Mary Seacole Hospital?

[MockersxxxxxxxSocialDistancing]

The Scots have named their emergency hospital after some obscure WW1 nurse nobody's ever heard of. They chose not to take up the name of the Half-Scottish heroine of the Crimea who was so much more popular in her day than Florence Nightingale.

There's a campaign in Brum to get the NEC hospital named after Seacole, but it looks like it's going to be Nightingale Birmingham, and Nightingale Manchester and Nightingale everywhere else in England.

The Seacole debate rages in history-teaching and medical circles. She was basically a landlady who sold drinks to spectators at the battle then went back and got the soldiers drunk, and they loved her for it. Don't call her a nurse.

Against that, there's the inclusive agenda and the call for positive role-models.

Seacole Hospital, a proper recognition of a national heroine, or virtue-signalling fiction in place of real history.

It's the latter

You think no one has heard of Mary Seacole? Good grief, OP, you’ve made yourself look a bit of a wally with this.

If I recall Mary Seacoles father was a Scot so would be doubly appropriate.

I think the problem is that many extraordinary women are sidelined by history, whereas you only have to be mediocre at best or even a total failure to be remembered if you are a man! To my regret I had never heard of Louisa Jordan.

When Mary Seacole returned to the UK after Crimea she was penniless, an appeal was made in a national newspaper and a huge amount of money was raised in days, most of it from ex soldiers who had been nursed by her. Sadly she was then almost completely forgotten about until primary schools started teaching about her in the nineties. She is buried in London , a few years ago a portrait of her was discovered and i think it is now in the National Portrait Gallery.

Op, I think you mean well but your post is confusing and is making out like she was a negative rather than positive unless one reads it several times.

If it helps as soon as I heard the one in London was going to be named Nightingale, First thing I thought what about Seacole.

I guess you don’t watch Horrible Histories then?

@viques

Yes, you’re correct her father was a Scottish solider.

I agree that the hospital in Scotland should have been named after her.

It is a disgrace that so many women were sidelined out of history, especially the social reformers, who we can all thank for our standards of living, the advancement of our hospitals/prisons/social care.

The Nightingale hospital in Glasgow has been named after the right person in my opinion.

Oh and I only called it Nightingale because it’s a temporary hospital.

She’s famous. All my DC learnt about her in primary school. There’s buildings named after her in my neighbourhood.

I really hope Norfolk gets the NHS Cavil. I get Nightingale was a big deal but she wasn't the only nurse out there.

And Louisa Jordan is pretty well known in Scotland. Just because it's not relevant to your country and you have never heard of her it doesn't mean no one else has. She deserves the recognition. All the War nurses do.

My DD’s girls ‘ secondary school named one of the school houses after Mary Seacole, though it’s a bit of a stretch making her a heroine.

The Brummies were already after the name NHS Seacole when the Scots announced NHS Louisa Jordan, so it would have been like poaching.

I even started a thread about it.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3866268-So-will-the-Scottish-temp-hospital-be-NHS-Inglis

Also, Jordan was a member of the Scottish Women's Hospital for Foreign Service, so can also be seen as representative of a larger Scottish movement. I think she's very appropriate.

Bang on @SuperlativeScrubs

The nursing school buildings at the university of Salford and Birmingham City University are named after Mary Seacole so she certainly isn’t forgotten.
Think it’s probably easiest just to keep them all as ‘Nightingale’ for ease though.

I'll repeat what I said on that thread.

There seems to be lots of carping about whether the hospitals are all named Nightingale or not.

But I really can't see a problem with naming the individual hospitals after different people, while naming the class as "Nightingale hospitals" after the first one. (This is done with Royal Navy ships, too.)

1forsorrow there's a Sister Dora nursing home on Cannock Chase.

My 6 year old has learned about Mary Seacole at school. My 4 year old knows what she was famous for. I remember learning about her at school...

She was basically a landlady who sold drinks to spectators at the battle then went back and got the soldiers drunk, and they loved her for it. Don't call her a nurse.

You do realise that original nurses were either Nuns (hence the tile Sister for senior nurses) or prostitutes don't you? No one else wanted anything to do with diseased people.

The OP has written in such a way its confusing but the Scottish have named it the Louisa Jordan Hospital after a Scottish Nurse - which entirely fits with them

We should maybe name the Birmingham one Mary Seacole but at the same time it makes sense for them all in England to be Nightingale Hospitals

Who are you saying was a landlady not a nurse that bit doesnt make sense?

If you are saying it’s not going to be named after Mary Seacole yanbu. I think there would perhaps, however, be an argument for all covid hospitals being named nightingale for ease of purpose so people would know where to go.

I’m confused...

She was not a landlady, but it is true that she worked as a hotelier. She did apply to be a nurse. There was no formal system of nursing registration or training in those days, so it's hard to define whether someone should be considered a nurse or not in the mid 19th century. She did offer comforts and treatments to soldiers while carrying on the hotelier work.

Her treatments were not evidence based and I am LOLing at the idea that she introduced sanitation and so on into hospitalsshe did nothing of the sort and this was Nightingale's work. To be fair, Nightingale's ideas were not always evidence-based eithershe did not accept germ theory even at the end of her life, and believed throughout her life that diseases were caused by miasma, a common belief at the time. However, Nightingale not only introduced sanitary practices and formal systems of training nurses and turning nursing into a proper profession. She was also one of the first people to gather medical statistics and present them in the form of graphs---something we take for granted today but which was absolutely revolutionary in those days. Seacole offered free refreshments and other comforts to soldiers for free, which was very kind of her, but her treatments had no basis in science and wouldn't have treated anybody.

I think she was a nice person, and her autobiography makes really interesting reading. But she wasn't Florence Nightingale and did not make any particular contributions to the development of medicine. She is more noteworthy as an unusual example of a female global traveler and entrepreneur of the 19th century than as a figure in the history of medicine IMO.

Your OP is very confusing. Louisa Jordan is better as she was a Scottish nurse when Mary Seacole was not. Yes I know her father was Scottish, but she was not.
Everyone has heard of Mary Seacole. Most people have not heard of Louisa Jordan outside of Scotland. So more appropriate to honour someone who is not honoured in the wider UK.

@hofficoffi13
Me too... (I also like coffee )