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Denny Blaine Park

Denny Blaine Park is a 2 acre water-front park in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. With picturesque views of Bellevue directly across the lake and Mount Rainier in the distance, it is primarily used for picnicking, sunbathing, and swimming. The park has also been one of Seattle's unofficial queer- and trans-friendly clothing optional beaches since the 1970s.

The park area consists of three tiers, in addition to a grassy area within the oval loop of E. Denny Blaine Place. The upper level between the parking lot and the original seawall is grass covered and has several large trees that provide shade. The middle level between the lake-side base of the seawall and the beach area is also grass. The lower lake level encompasses a sandy beach area with a rocky shoreline that is covered with small, smooth river pebble extending the first few feet into the lake.

Denny Blaine Park is located on the western shore of Lake Washington, where historic Lake Washington Boulevard turns inland towards Washington Park Arboretum. It is sometimes referred to as Denny Blaine Beach.

Nearby public beaches with lifeguard and full handicap accessibility include Madrona Park 0.8 mile south and Madison Park 1.3 mile north. Other parks in close vicinity include Viretta Park, Howell Park, and Lakeview Park.

From private land to a park for the Public and for the City of Seattle
Denny Blaine Park (as it is now named) was created on April 15, 1901 when the plat for the Denny-Blaine-Lake Park Addition was filed with the city of Seattle. As part of the plat filing, which also established four other parks, landowners Charles L. Denny and Viretta Denny (husband and wife) dedicated all of the streets, lanes, parks, fountains, and places therein "to the use of the Public and the City of Seattle forever".

E. F. Blaine and C. L. Denny were proponents of open space parks for use by anyone in the city rather than restricting use to the residents within the subdivision, or alternatively, developing the parks for commercial recreation, amusement, or carnival-type activities such as at Madrona and Leschi parks to the south. The Denny's dedication of these open space parks to the city was like that of David Denny (Charles’ uncle), who donated 6 acres of land in 1883 to create Seattle’s first public park, now named Denny Park in his honor. E. F. Blaine continued to establish his reputation as an aggressive friend of the public open space park concept through his service on the Park Commission from 1902 to 1908.

The park was unnamed in the filed plat. Because the park was located at the end of the oval turn-around named Whitman Place, many people referred to it as Whitman Park though that was never an official name.

A colorized postcard of the park, initially published as early as 1904, labeled it as Denny-Blaine Park, though references to "Denny-Blaine Park" in reports from the Parks Board in the early years included all five parks in the Denny-Blaine-Lake Park subdivision as a single entity. After the City Council—in order to reduce confusion with a Whitman Ave elsewhere in the city—renamed Whitman Place to Denny Blaine Place in 1918, the park area with its newly exposed beach started to become better known as Denny-Blaine Park on its own. Currently, the official park name by Seattle Parks and Recreation omits the hyphen which had been used until at least the 1970s.

Initial construction and landscaping of the park was provided by the Denny Blaine Land Company, which still privately owned the land. During that time, a parks department letter in 1908 and reports through 1916 indicate that maintenance (only) was being provided by the parks department, as required by the conditions of the plat. In 1932, Denny-Blaine Park was transferred to the city and placed under Park Jurisdiction.

Inclusion in the Olmsted System of Parks & Boulevards
Denny Blaine Park (aka Whitman Place) is referred to as the water terrace located at the North End of Denny Blain-Lake Park in a revised preliminary draft of the 1903 Olmsted Report, sent near the end of July 1903 from John Charles Olmsted to E. F. Blaine, Chairman of the Board of Park Commissioners. In that report, the water terrace location is the reference point at which the proposed pleasure drive running northward along Lake Washington from Bailey Peninsula (Seward Park) transitions inland to run northwest towards Washington Park. Olmsted further recommended that “all the land between these streets (Lake Washington Blvd) and the lake in the Denny-Blaine subdivision should be acquired [by the city]”, an area that, if acquired, would have encompassed both Denny Blaine Park and Howell Park.

Denny Blaine Park (water terrace) is included within the areas marked by Olmsted on the 1903 map, the 1908 map, and the 1928 map of the Olmsted System [of] Parks, Boulevards and Playgrounds of the City of Seattle.

The 1909 Annual Report by the Board of Park Commissioners—which celebrated the history of the Park Board since its founding in 1884 and its success to date implementing the 1903 and 1908 Olmsted reports—included Denny Blaine Park in the list of fully improved parks. The same report also honored the service of retired commissioner Blaine, “father of the Seattle Park System,” who had served from 1902 to 1908.

