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Most of us have heard the name Mary Seacole, but only a few know the history of this remarkable Jamaican who was a nurse and best known for her involvement in the Crimean War and is considered by many as Crimean War Heroine.

Mary Jane Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant in 1805 and was a Jamaican-born multiracial British nurse. She set-up and operated boarding houses in Panama and Crimea to assist in her desire to treat the sick. Seacole was taught herbal remedies and folk medicine by her mother, who kept a boarding house for disabled European soldiers and sailors.

Mary loved traveling and as a young woman visited the Bahamas, Haiti and Cuba. In these countries she collected details of how people used local plants and herbs to treat the sick. On one trip to Panama she helped treat people during another cholera epidemic. Mary carried out an autopsy on one victim and was therefore able to learn even more about the way the disease attacked the body.

Confident that her knowledge of tropical medicine could be useful, and after hearing about poor medical provisions for wounded soldiers during the Crimean War, she travelled to London to volunteer as a nurse. Relying on her experience in the Caribbean, she applied to the War Office and asked to be sent as an army assistant to the Crimea. She was refused, mainly because of prejudice against women's involvement in medicine at the time.

The British Government later decided to permit women to travel to the affected area, but she was not included in the party of 39 nurses chosen by Florence Nightingale. Instead, she borrowed money to make the 4,000-mile (6437 km) journey by herself. She distinguished herself treating battlefield wounded, often nursing wounded soldiers from both sides while under fire. When the conflict ended in 1856 she found herself stranded and almost destitute, and was only saved from adversity by friends from the Crimean War who organised a benefit concert. In later years, she expressed a desire to work in India after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but was unable to raise the necessary funds.

Seacole was lauded in her lifetime, alongside Florence Nightingale, but after her death on 14 May 1881 (aged 76), was forgotten for almost a century. Today, she is noted for her bravery and medical skills and as "a woman who succeeded despite the racial prejudice of influential sections of Victorian society". Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), is a vivid account of her experiences, and is one of the earliest autobiographies of a mixed-race woman.