{"id":48006,"date":"2016-06-29T21:21:22","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T21:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48006"},"modified":"2016-06-29T21:21:22","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T21:21:22","slug":"mary-seacole-statue-why-florence-nightingale-fans-are-angry-the-crimean-war-nurse-is-being-commemorated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48006","title":{"rendered":"Mary Seacole statue: Why Florence Nightingale fans are angry the Crimean War nurse is being commemorated"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mary Seacole statue: Why Florence Nightingale fans are angry the Crimean War nurse is being commemorated<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Independent<\/a>
\n2016-06-27<\/p>\n

Kashmira Gander<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nSome Florence Nightingale<\/a> experts say Mary Seacole<\/a> isn’t a nurse<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

It should be a symbol of pride in a black British heroine. Instead, a statue of Mary Seacole<\/a>, to be unveiled on 30 June, has become a source of controversy<\/em><\/p>\n

Staring proudly across the River Thames<\/a> towards Big Ben<\/a>, her cape caught in a gust as she strides away from a backdrop of the Crimean battlefield. This is how the Crimean War<\/a> heroine Mary Seacole<\/a> will be memorialised in a powerful 10ft bronze statue by the distinguished sculptor Martin Jennings<\/a>, to be unveiled outside St Thomas\u2019 hospital<\/a> in central London<\/a> on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The campaign to commemorate the nurse once voted the greatest black Briton began when a group of Caribbean women approached their local MP in Hammersmith<\/a>. Seven years later, the sculpture \u2013 the first public statue of a named black woman in the UK<\/a> \u2013 is complete thanks to donations from tens of thousands of people. Happy days.<\/p>\n

Except a small faction of hand-wringing Florence Nightingale<\/a> experts and fans are not at all happy. To them, placing Seacole\u2019s statue outside the hospital where the Lady with the Lamp<\/a> established her revolutionary nursing school is an affront…<\/p>\n

…Then there\u2019s the argument that Seacole is a symbol of political correctness gone mad because the great black British icon isn\u2019t, er, black. In a Spectator<\/em> piece Rob Liddle<\/a> took the baffling stance<\/a> that Seacole was \u201cthree-quarters white\u201d. This is despite contemporary depictions of her as a person \u201cof colour\u201d (and her own recollection that a white American at a dinner party said he wished he could bleach her skin).<\/p>\n

But how tiresome this mud-slinging is. If we were going to pick holes, we could point out that even Nightingale couldn’t compete with the fact that her military hospital at Scutari<\/a> was placed over a sewer, meaning many patients died. But we celebrate the best in her: her initial impulse; her skill in creating and organising the British nursing profession in later life…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Seacole statue: Why Florence Nightingale fans are angry the Crimean War nurse is being commemorated The Independent 2016-06-27 Kashmira Gander Some Florence Nightingale experts say Mary Seacole isn’t a nurse It should be a symbol of pride in a black British heroine. Instead, a statue of Mary Seacole, to be unveiled on 30 June, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245,459,8,10,25],"tags":[81,24259,24318,850,24319,3692,2502],"class_list":["post-48006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","category-history","category-media-archive","category-uk","category-women","tag-england","tag-florence-nightingale","tag-kashmira-gander","tag-london","tag-martin-jennings","tag-mary-seacole","tag-the-independent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48007,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48006\/revisions\/48007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}