In 2016, Denny Blaine Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places as part of the multiple property submission for Seattle's Olmsted Parks and Boulevards (1903–68).

Features
The plat drawing depicts a shoreline “esplanade” along a seawall, located at the end of a wide turnaround that formed an open space loop in the middle. The drawing also appears to depict a fountain within the oval area, but was never installed.

The seawall (as drawn in the plat) was already under construction—and likely completed—in 1900, a year before the plat was filed; with the wharf also being built that year or shortly thereafter (no later than May, 1903). Additional features at that time evidently included a boat facility, an oval shaped lagoon with narrow passage to the lake, a small rustic shelter, and paths, lawn, and landscaping.

In 1917, the water level dropped by 9 feet after the anticipated Montlake Cut connecting Lake Washington to South Lake Union was completed, leaving the seawall "high and dry" with a gently sloping beach that became usable after removing exposed debris and smoothing. The seawall remains today as reminder to the original shoreline, and the beach area is reached via the two sets of stairs that had been built into the seawall as depicted on the original plat of 1901.

Around the time Whitney Place was renamed, the turnaround was paved as part of an L.I.D. project.

It is said the actor John Wayne rented the house to the South, and, due to people peeping over the wall, a hedge was put in running along the South border of the park, above the lower beach levels.

Much of a renovation completed in 2004 involved the large middle bed just above the shoreline.

Topfree and clothing optional use
Denny Blaine Park is not designated by Seattle Parks and Recreation as a clothing optional park, though it is recognized that it has been used as such, especially by the queer community, for over 50 years. Thus while clothing optional use is not sanctioned, neither is it unsanctioned since simply being naked in public is not illegal in Seattle. Regular nudists maintain the beach to a degree.

The first recorded (though unlikely the actual first) case of clothing optional use was when famed architect and Denny-Blaine neighbor Ellsworth Storey was arrested at Whitman Place for skinny dipping.

A letter to the Seattle Park Board (circa 1930s) protesting unruly behavior in the park noted "there was an element of young people from 'Coon Hollow' who ... come down there and change their clothes right in the open."

On May 1st, 1934, O. H. Lindstedt, manager of sporting goods at University Book Store, sent a letter to the Seattle Park Board President requesting they stop requiring men to wear body bathing suits at public beaches. Lindstedt noted that men were buying trunks, but avoiding lifeguarded beaches and instead swimming in places that are dangerous or at least unprotected. Denny Blaine Park, situated between public beaches at Madison Park and Madrona Park, would likely be one of the parks where men illegally swam and sunbathed topless in the 1930s.

In the 1970s, women began to go topless at Denny Blaine Park. These women, who predominantly identified as lesbian, referred to the park as Dykekiki Beach (a playful combination of the words Dyke and Waikiki Beach). News reports from the period include accounts that feminist groups on the beach were "fairly aggressive" in chasing other groups out of the park, including "men who come to the park to ogle"; Seattle Police cited 16 women for lewd conduct in one crackdown in 1988.

World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) Seattle had its bodypainting party at the park on August 17, 2008, and returned on August 16, 2009, with Hemp Ride 2009 (affiliated with WNBR Seattle).

In 2010, several Seattle Parks and Recreation workers reported nudity and topless usage used to be more common; and male nudists cited different parks that were being commonly used as unofficial nude beaches at that time.

Clothing optional use at Denny Blaine Park became more diverse across gender and sexual orientation starting in the mid-2010s and has continued to grow in popularity, including a substantial increase by Seattle's transgender community, especially in the years following the COVID lockdown. On warm summer days, it is not uncommon for all three tiers of the park to be fully utilized. The diversity and current popularity of the park was demonstrated on December 6, 2023 when an overflow crowd of around 400 people attended a Seattle Parks and Recreation community response meeting to voice their opposition to a proposed children's play area and to speak on public record about how significant Denny Blaine Park—as a queer- and trans-friendly clothing optional park and beach—has been to them, with many sharing poignant and personal testimonies.

