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Prominent Women

Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-Scottish nurse who helped care for soldiers in the Crimean War, drawing on herbal remedies, after being denied by the War Office due to her race. She later funded her own medical hotel. Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman pilot but faced discrimination and had to train in France. She performed stunts but died in a crash at age 34. Mary Anning was a pioneering female paleontologist in the 1800s who discovered fossils in England but was excluded from scientific societies as a woman.

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20 views2 pages

Prominent Women

Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-Scottish nurse who helped care for soldiers in the Crimean War, drawing on herbal remedies, after being denied by the War Office due to her race. She later funded her own medical hotel. Bessie Coleman was the first African American woman pilot but faced discrimination and had to train in France. She performed stunts but died in a crash at age 34. Mary Anning was a pioneering female paleontologist in the 1800s who discovered fossils in England but was excluded from scientific societies as a woman.

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esrdghi
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Mary Seacole (1805-81)

When the Crimean War broke out, Jamaican-Scottish Mary was one of two outstanding
nurses who tended to the wounded – alongside Florence Nightingale – drawing on her
knowledge of Caribbean herbal remedies to care for fallen soldiers on the battlefield.

After offering her services to the War Office, she was initially turned down as a result of
her race, so she funded her own passage to Balaclava in the Crimea and set up a
‘British Hotel’ where veterans could coalesce.

Mary was posthumously awarded the 1991 Jamaican Order of Merit and, in 2004, she
was voted one of history’s greatest black Britons.

Bessie Coleman (1892-1926)


Bessie dreamed of flying from a young age but, as an African-American and Native
American woman, she faced discrimination at every turn.

After being blocked from entering American flight school on racial/gender grounds, she
obtained sponsorships to completed flight training in France instead – only to once more
be prevented from becoming a commercial pilot on her return to the US. Instead, she
became a stunt flier performing dangerous mid-air stunts with great success.

She had almost raised enough money to found her own training school for black
aviators when she was killed in a plane crash aged just 34 – but she remains the first
African-American woman to hold a pilot’s licence and inspired a generation of female
pilots.

Mary Anning (1799-1847)


Mary was a working-class seashore collector-turned-palaeontologist in Dorset who went
on to become a leading world expert on prehistoric fossils in Britain.

While walking her dog Tray on the Blue Lias cliffs near her home, she collected her first
fossils, worried they’d be lost to the tide. During her career, she discovered various
dinosaur skeletons and fish fossils, and went on to consult in global geographical circles
– and she is widely believed to have been the inspiration behind the well-known tongue-
twister ‘She sells seashells on the sea shore’.

Despite all this, as a woman she was not eligible to join the Geographical Society of
London and she did not receive full credit for her accomplishment
Beulah Louise Henry (1887-1973)
Prolific American inventor and entrepreneur Beulah created more than 100 inventions
designed to improve daily life, including the vacuum ice cream freezer, can opener and
bobbin-free sewing machine.

‘I invent because I cannot help it,’ she is quoted as saying. ‘New things just thrust
themselves on me.’

Beulah founded two of her own companies and acted as a consultant for several others,
and was inducted into the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame in 2006.

Frida Kahlo (1907-54)


Mexican artist Frida’s striking works span gender, class, identity and race in Mexican
society. She was the first Mexican artist to be displayed at the Louvre in Paris, had
many successful exhibitions and was well known for her eccentric personality in social
and political circles, but she remained relatively unrecognised until the 1970s.

Today, Frida (pictued above) is viewed as an important figure in art history as well as an
icon for Chicanos, and the LGBT and feminist movements.

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