High Commission to Stage Panel Discussion in Memory of Mary Seacole

The High Commission, in London, is to commemorate the life of the Hon. Mary Seacole, OM, by hosting a Panel Discussion on May 13, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Scheduled to be held on the eve of the anniversary of Mary Seacole’s death on May 14, 1881, the event will also see the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal officially passing the £300,000 landmark.

The panel discussion will be chaired by Dr. Simon Woolley, Chair of Operation Black Vote, and the panellists are: Chair of the Trustees of the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal, Lord Soley of Hammersmith; Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Regional Director, Bernell Bussue and Senior Research Fellow in North East London Mental Health Trust and the Faculty of Health at South Bank University, Professor Tony Leiba.

“The Jamaican High Commission is proud to host this special event to commemorate an outstanding Jamaican. We can only imagine the great difficulty encountered by a widowed, Jamaican woman of colour travelling in Victorian times. You cannot exaggerate what a pioneer she really was – as a healer, as an entrepreneur and as an individual,” High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Her Excellency Aloun N’dombet Assamba said.

“She was well aware that there were many obstacles in her path, but she had no intention of letting other people’s limits stand in her way. Mary Seacole was an excellent example of the long tradition of Jamaican women, who had forged ahead in the face of adversity to make their own way in the world,” the High Commissioner added.

Mary Seacole was born in Jamaica in 1805. She was posthumously awarded Jamaica’s third highest National Honour, the Order of Merit, in 1991.

She is well known and revered in many sectors of the United Kingdom for her work in nursing British soldiers during the Crimean War.

The High Commissioner is one of the patrons of the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal.

By Vivienne Siva, JIS Reporter