[5] The erection of a statue of her at St Thomas' Hospital, London, on 30 June 2016, describing her as a "pioneer", generated some controversy and opposition, especially among those concerned with Florence Nightingale's legacy.

They had a vast knowledge of tropical diseases, and had a general practitioner's skill in treating ailments and injuries, acquired from having to look after the illnesses of fellow slaves on sugar plantations.

[15][16] At Blundell Hall, Seacole acquired her nursing skills, which included the use of hygiene, ventilation, warmth, hydration, rest, empathy, good nutrition and care for the dying.

She put her rapid recovery down to her hot Creole blood, blunting the "sharp edge of [her] grief" sooner than Europeans who she thought "nurse their woe secretly in their hearts".

"[44] Cholera was to return again: Ulysses S. Grant passed through Cruces in July 1852, on military duty; a hundred and twenty men, a third of his party, died of the disease there or shortly afterwards en route to Panama City.

She records a white American giving a speech at a leaving dinner in which he wished that "God bless the best yaller woman he ever made" and asked the listeners to join with him in rejoicing that "she's so many shades removed from being entirely black".

In Britain, a trenchant letter in The Times on 14 October triggered Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War, to approach Florence Nightingale to form a detachment of nurses to be sent to the hospital to save lives.

[51] Seacole wrote in her autobiography, "Now, I am not for a single instant going to blame the authorities who would not listen to the offer of a motherly yellow woman to go to the Crimea and nurse her ‘sons’ there, suffering from cholera, diarrhœa, and a host of lesser ills.

Business cards were printed and sent ahead to announce her intention to open an establishment, to be called the "British Hotel", near Balaclava, which would be "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers".

I fancy Mrs. B— thought that I sought for employment at Scutari, for she said, very kindly – "Miss Nightingale has the entire management of our hospital staff, but I do not think that any vacancy – "[59] Seacole informed Bracebridge that she intended to travel to Balaclava the next day to join her business partner.

[62] Seacole requested Soyer's advice on how to manage her business, and was advised to concentrate on food and beverage service, and not to have beds for visitors because the few either slept on board ships in the harbour or in tents in the camp.

It included a building made of iron, containing a main room with counters and shelves and storage above, an attached kitchen, two wooden sleeping huts, outhouses, and an enclosed stable-yard.

[75][76] While Lady Alicia Blackwood later recalled that Seacole had "... personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as could comfort or alleviate the suffering of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pay ...".

[85] Though she had left poorer, her impact on the soldiers was invaluable to the soldiers she treated, changing their perceptions about her as described in the Illustrated London News: "Perhaps at first the authorities looked askant at the woman-volunteer; but they soon found her worth and utility; and from that time until the British army left the Crimea, Mother Seacole was a household word in the camp...In her store on Spring Hill she attended many patients, cared for many sick, and earned the good will and gratitude of hundreds".

She deserves much credit for rising to the occasion, but her tea and lemonade did not save lives, pioneer nursing or advance health care.However, historians maintain that claims dismissing Seacole's work as mainly "tea and lemonade" do a disservice to the tradition of Jamaican "doctresses", such as Seacole's mother, Cubah Cornwallis, Sarah Adams and Grace Donne, who all used herbal remedies and hygienic practices in the late eighteenth century, long before Nightingale took up the mantle.

[91] The Times war correspondent William Howard Russell spoke highly of Seacole's skill as a healer, writing "A more tender or skilful hand about a wound or a broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons.

[94] Robinson speculates that Seacole's business problems may have been caused in part by her partner, Day, who dabbled in horse trading and may have set up as an unofficial bank, cashing debts.

[100] However, in Punch's 30 May edition, she was heavily criticised for a letter she sent begging her favorite magazine, which she claimed to have often read to her British Crimean War patients, to assist her in gaining donations.

While urging the public to donate, the commentary's tone can be read as ironic: "Who would give a guinea to see a mimic-sutler woman, and a foreigner, frisk and amble about on the stage, when he might bestow the money on a genuine English one, reduced to a two-pair back, and in imminent danger of being obliged to climb into an attic?

"[107] A 200-page autobiographical account of her travels was published in July 1857 by James Blackwood as Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain.

In a brief preface, the Times correspondent William Howard Russell wrote, "I have witnessed her devotion and her courage ... and I trust that England will never forget one who has nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.

"[111][112] The Illustrated London News received the autobiography favourably, agreeing with the statements made in the preface: "If singleness of heart, true charity and Christian works – of trials and sufferings, dangers and perils, encountered boldly by a helpless women on her errand of mercy in the camp and in the battlefield can excite sympathy or move curiosity, Mary Seacole will have many friends and many readers.

[118] It seems likely that she approached Sir Harry Verney (the husband of Florence Nightingale's sister Parthenope) Member of Parliament for Buckingham who was closely involved in the British National Society for the Relief of the Sick and Wounded.

[126] Her grave in London was rediscovered in 1973; a service of reconsecration was held on 20 November 1973, and her gravestone was also restored by the British Commonwealth Nurses' War Memorial Fund and the Lignum Vitae Club.

[132] In 2005, British politician Boris Johnson wrote of learning about Seacole from his daughter's school pageant and speculated: "I find myself facing the grim possibility that it was my own education that was blinkered, and that my children are now receiving a more faithful account of heroism in imperial Britain than I did.

[150] The words written by Russell in The Times in 1857 are etched on to Seacole's statue: "I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead.

Sean Lang has stated that she "does not qualify as a mainstream figure in the history of nursing",[160] while a letter to The Times from the Florence Nightingale Society and signed by members including historians and biographers asserted that "Seacole's battlefield excursions ... took place post-battle, after selling wine and sandwiches to spectators.

[164] However, Jamaican women such as 18th century practitioners Nanny of the Maroons and Mrs Grant (Seacole's mother), developed their nursing skills from West African healing traditions, such as the use of herbs, which became known as obeah in Jamaica.

Opposing this, Greg Jenner, historical consultant to Horrible Histories, has stated that while he thought her medical achievements may have been exaggerated, removing Seacole from the curriculum would be a mistake.

[172] In January 2013 Operation Black Vote launched a petition to request Education Secretary Michael Gove to drop neither Seacole nor Olaudah Equiano from the National Curriculum.