Mary Seacole opens the British Hotel
1855 · Event
Refused by the War Office, the Jamaican-born nurse and hotelier pays her own way to Crimea and builds a canteen and sick-house from salvage two miles behind the siege lines, tending soldiers on the battlefield itself. The men call her Mother Seacole; when the war bankrupts her, they fill a four-day benefit festival to keep her afloat.
On these timelines: The Crimean War, Women in history, Medicine through Time, England, United Kingdom (combined)
More from The Crimean War
- Crimean War (1853)
- The fall of Sevastopol (1855)
- Britain and France declare war on Russia (1854)
- The Sinope massacre (1853)
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- Battle of Inkerman (1854)
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Around 1855
- Indian Rebellion of 1857 (1857)
- Great Famine of Ireland (1845)
- Italian unification (Risorgimento) (1859)
- Taiping Rebellion (1851)
- American Civil War (1861)
- Wars of German Unification (1864)
- Revolutions of 1848 (1848)
- On the Origin of Species (1859)
- Pasteur develops germ theory of disease (1861)
- Perry Expedition to Japan (1853)