Comfort and succour Mrs Rogers, an army wife, prepares food for the 4th Dragoon Guards during the Crimean War. Ever the entrepreneur, Mary Seacole set up a “hotel” near Balaclava to supply food and care to troops
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
In the days before the advent of the internet, anyone intent on seeking out the story of the black Jamaican healer and entrepreneur Mary Seacole would have been hardpressed to find any information on her. There was her brief memoir, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, published in 1857 to help relieve the crushing debts that had landed her in the bankruptcy court at the end of the Crimean War. But this little book with thin cardboard covers was, unfortunately, not printed to last. Today, only a handful of copies of the original version survive, in repositories such as the British Library and Oxford and Cambridge universities.