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But it is now emerging that the "Lady with the Lamp" was not really the best-loved nurse of that particular war. That honour lies with a long forgotten woman called Mary Seacole. Seacole's name does not appear in any history books or encyclopaedias. Yet, back in the 1850s, she was celebrated for administering to British boys at the front.
And it was she, rather than Florence Nightingale, whom soldiers considered the true "Mother of the Army". While Miss Nightingale worked at the official military hospital from the safety of Turkish shores, across the Black Sea at Scutari, Mrs Seacole set up her own supply store and medical unit at Spring Hill, just five miles from the action at Sebastopol.
And while Miss Nightingale - contrary to her popular image - dismayed wounded officers by walking past their beds without even a word, Mrs Seacole went into the war zone, armed with bandages and medicines, to tend casualties.
Because so little was documented about her, and almost nothing of her estate survives, Mrs Seacole is known by historians only as an aside to Florence Nighti
ngale
and the war. Alex Attewell, director of the Florence Nightingale
Museum at St Thomas' Hospital in London, has given her due recognition
by devoting a panel in the museum to her. "I think she was a remarkable person," he says. "She was amazingly determined and compassionate, and deserves to stand alongside such contemporaries as Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross."
Born in Jamaica in 1805, Mary was the daughter of a Jamaican "doctress" who ran a boarding house and dispensary for British soldiers, and a Scottish officer named Grant, about whom little is known. In 1836, she married Edwin Seacole, the British godson of Lord Nelson, in Jamaica, but when he died eight years later, she devoted the rest of her life to medicine and travel.
From her mother she learnt much about herbal remedies, and in 1850, while running a hotel in Panama with her brother, she tended victims of a cholera epidemic. Back in Jamaica, with experience equivalent to a GP's, she took charge of medical supervision at the headquarters of the British Army, treating diseases that occured through bad sanitation and a tropical climate.
When war broke out in the Crimea in 1853, confident of her apposite medical experience, she departed for Britain to offer her services. By the time she arrived, however, Florence Nightingale and her 38 nurses had already left for Scutari. What followed was a series of official rebuffs. Although there is no documentation as to why she was rejected, Mary Seacole, in her 1857 autobiography Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, wondered whether it was due to her colour.
"Mrs Seacole was very thorough in her researches," says Alex Attewell. "She went to every government and Army department, but even though jobs had been advertised, she was told there was nothing for her. She was discriminated against, not allowed to participate in official matters."
In some ways, the authorities' attitude is unsurprising. Mrs Seacole did not fit the mould - not just in the colour of her skin, but in her background and experience. According to the historian Hugh Small, author of Florence Nightingale: Avenging Angel, "They were looking either for ladies, who would be in charge, or paid skivvies. Mary Seacole would have fitted badly into this set-up. She was over-qualified and would have had strong ideas about what she wanted to do."
Florence Nightingale, meanwhile, was an exception. Highly educated and well connected, she was approached by the Minister of War, Sidney Herbert, to take charge of introducing female nurses to the military hospital at Scutari. Mary Seacole may have been better qualified to deal with the conditions and diseases of the Crimea, but she had no official strings to pull.
Unabashed, she placed an advertisement in the newspapers announcing her imminent arrival and, self-funded, set sail for Balaclava in February 1855. Choosing a location en route to the front, she hired local builders to construct her "British Hotel", from which she dispensed provisions, herbal remedies, medical equipment and care to the soldiers, many of whom she knew personally from Jamaica.
Her establishment, well stocked with linen, salmon, lobsters, oysters, game, wild fowl, eggs, cigars, alcohol and tobacco, as well as more prosaic items, was a hit with the men, as was her maternal, hands-on care of the sick and wounded. What has recently come to light, however, is a letter written by Florence Nightingale that reveals that she was less than warm towards Mrs Seacole.