Neighborhood Park vs. City-wide Public Park usage
During the 1930s, after the beach began attracting use from those outside of the neighborhood and because the Park Board could not find monies for a lifeguard at this small beach, the Ostranders and other near-by eminent neighbors (“a veritable 'who’s who' of Old Seattle”) filed complaints with the Parks Board and urged that bathing be prohibited. They even provided a sketch for a proposed sign that stated, “NO SWIMMING OR PICNICING (Parks Dept.) / Violators will be arrested” and listed alternate parks as "Madison Public Beach (1 mile) / Madrona Public Beach (1 mile)". The Park Superintendent rejected posting the sign and refused to disallow public bathing. Such refusal to treat Whitman Place as a neighborhood park (similar to a refused request by neighbors of Madrona Park) is consistent not only with the founding intention of Denny and Blaine, but also that park was maintained by public funds and that (as of 1932) the park had been transferred to Park jurisdiction.

Top-free and naked usage
Prior to 1990, the Seattle Police Department would periodically issue citations under a then-current lewd conduct ordinance (City of Seattle 12A.10.070), though many continued with their top-free or even naked usage as a form of self-expression or even protest. In 1988, in an article titled “The Cops and The Tops,” the Seattle Weekly reported that police were citing nude sunbathers at Denny-Blaine beach for “lewd conduct” for the second year in a row. “For many women, it’s a matter of pride, and of gender politics, so they have continued to swim shirtless despite the tickets and the police patrols,” the article says.

After the city dropped the lewd conduct ordinance in 1990 following a ruling against them in Seattle v. Johnson, simply being top-free or even fully naked in public was no longer illegal conduct — despite frustrations periodically expressed through neighborhood community associations or via direct calls to the police.

Proposal to create a play area for neighborhood children
In 2023, Stuart Sloan, the owner of a 8,310-square-foot waterfront mansion that neighbors the park, began sending text messages to the personal cell phone number of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, complaining about the nude sunbathers at Denny Blaine Park.

In the following months, Sloan met with a variety of City of Seattle officials to discuss building a playground at the park, ostensibly to curb nudity at the beach. According to a donation budget breakdown, Sloan committed to a donation of "$1 million in 'private funds'" for the proposed park.

Seattle Parks and Recreation staff presented the proposed play area during its November 2023 Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners meeting, noting that it would be fully funded by an anonymous donor who initiated the proposal contingent on it being built at Denny Blaine Park. The play area, suitable for toddlers, would utilize one sixth of the upper tier space and consist of a single play element made from natural materials.

During the proposal presentation, the following beneficial factors were cited:

 * 1) Availability of funding;
 * 2) Fills gap in play area coverage for this area, defined by the ability to walk within 15 minutes;
 * 3) Supports the youth initiative priority;
 * 4) Addresses a nature deficit; and
 * 5) Increases accessibility to the shoreline.

The following challenges were also noted:

 * 1) The site is currently used as a clothing optional (nudist) park;
 * 2) The site is a historic Olmsted park, with classical forms that are reminiscent of Olmstead design;
 * 3) The site would require improvements to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA);
 * 4) The city would be obligated to reimburse the donor if the project is started but not completed;
 * 5) There is limited shoreline access, so why put a kids area at this one (vs. at Madrona Beach);
 * 6) The park has a long tradition of use by the LGBTQIA+ community along with other clothing-optional users who will object to being displaced; and
 * 7) The park serves the entire city, not just the neighborhood.

At the conclusion, the presenter noted the next step was to gather community input before moving on to planning and permitting. The attending commissioners stressed that gathering this feedback was very important, including from the current users of the park.

As anticipated by the commissioners, the proposed play area generated a strong outcry from the LGBTQIA+ community and others who value continued clothing-optional use at Denny Blaine Park. This response included creating a Save Denny Blaine! information website, a petition to Halt the Construction of a Children's Play Area at Denny Blaine Park that received over 9,000 signatures, and a Save Denny Blaine website page to contact elected officials. The public response meeting held in the auditorium of the Martin Luther King FAME Community Center on December 6, 2023 was attended by an overflow crowd of about 400 people who were nearly unanimous in their opposition to the proposal.

On December 8, 2023, Seattle Parks and Recreation announced the proposed play area project would not proceed, citing the feedback they received about the cohesion the current park usage brought to the LGBTQIA+ community and the potential unintended consequences of placing a play area at that beach. The announcement indicated they will evaluate other locations for a play area and will meet with leaders in the LGBTQIA+ community to “better understand the importance of this beach to the community and the hopes for future uses.”

