The woman whom the surviving soldiers of the Crimean War most adored, for the very good reason that she saw them through the worst, was the most forgotten and most unlikely heroine, and her name was Mary Seacole.

Mary Seacole was West Indian, the daughter of a Scotsman and a Jamaican woman. Largely self taught, her Caribbean methods became famous after they were shown to stop violent dysentery, and to bring cholera and yellow fever victims back from death’s door.

When Britain joined the Crimean War in 1854, she tried to volunteer her services at the Front, but Mary didn’t exactly fit the profile of middle class nurses. She was turned down by the likes of Nurse Nightingale. So Mary got herself to the Crimea under her own steam, and with her own funds, and once she got there she did something truly extraordinary.

Mary Seacole built her British Hotel right on the Front Line and it doubled up both as a refectory, feeding the boys about to go into action, and a recovery station for the sick and wounded.

Every morning she’d make great vats of nutritious food like rice pudding, saddle up a pair of mules and ride into the heart of the action looking for the wounded to whom she would dole out food, hot tea, medicine, but most of all, motherly love. Mortars would whizz past the big old woman trundling along the lines.

Paradise lost