2-991-301 - Heritage Imagined/Heritage Images

AI IMAGE - Portrait of Mary Jane Seacole, 1850s, (2023). Seacole (1805-1881) was born in British Jamaica, and had many careers including nurse, boarding house keeper, author, and world traveller. In 1855 she went to the seat of the Crimean War with the plan of setting up the "British Hotel", as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers". This became a restaurant/bar/catering service which proved to be very popular. Her autobiography, "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands" (1857), was the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain. In 1990, Seacole was (posthumously) awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit. In 2004, she was voted the greatest black Briton.