On December 9, 2023, the day following the announcement that the project would not proceed, Mayor Harrell met with the would-be donor Stuart Sloan at University Village, the mall Sloan owns. According to the Mayor's office, though, the Mayor did not know the identity of the anonymous donor and he did not discuss the donation for this project with Sloan at this meeting. A July 2024 report by KUOW-FM reviewed March 2023 text messages between Mayor Harrell and donor Sloan. This report found that the two had discussed the park, with Sloan sending pictures of nude park visitors to Harrell during his vacation, and the mayor responding to tell Sloan that, "If you are disgusted I share your disgust."

Since the decision to scrap the park proposal, neighbors of the park and activists who have organized a Friends of Denny Blaine Park group have met regularly with the Seattle Parks Foundation, a nonprofit that helps bridge the gap between private money and government agencies, in an attempt to "end years of conflict over the beach." In June 2024, the City put forth a policy suggestion, which would create two zones in Deny Blaine Park: "naked Zone A, composed of the grassy area and beach, and a clothed Zone B, consisting of the loop of road... outside the park where several neighbors live."

title: Denny Blaine Park


text: Category:1530s deaths

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Category:1530s deaths


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Karafuto Prefecture

Karafuto Agency, from 1943 Karafuto Prefecture, commonly known as South Sakhalin, was a part of the Empire of Japan on Sakhalin. It was part of the gaichi from 1907 to 1943 and later a prefecture as part of the naichi until 1945.

Karafuto became a territory of the Empire of Japan in 1905 after the Russo-Japanese War, when the portion of Sakhalin south of 50°N was ceded from the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Portsmouth. Karafuto was established in 1907 as an external territory, until being upgraded to an "Inner Land" of the Japanese metropole in 1943. Ōtomari (Korsakov) was the capital of Karafuto from 1905 to 1908 and Toyohara (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk) from 1908 to 1945.

In August 1945, the Japanese administration ceased to function following the invasion of South Sakhalin by the Soviet Union. Karafuto Prefecture was de facto replaced with Sakhalin Oblast, although it continued to exist de jure under Japanese law until it was formally abolished as a legal entity by Japan in June 1949.

Name
The Japanese name Karafuto purportedly comes from Ainu kamuy kar put ya mosir (カムィ・カㇻ・プッ・ヤ・モシㇼ), which means the island a god has created on the estuary (of Amur River). It was formerly known as Kita Ezo, meaning Northern Ezo (Ezo was the former name for Hokkaido). When the Japanese administered the prefecture, Karafuto usually meant Southern Sakhalin only. For convenience, the northern part of the island was sometimes called Sagaren.

In Russian, the entire island was named Sakhalin or Saghalien. It is from Manchu sahaliyan ula angga hada, meaning "peak of the mouth of Amur River". The southern part was simply called Yuzhny Sakhalin ("South Sakhalin"). In Korean, the name is Sahallin or Hwataedo, with the latter name in use during Korea under Japanese rule.

History
Japanese settlement on Sakhalin dates to at least the Edo period. Ōtomari was established in 1679, and cartographers of the Matsumae domain mapped the island, and named it "Kita-Ezo". Japanese cartographer and explorer Mamiya Rinzō established that Sakhalin was an island through his discovery of what is now named Mamiya Strait (Strait of Tartary) in 1809. Japan unilaterally proclaimed sovereignty over the whole island in 1845.

The 1855 Treaty of Shimoda acknowledged that both the Russian Empire and Japan had joint rights of occupation to Sakhalin, without setting a definite territorial demarcation. As the island became settled in the 1860s and 1870s, this ambiguity led to increasing friction between settlers. Attempts by the Tokugawa shogunate to purchase the entire island from the Russian Empire failed, and the new Meiji government was unable to negotiate a partition of the island into separate territories. In the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1875), Japan agreed to give up its claims on Sakhalin in exchange for undisputed ownership of the Kuril Islands.

Japan invaded Sakhalin in the final stages of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, but per the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth was allowed to retain only the southern portion of the island below the 50° N parallel. Russia retained the northern portion, although the Japanese were awarded favorable commercial rights, including fishing and mineral extraction rights in the north. In 1907, Karafuto Prefecture was officially established, with the capital at Ōtomari. In 1908, the capital was relocated to Toyohara.

In 1920, Karafuto was officially designated an external territory of Japan, and its administration and development came under the aegis of the Ministry of Colonial Affairs. Following the Nikolaevsk Incident in 1920, Japan briefly seized the northern half of Sakhalin, and occupied it until the establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1925; however, Japan continued to maintain petroleum and coal concessions in northern Sakhalin until 1944. In 1943, the status of Karafuto was upgraded to that of an "inner land", making it an integral part of the Empire of Japan.

