Black History Month and the British Hotel and the Scots Jamaican Nurse Mary Seacole

That this House notes October is Black History Month; welcomes the opportunity to highlight some of those people largely forgotten in history but who have made a significant contribution nonetheless; celebrates the tale of Scots Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole who set up her own convalescent home named The British Hotel, to tend wounded soldiers with traditional herbal remedies in the Crimean war of the 1850s; considers it all the more impressive that she did so after being rejected by the War Office and by fundraising for the costs herself; understands she was so well loved for the voluntary work she carried out that when she returned to London in 1857, destitute, and a fundraising gala in her honour on the banks of the River Thames attracted 80,000 guests; understands that Mary Seacole then disappeared from history books for over a century; finds it inexplicable that when her contribution began to be acknowledged in more recent times, there were campaigns against doing so; and considers it fitting that she is now considered one of the greatest black role models and has been remembered with a community hospital named after her in Surrey and a statue erected in her honour outside St Thomas’ Hospital.