Mary Seacole

Mary Seacole was a nurse and successful business woman during the mid-1800s.

She was a prolific traveler and used her skills in her homeland of Jamaica, throughout the Caribbean, in Panama, and on the Crimea peninsula during the Crimean War. She was also fiercely independent and when British authorities refused her help during the Crimean War, she made her own way.

Many forget her in favor of Florence Nightingale (a critic of Seacole's) as the mother of nursing but her experience and expertise in practical nursing surpassed Nightingale's.

She used her learnings in care and hygiene from Jamaican doctresses along with surgical techniques from Britain's growing medical community to prepare and dispense medicines, diagnose, perform minor surgery, and even conduct an autopsy on a baby, to learn more about cholera. And she did this all while feeding and comforting for her patients (mostly service men) who loved her.