As Japan was extending its influence over East Asia and the Pacific through the establishment of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, the Imperial Japanese Army as part of its offensive contingency plans to invade the Soviet Union if it either became involved in the Pacific War or collapsed due to the ongoing German invasion, proposed the annexation of the remaining northern half of Sakhalin to Japan.

Soviet invasion
In August 1945, after repudiating the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April, and according to the signed agreements of Yalta, in which Stalin pledged that the Soviet Union would enter the Pacific War three months after the defeat of Germany, the Soviet Union invaded Karafuto. The Soviet attack started on 11 August 1945, three day before the surrender of Japan. The Soviet 56th Rifle Corps, part of the 16th Army, consisting of the 79th Rifle Division, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, the 5th Rifle Brigade and the 214 Armored Brigade, attacked the Japanese 88th Infantry Division. Although the Soviet Red Army outnumbered the Japanese by three to one, they advanced only slowly due to strong Japanese resistance. It was not until the 113th Rifle Brigade and the 365th Independent Naval Infantry Rifle Battalion from Sovetskaya Gavan landed in Tōro, a seashore village in western Karafuto, on 16 August that the Soviets broke the Japanese defense line. Japanese resistance grew weaker after this landing. Actual fighting continued until 21 August. Between 22 and 23 August, most remaining Japanese units agreed to a ceasefire. The Soviets completed the conquest of Karafuto on 25 August 1945, by occupying the capital of Toyohara.

Post-war
There were over 400,000 people living in Karafuto when the Soviet offensive began in early August 1945. Most were of Japanese or Korean extraction, though there was also a small White Russian community as well as some Ainu indigenous tribes. By the time of the ceasefire, approximately 100,000 civilians had managed to escape to Hokkaidō. The military government established by the Soviet Army banned the local press, confiscated cars and radio sets and imposed a curfew. Local managers and bureaucrats were made to aid Russian authorities in the process of reconstruction, before being deported to labor camps, either on North Sakhalin or in Siberia. In schools, courses in Marxism–Leninism were introduced, and Japanese children were obliged to sing songs in praise of Stalin.

Step by step Karafuto lost its Japanese identity. Sakhalin Oblast was created in February 1946, and by March all towns, villages and streets were given Russian names. More and more colonists began to arrive from mainland Russia, with whom the Japanese were obliged to share the limited stock of housing. In October 1946 the Soviets began to repatriate all remaining Japanese. By 1950 most had been sent, willing or not, to Hokkaidō. They had to leave all of their possessions behind, including any currency, Russian or Japanese. Today some keep alive the memory of their former home in the meetings of the Karafuto Renmei, an association for former Karafuto residents.

In 1945, with the defeat of Japan in World War II, the Japanese administration in Karafuto ceased to function. The Japanese government formally abolished Karafuto Prefecture as a legal entity on 1 June 1949. In 1951, at the Treaty of San Francisco, Japan renounced its rights to Sakhalin, but did not formally acknowledge Soviet sovereignty over it. Since that time, no final peace treaty has been signed between Japan and Russia, and the status of the neighboring Kuril Islands remains disputed.

Economy
The pre-war economy of Karafuto was based on fishing, forestry and agriculture, together with extraction of coal and petroleum. In terms of industry, the paper industry and the charcoal production industry was well developed. Pulp for rayon production in Honshu was predominately sourced from Karafuto. The territory suffered from a labor shortage through most of its history, and tax incentives were provided to encourage immigration. Indigenous Nivkh and Oroks worked in Japanese-run fisheries and a  synthetic textile plant near the Russian border. For the construction of the Toyohara-Maoka line, bonded labor was put to use, including Chinese contract laborers. By the end of the 1920s, these laborers would be replaced with Koreans. With the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, their population would increase substantially.

An extensive railway network was constructed in Karafuto to support the extraction of natural resources. The Karafuto Railway Bureau (樺太鐵道局) maintained 682.6 kilometers of track in four main lines and an additional 58.2 kilometers of track.

Government
Karafuto was administered from the central government in Tokyo as the Karafuto Agency (樺太廳) under the Colonization Bureau (拓務局) of the Home Ministry. The Colonization Bureau became the Ministry of Colonial Affairs (拓務省) in 1923 at which time Karafuto was officially designated an overseas territory of the Empire of Japan.

