To what extent do you agree that Florence Nightingale did more useful work in the Crimea
than Mary Seacole? (20 marks)
The work of these two notable women during the Crimean War is disputed about how useful
they were in the Crimea. It is evident that during the Crimean War Florence Nightingale was
a nurse who went and was her job to treat the injured and sick soldiers, whereas the work of
Mary Seacole was mainly business related however still useful. In my opinion Florence
Nightingale did more work to help the soldiers with things such as medicine to give soldiers
essential help. But this is not to say that Seacole did not help at all, as she had other ways to
help them which were useful in other respects. Florence Nightingale was sent to the Crimea
after she was trained as a nurse in Germany, and had practise in 1854 as a senior nurse in a
London Clinic. She was a member of a rich upper-middle class family and was so expected to
marry and settle down with a family, but she defied this and decided to focus on being a
nurse and was determined to do well. The quality of her education in nursing was therefore
most likely better as she was taught in a professional environment, whereas Mary Seacole
was taught her remedies by her mother who was a ‘doctress’. Seacole was from a different
background to Nightingale as she was born in Jamaica and was mixed-race, her influence is
often disputed as historians argue that she is either over and under-represented due to this
as another factor. In October 1854, Nightingale set sail for the Crimea with a team of 38
nurses in order to care for the wounded and sick soldiers. Seacole was not asked to go to the
Crimea like Nightingale and after being turned down decided to make her own way there to
help during the War.
Nightingale and her team were based in a hospital in Scutari which was on the outskirts of
Constantinople. Before Florence and her team of 38 nurses came to the scene, there were no
doctors signed up for the Crimea, as well as the fact that Raglan had limited the amount of
medical staff as he needed more space on the ships for men and cavalry. This mean that an
increased number of men became sick very easily, and were often expected to nurse
themselves or each other, as there was no-one else to do this task well, and this could lead to
the spreading of illness to a greater extent. Nightingale therefore had a big impact on nursing
as she set out to improve the current situation with a fund of £30,ooo to manage by
reorganising the kitchen and improving the food for the patients in the hospital. She also
cleaned the wards and the wounds of the soldiers, and opened the windows in the hospital as
she believed stale air caused higher death rates. She also opened a school room, and a library
and made some men with minor wounds grow vegetables. She is well known as the woman
who invented modern nursing and has the legacy of the warm hearted ‘lady with the lamp’. It
is clear that she made an impact as she helped to maintain cleanliness in the hospital after
the Sanitary Commission made the essential task of giving it a deep clean, and therefore
prevented further disease. This shows that Nightingale did have a big impact in the hospital
when treating her patients and was a useful nurse to have as she greatly improved the
standards to help with hygiene.
Mary Seacole did useful work in the Crimea with her hotel that she set up called ‘The British
Hotel’ on Spring Hill in 1855. This place was a part hotel, part store and part clinic which
closed at 8pm every evening. The hotel offered good quality food, which was better than the
army rations and offered the chance to buy warm clothing and shoes. Although a hotel, Mary
Seacole helped the injured soldiers every morning after breakfast using her mother’s folk-
medicine experience which was usually helpful to the patients, but not trained professional
methods. Seacole also went to the Battlefields themselves and carried first aid supplies on
mules to the troops stationed there. This meant that she could help them directly at the scene
as opposed to staying in one place, which shows that she was more useful than Nightingale in
this respect who remained in Scutari for the majority of her time. She did however have more
freedom to do this as she was not restricted to one place as she had the freedom to do this.
William H. Russell, a war correspondent described her as a kind and successful ‘physician’.
She stayed in the Crimea until 1856 working in her hotel. This shows that the work of Seacole
