The Hon. Mary Seacole, OM (1805 - 1881) was born in Kingston to a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army (James Grant) and his Jamaican wife who ran a boarding house, Blundell Hall on East Street. Her mother, Mrs Grant, nicknamed "The Doctress", was a healer who used traditional herbal medicines and good hygiene to treat military and naval staff as well as enslaved Africans. Due to a patroness, she had the opportunity to further her education and live in England for a time before returning home to practice nursing with her mother and help run their hostel at Blundell Hall. Mary used what she learned from her mother and also by watching military doctors. Her marriage to Edwin Seacole in 1836 allowed her to travel to the Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti where she augmented her knowledge of traditional medicines. Unfortunately fire destroyed Blundell Hall in 1843, Mr. Seacole died in 1844 and her mother soon after. However, Mrs. Seacole rebuilt Blundell Hall and continued the practice her mother had started including successfully treating many for cholera in 1850 and later on treating yellow fever particularly amongst English officers. In 1851, she joined her step-brother in Panama where he had established a small hotel and with the outbreak of cholera, she made a name for herself for nursing many back to health. She was a successful entrepreneur in the hospitality business and did well for herself whilst also attending to the sick and injured – rich and poor. She eventually moved to London and on hearing of the poor circumstances of injured and sick soldiers in the Crimean War tried to join Florence Nightingale’s nurses but was not accepted. She therefore organized and went herself in 1855, setting up a restaurant and also offering care to the sick and wounded. She made a name for herself amongst the many English soldiers and officers she cared for and despite returning to England bankrupt in 1856, was able to make a comeback both in Jamaica and England, including the writing of her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (the first book written in England by a black women) which was a best-seller. Mrs. Mary Seacole eventually died in London in 1881 and was initially forgotten. In 1957, the first Hall of Residence for women at The University of the West Indies was built and named for her amongst other recognitions. In 1990 she was awarded the Order of Merit by the Jamaican Government. She was only recognized much later in England with a statue of her placed at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London in 2016.