When the Ministry of Colonial Affairs was absorbed into the new Ministry of Greater East Asia in 1942, the administration of Karafuto was separated, and Karafuto became an integral part of the Japanese archipelago.

Major cities
As of 1945, Karafuto was divided into four subprefectures, which in turn were subdivided into 11 districts, in turn divided into 41 municipalities (one city, 13 towns, and 27 villages).

Karafuto's largest city was Toyohara, while other major cities included Esutoru in the north central and Maoka in the south central region.

The list below are the towns and the city of the prefecture. These in italics are the corresponding current Russian names.

Esutoru Subprefecture (惠須取支廳)
 * Towns
 * Chinnai (珍內町, Krasnogorsk)
 * Esutoru (惠須取町, Uglegorsk)
 * Nayoshi (名好町, Lesogorskoye)
 * Tōro (塔路町, Shakhtyorsk)

Maoka Subprefecture (眞岡支廳 )
 * Towns
 * Honto (本斗町, Nevelsk)
 * Maoka (眞岡町, Kholmsk)
 * Naihoro (內幌町, Gornozavodsk)
 * Noda (野田町, Chekhov)
 * Tomarioru (泊居町, Tomari)

Shikuka Subprefecture (敷香支廳)
 * Towns
 * Shirutoru (知取町, Makarov)
 * Shikuka, Shisuka (敷香町, Poronaysk)

Toyohara Subprefecture (豐原支廳 )
 * City
 * Toyohara (豐原市, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk)
 * Towns
 * Ochiai (落合町, Dolinsk)
 * Ōtomari (大泊町, Korsakov)
 * Rūtaka (留多加町, Aniva)

title: Karafuto Prefecture


text:
East Hills railway station

East Hills railway station is located on the East Hills line, serving the Sydney suburb of East Hills. It is served by Sydney Trains T8 Airport & South line services.

History
East Hills station opened on 21 December 1931 when the line was extended from Kingsgrove. It served as the terminus of the line until it was extended to Glenfield on 21 December 1987.

A new station was built south-east of the original station as part of the extension opening in August 1987 with the original station closed and demolished. Following the extension, East Hills became the main intermediate terminus and an interchange point between all stops and limited stops trains. In addition to the two through tracks (platforms 2 and 3), a side terminating track (platform 1) was provided. A new centre turnback at Revesby opened in 2009 as part of the Rail Clearways Program, which ended East Hills' role as the primary intermediate terminus.

The station was upgraded and received lifts in April 2022.

Platforms and services
An 8-car Tangara service may operate sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays. Usually, A & B set trains service the station, however, there may be the occasional M, T or K set train will operate.

Transport links
U-Go Mobility operates one bus route via East Hills station, under contract to Transport for NSW:
 * 962: to Westfield Miranda
 * 922: to Bankstown Central via Milperra
 * 924: to Bankstown Central via Revesby
 * 925: to Lidcombe station
 * 962: to Westfield Miranda

East Hills station is served by one NightRide route:
 * N40: to Town Hall station

title: East Hills railway station


text: Category:1560s deaths

title: Category:1560s deaths


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WebMD

WebMD is an American corporation which publishes online news and information about  human health and well-being. The WebMD website also includes information about drugs and is an important healthcare information website and the most popular consumer-oriented health site.

WebMD was started in 1998 by internet entrepreneur Jeff Arnold. In early 1999, it was part of a three-way merger with Sapient Health Network (SHN) and Direct Medical Knowledge (DMK). SHN began in Portland, Oregon, in 1996 by Jim Kean, Bill Kelly, and Kris Nybakken, who worked together at a CD-ROM publishing firm, Creative Multimedia. Later, in 1999, WebMD merged with Healtheon, founded by Netscape Communications founder James H. Clark.

Traffic
During March 2020, WebMD's network of websites reached more unique visitors each month than any other leading private or government healthcare website, making it the leading health publisher in the United States. In the fourth quarter of 2016, WebMD recorded an average of 179.5 million unique users per month, and 3.63 billion page views per quarter. In the first quarter of 2020, WebMD received approximately 127 million unique users viewing over 229 million page views per month.

History
WebMD is best known as a health information services website, which publishes content regarding health and health care topics, including a symptom checklist, pharmacy information, drugs information, and blogs of physicians with specific topics, and provides a place to store personal medical information. URAC, the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission, has accredited WebMD's operations continuously since 2001 regarding everything from proper disclosures and health content to security and privacy.

