Thought for the Week - 1st October 2023

Dear Friends, 

The beginning of October also marks the beginning of Black History Month, an annual celebration that recognises and celebrates the contribution that people from African and Caribbean backgrounds have made to UK history. This year the theme is Saluting our Sisters, and it highlights the crucial role that black women have played in shaping history, inspiring change and building communities. One such example is Mary Seacole, a Jamaican born nurse who cared for wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War in the 19^th Century. She was born Mary Jane Grant in 1805 to a Scottish soldier and Jamaican mother from whom she learned her nursing skills. She married Edwin Seacole in 1836 who died eight years later, and she travelled widely visiting the Caribbean, Central America and the UK. On these trips she studied traditional and European medical ideas, and in 1854 she travelled to England and approached the War Office, asking to be sent as an Army nurse to the Crimea. Her request was refused but she went anyway and once there established the British Hotel near Balaclava, providing a place for sick and injured officers and nursing the wounded on the battlefield, becoming known as ‘Mother Seacole’. She returned to England in 1857, destitute and in ill health, and died on 14^th May 1881. There is a statue of her outside St Thomas’ Hospital, London, which faces the Houses of Parliament, the UK’s first in honour of a named black woman. It is inscribed with words written in 1857 by The Times’ Crimean War correspondent who said, ‘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.’ A fitting tribute to a woman who showed such selfless support and service to so many who were in need.

Grace and peace,

Neil