A 19th-century Jamaican nurse will become the first Black woman from outside the UK ever featured on a Royal Mint coin.
Mary Seacole was a lot of things. A nurse, a writer, a hotelier, a world traveller and a businesswoman, among other things.
Now her face will be seen across countless coins produced by the Royal Mint as the coin-maker honours her life as Black History Month begins.
Trevor Sterling, chair of Mary Seacole Trust, said: ‘This is another significant historical moment and it pays tribute to Mary Seacole as a symbol of the NHS, diversity, social justice and also in understanding the diverse contributions that have been made to this country.
‘This is a very proud moment, and I’m looking forward to travelling to Jamaica to honour Mary Seacole Day to present the coin to the new Jamaican High Commissioner and gift a coin to the Institute of Jamaica.
‘It’s our way of saying thank you, we know that you suffered a loss as a result, and we acknowledge what’s been given to us.’
The coin comes after a 12-year campaign which raised £500,000 to honour her as a statue at St Thomas’ Hospital London – the first statue of a named Black female in the UK.
Sculptor Martin Jennings, who designed the statue, also created the design for the coin’s reverse, which features King Charles.
Mary was born in Jamaica in 1805 to a Scottish soldier and a Jamaican woman who was skilled in traditional medicine and treated the sick at her boardinghouse.
She tended to British troops wounded during the Crimean War at a time when many Black people in the Caribbean were forced to work as slaves.
The conflict between a coalition of nations – Britain included – against Russia lasted from October 1853 until February 1856.
Mary, according to the Mary Seacole Trust, arrived in England in 1854 and asked the British War Office to be sent as an army nurse to Crimea.
But army officials refused, despite her years of experience as a healthcare worker, such as treating victims of cholera and yellow fever in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital.
Mary, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer. She saved enough money to journey to Crimea herself and set up a hotel to treat the injured with a relative of her husband, Edwin.
‘At the time, Mary was as well-known in Britain as Florence Nightingale,’ the trust says, adding that the British Hotel near Balaclava she founded offered accommodation for sick and recovering soldiers.
The charity added: ‘Mary was able to visit the battlefield, sometimes under fire, to nurse the wounded.
‘Indeed, she nursed sick soldiers so kindly that they called her ‘Mother Seacole”.’
After the war finished, a financially downtrodden Mary returned to Britain.
But the many personnel she treated sent letters to newspapers thanking her, bringing her into the national spotlight and even saw a four-day fundraising gala held for her, attended by 80,000.
The Times’ war correspondent, William Russell, wrote of Mary in 1857: ‘I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.’
Yet in the century following her death in 1881, Mary was all but left out of the history books
Her 1957 best-selling autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, was the first autobiography written by a Black woman in Britain.
‘Time is a great restorer,’ she wrote, ‘and changes surely the greatest sorrow into a pleasing memory.’
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