British Hotel: Mary Seacole Builds a Business in Crimea
Mary Seacole established the British Hotel near Balaclava after deciding to travel to Crimea using her own resources. The Jamaican nurse and businesswoman had sought a place among the nurses being sent to the war, but those approaches did not secure a position. Her eventual plan joined commercial work with assistance to sick and wounded soldiers. She announced an establishment intended to offer meals and comfortable quarters for officers recovering from illness. Once in Crimea, advice from chef Alexis Soyer helped shape the business into a restaurant, bar, and catering service.
Seacole's experience with care and hospitality began in Kingston, Jamaica. Her mother was a healer known as a doctress and ran Blundell Hall, a boarding house that also accommodated military and naval personnel recovering from illnesses. There, Seacole learned nursing practices that included hygiene, ventilation, hydration, warmth, rest, and nutrition. She observed military doctors and combined those observations with remedies learned from her mother. After her husband's death and then her mother's, she took over management of the family establishment. During the cholera epidemic in Jamaica in 1850, she treated and nursed patients, bringing practical experience to the work she later pursued abroad.
Panama offered another combination of business and care before the British Hotel in Crimea. In 1851, Seacole visited her brother in Cruces, where he accommodated travelers crossing between the coasts of the United States. Cholera struck shortly after she arrived. She treated patients, charging those who could pay and helping poor patients without charge; she later contracted the disease herself. In Cruces she also opened a restaurant bearing the same name as her later Crimean venture. Its larger room could serve up to 50 diners, while a smaller room was her bedroom. She subsequently ran a hotel for women in Gorgona before returning to Jamaica.
News of the Crimean War reached Seacole while she was in Panama. She traveled to England, initially to deal with investments in gold-mining businesses, and attempted to join a later contingent of nurses. Government offices and the Crimean Fund turned down her approaches. Elizabeth Herbert told her that the nursing contingent was full. In her autobiography, Seacole questioned whether racial prejudice had influenced refusals. She then arranged her own journey, joining Thomas Day, a Caribbean acquaintance related to her late husband, in a business partnership. They assembled goods for the venture, and she sailed aboard the Hollander on January 27, 1855, bound for Constantinople.
Before continuing to Balaclava, Seacole visited Florence Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari. She requested a bed for the night and explained that she intended to join her business partner. Her memoir presents the meeting with Nightingale as friendly, and a bed and breakfast were arranged. In Crimea, building the British Hotel required improvisation. Seacole gathered abandoned wood and metal, choosing a site she named Spring Hill near Kadikoi, on the road between Balaclava and the British camp near Sevastopol. Hired local workers built with packing cases, iron sheets, driftwood, and salvaged doors and window frames from the village of Kamara.
The British Hotel opened in March 1855. Soyer visited and advised Seacole to emphasize food and drink because officers generally slept aboard ships or in camp tents. By July, construction was complete at a cost of £800. The premises included an iron building with counters, shelves, and storage, an attached kitchen, two wooden sleeping huts, outbuildings, and an enclosed stable yard. Stock came from London and Constantinople as well as purchases near the British and French camps. Two Black cooks prepared meals, and the kitchen handled outside catering. Seacole sometimes made pastry herself between other duties. The business closed each evening at 8 pm and on Sundays.
Beyond the British Hotel, Seacole sold provisions near the camp at Kadikoi and nursed casualties arriving from the trenches around Sevastopol and the Tchernaya valley. British soldiers knew her as "Mother Seacole." She also catered for battle spectators and spent time observing from Cathcart's Hill. While attending wounded troops under fire on one occasion, she dislocated her right thumb, leaving an injury that never healed fully. William Howard Russell of The Times praised her assistance near the battlefield in a dispatch dated September 14, 1855. Other witnesses recalled her comforting sufferers and providing hot tea to sick and wounded men awaiting transport to Scutari.
The fall of Sevastopol brought Seacole into the city itself. After French troops led the final assault, the Russians retreated to fortifications north of the harbor. On September 9, 1855, she obtained a pass and entered with refreshments, fulfilling a bet to become the first British woman to enter after the city fell. She visited a crowded hospital near the docks and was rescued by an officer after French looters stopped her. In the quieter period that followed, officers enjoyed theatrical performances and horse races. Seacole provided catering for those occasions while her partnership with Day continued to prosper during the remaining hostilities.