The company reported $705 million in revenue for the year 2016. In 2017, Internet Brands, a company owned by private-equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) agreed to purchase WebMD Health Corporation for approximately $2.8 billion.

In May 2021, WebMD acquired the print magazine and website for patients with ADHD and parents of children with ADHD, ADDitude. In August 2022, WebMD acquired the leading French medical news site Jim.fr.

Company
WebMD is financed by advertising, third-party contributions, and sponsors. Some of the sponsors have influence over the content on WebMD. In 2013, the Chicago Tribune reported that WebMD, "has struggled with a fall in advertising revenue with pharmaceutical companies slashing marketing budgets as several blockbuster drugs go off patent." In response, WebMD began investing in changes to its site in order to entice users who use its site seeking specific information to linger on the site reviewing other material.

WebMD offers services to physicians and private clients. They publish WebMD the Magazine, a patient-directed publication distributed bimonthly free of charge to 85 percent of physician waiting rooms. Medscape is a professional portal for physicians and has training materials, a drug database, and clinical information on 30 medical specialty areas and more than 30 physician discussion boards. WebMD Health Services provides private health management programs and benefit decision-support portals to employers and health plans.

The WebMD Health Network operates WebMD Health and other health-related sites including: Medscape, MedicineNet, eMedicine, eMedicineHealth, RxList, OnHealth, and theheart.org. These sites provide similar services to those of WebMD. MedicineNet is an online media publishing company. Medscape offers up-to-date information for physicians and other healthcare professionals. RxList offers detailed information about pharmaceutical information on generic and name-brand drugs. eMedicineHealth is a consumer site offering similar information to that of WebMD. It was first based on the site created for physicians, dentists and other healthcare professionals called eMedicine.com.

WebMD China is operated by an unaffiliated online publishing group, and is not part of the WebMD Health Network.

Criticism
Writing in The New York Times Magazine in 2011, Virginia Heffernan criticized WebMD for biasing readers toward drugs that are sold by the site's pharmaceutical sponsors, even when they are unnecessary. She wrote that WebMD "has become permeated with pseudo-medicine and subtle misinformation."

Julia Belluz of Vox criticized WebMD in 2016 ("The Truth about WebMD, a Hypochondriac's Nightmare and Big Pharma's Dream") for encouraging hypochondria and for promoting treatments for which evidence of safety and effectiveness is weak or non-existent, such as green coffee supplements for weight loss, vagus nerve stimulation for depression, and fish-oil/omega-3 supplements for high cholesterol.

in 2012, Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, MD, Associate Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Ottawa and the medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute, wrote an article entitled "Why I Can No Longer Trust Medscape". In it he wrote that Medscape is "putting patients at risk by actively misinforming their physicians." He also noted poor vetting of studies that Medscape chooses to publish as his reason for stating this.

In 2016, a survey of doctors found WebMD and its sister company Medscape to have incomplete medical information lacking depth and also numerous cases of misinformation on their sites. A study of Medscape and WebMD also found both services to lack neutrality and exhibiting bias potentially based on very high payments (compared to their industry competitors) from the pharmaceutical industry.

title: WebMD


text: Category:1588 births

title: Category:1588 births


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User talk:Error 404

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 * That is hilarious. 68.39.174.238 23:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Image:Dyna-Soar_template.png listed for deletion
An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:Dyna-Soar_template.png, has been listed at Images and media for deletion. Please see the to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Sherool (talk) 17:49, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

ha ha
The username is trolling, but it's within Wikipedia's guidelines. Hilarious! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1234567890Number (talk • contribs) 12:01, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:50, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Apollo 1 2nd plaque.png

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title: User talk:Error 404


text: Category:1052 births

title: Category:1052 births


text:
Linz am Rhein

Linz am Rhein (in English Linz on the Rhine) is a municipality in the district of Neuwied, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated on the right bank of the river Rhine near Remagen, approx. 25 km southeast of Bonn and has about 6,000 inhabitants. It is the sister city of Marietta, Georgia in the United States, Linz in Austria and Pornic in France.

Linz is the seat of the Verbandsgemeinde ("collective municipality") Linz am Rhein.

The town is also a destination for tourists thanks to its location next to the Rhine river and its colorful half-timbered houses.

History
The town of Linz was first mentioned in an official document in 874 and called "Lincesce".

Between 1206 and 1214 the parish church of St. Martin was built at the most elevated spot of the town. A former church, which was located at the same place, had been destroyed during the fights of Otto IV and Philip of Swabia in 1198. During reconstruction work in 1981 the remains of graves and foundations belonging to the former church were found.

