell Hall
• Chapter 5: ‘An Admirable Doctress’
• Chapter 6: ‘That Longing for Travel Which Will Never Leave Me’
• Chapter 7: ‘A Certain Arrangement Timidly Proposed by Mr Seacole’:
• Chapter 8: ‘Left Alone to Battle with the World’
• Chapter 9: ‘The Graveyard of Europeans’
• Chapter 10: ‘A Villainous Looking Little Place’
• Chapter 11: ‘The Yellow Woman with the Cholera Medicine’
• Chapter 12: ‘A Wild and Unprofitable Speculation’
• Chapter 13: An ‘Unknown Creole Woman’ Goes to War
• Chapter 14: ‘The Rightness of the Step I Had Taken’
• Chapter 15: A ‘Tea-shed’ at Balaclava
• Chapter 16: ‘A Good Mother, Doctor and Nurse to All’
• Chapter 17: ‘The Dark Maid of the Eastern War’
• Chapter 18: ‘Nothing in the World I Would Not Do For Them’
• Chapter 19: ‘The “Good Samaritan” in the Crimea’
• Chapter 20: ‘Am I Not a First-Class Woman?’
• Chapter 21: ‘Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands’
• Chapter 22: ‘My Sister Wanted to Go to India’
• Chapter 23: ‘That Brave and Charitable Old Woman’
• Chapter 24: ‘Mrs Seacole’s Specific’
• Chapter 25: ‘A Niche in the Temple of Fame’
• Chapter 26: ‘The Identity of Mrs Seacole, A Little Yellow Woman’
• Chapter 27: The Making of a Cultural Icon
• Photographs
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright