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Mary Seacole
Nurse, healer & Crimean War heroine
Turned away by the War Office because of her colour, she funded her own way to the front — and the soldiers called her Mother Seacole.
The rise
Born in Kingston to a Scottish officer and a Jamaican healer, Seacole learned traditional medicine from her mother and ran a boarding house for sick soldiers. When the Crimean War broke out, she applied to join Florence Nightingale's nurses but was rejected.