Mary Seacole

Mary Jane Seacole (née Grant; 23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a Jamaican nurse and businesswoman. She was famous for her nursing work during the Crimean War and for publishing the first autobiography written by a woman of African descent in Britain. Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Creole mother who ran a boarding house and had herbalist skills as a "doctress".