NEW THREAD: Just watched the ITV doc about #MarySeacole. It appears there are actual Seacole deniers who seem to think she didn’t deserve a statue. I’m gobsmacked. Let me dismantle some of their arguments for you:

1. “She was a business woman not a qualified nurse”. There was no such thing as a ‘qualified nurse’ until the AFTER the Crimean war, when Florence Nightingale set up the first professional system in 1860.

2.” If she’d really wanted to be a nurse, she’d have gone alongside the troops”. She applied 5 times, and was rejected 5 times. So, age 59 she paid for her own passage and went alone to a war zone in 1853

3.”She was rejected by the army because she called herself a doctoress ”. Firstly, see above. Secondly, as a black woman of that era it’s highly unlikely she would have been allowed to study because of racism. The first (white) female doc was Elizabeth Garrett Anderson 1865

4. “She set up a boarding house on the Crimea and coined it”. Mary Seacole left a very successful business beind in Jamaica to travel to the Crimea. She crawled through live fire to comfort dying soldiers. No amount of money buys that kind of courage.

5. I’ll stop now. Cos I’m boring on. And, who knows, I’m probably breaking the BBC’s new social media guidelines on impartiality... Grrrr

Dammit! One more..6. “Venerating Seacole diminishes Nightingale”. No feminist will fall for it that c**p. There’s room enough in history for two women, both extraordinary in their own way, doing what they can to improve life for dying & injured soldiers. It’s not an either/or.

And this is why I like Twitter: Prof @alisonleary1 has sent me this extra info to add to this thread #MarySeacole #FlorenceNightingale #Nursing