Born Mary Jane Grant in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1805, the future Mrs. Seacole helped her mother nurse British officers and their wives at nearby military camps. Widowed in the 1840s, she was rejected from service with Florence Nightingale and eventually sailed for the Crimea with a relative. There they established a "British Hotel" near the battlefront, where Seacole catered for army personnel and nursed the sick and wounded. Her memoirs were published to popular and critical acclaim in 1857.
