Black 'Florence Nightingale' Portrait Goes on Show

Jan 10, 8:42 AM (ET)

LONDON (Reuters) - The only known oil painting of nurse Mary Seacole, known as
the black Florence Nightingale, went on show at London's National Portrait
Gallery Monday after being lost for years.

Seacole, born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805 of a white Scottish father and a
mixed race mother, not only overcame the treatment of women as inferiors but
also the open racism of the era to make her way to the Crimea and nurse wounded
soldiers.

The oil portrait dated 1869 by little known artist Albert Challen, shows Seacole
in profile wearing a dark blue dress and red scarf with three medals pinned to
her chest.

It was discovered by chance being used as the backing for a framed print.

Unlike her contemporary Florence Nightingale, deemed to be the founder of modern
nursing, Seacole was shunned by the British government when she offered her
services as a nurse during the Crimean War.

Undaunted, Seacole, who learned her basic nursing from her mother and added to
her knowledge through extensive traveling, paid her own way to the Crimea in
1854.

There she established the "British Hotel" near Balaklava to nurse sick and
wounded soldiers, earning herself the affectionate title of "Mother Seacole" in
the process.

She returned to Britain two years later sick and destitute, but her popularity
with the soldiery and in the British newspapers ensured that adequate funds were
raised for her.

She was awarded the British Crimean medal, the Turkish Medjidie and the French
Legion d'honneur.

Seacole, who was voted the greatest black Briton in a poll last year, died on
May 14, 1881 at her home in London.