The most important political decision for Linz was taken in the late Middle Ages. Between 1304 and 1332 Linz was officially awarded city status by the Archbishop of Cologne, Heinrich II of Virneburg. Shortly after having been declared a "city", the castle Burg Linz was built.

In 1391 a fire destroyed two thirds of the city. In 1475 the Emperor's troops occupied Linz during the Neuss War. The town hall, which is one of the major sights of Linz, was built in 1517.

In 1815, Linz became part of Prussia. One year later in 1816 Linz received the status of a district town ("Kreisstadt"). This status was revoked in 1822 and Linz became part of the Neuwied county.

After the Second World War, Linz became a part of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1946.

In the 1970s the city expanded with the new residential area "Roniger Hof". In 1979 the local hospital was put into service.

Mayors

 * 1812–1813: Engelbert Schwamborn
 * 1817–1820: Friedrich Adolph von Cocy
 * 1820–1842: Franz Kerp
 * 1842–1848: Franz Stephan Christmann
 * 1848–1851: Rudolf Jakob von Gerolt zur Leyen
 * 1851–1856: Hubert Hubaleck
 * 1856: Johann Schmitz
 * 1856–1871: Willibrord Thiesen
 * 1871–1910: Julius Lerner
 * 1910–1914: Hugo Menzel
 * 1914–1932: Paul Pieper
 * 1933: Eugen Mehliß
 * 1933: Rahms (given name unknown)
 * 1933–1938: Franz Weyand,
 * 1939–1944: Paul Wiezorke
 * 1944–1945: Matthias Wagner
 * 1945: Franz-Josef Wuermeling, CDU
 * 1945–1947: Wilhelm Hoffmann
 * 1947–1948: Peter Frings CDU
 * 1948–1956: Wilhelm Hoffmann
 * 1956–1972: Leo Thönnissen, SPD
 * 1972–1974: Theo Lück, SPD
 * 1974–1979: Hans Breitenbach, CDU
 * 1979–1989: Theo Lück, first SPD, from 1984 FWG
 * 1989–2014: Adi Buchwald, CDU
 * since 2014: Hans Georg Faust, CDU

Notable people

 * Ferdinand von Malaisé (1806-1892); Bavarian General, Educator of King Ludwig III of Bavaria
 * Anton Joseph Weidenbach (1809-1871), historian and archivist
 * Manfred Bruns (1934-2019), Federal Prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice
 * Alex Kempkens (born 1942), photographer
 * Osvaldo Bayer (1927-2018), German-Argentine anarchist journalist and historian, resided in the town during the 1976-1983 Argentine Dirty War
 * Thomas Bierschenk, (born 1951), German ethnologist and sociologist, Professor of African Cultures and Societies at the Institute for Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Mainz.

title: Linz am Rhein


text:
Crescent Beach

Crescent Beach may refer to several places:

Canada

 * Crescent Beach, Nova Scotia
 * Crescent Beach, Lockeport, Nova Scotia
 * Crescent Beach, Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia
 * Crescent Beach, British Columbia

United States

 * Crescent Beach, Brevard County, Florida
 * Crescent Beach, St. Johns County, Florida
 * Crescent Beach, Sarasota County, Florida
 * Crescent Beach, South Carolina

title: Crescent Beach


text:
Talk:List of parks in Seattle

Untitled
There is a park whose name I can't remember and I don't think is listed. As one takes Lake Washington Blvd. East from East Madison Street down the hill to Lake Washington, one goes through a park in which Lake Washington Blvd East goes through a hairpin turn. I believe this park was one of those designed by the famous Seattle Engineer whose name I can't remember. In any case I have uploaded several pictures of the hairpin curve and they are looking for a place to rest.

 * That is Lakeview Park. A great way to find out the names of parks is to use Seattle's Fleets & Facilities Department's mapping application (link below)--use "identify property management area" when you get to the map of the park you're researching. Another good resource is the Parks & Recreation Department's A-Z Directory.
 * Fleets & Facilities Mapping Application
 * Parks & Recreation A-Z Directory
 * --Lukobe 17:06, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Come to think of it, we could basically dump http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/parkspaces/parklist.htm into here. --Lukobe 19:26, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
 * That list includes over 400 entries, many of which are "boat ramps," school "playfields" or "playgrounds" and many that are much less than one acre. Perhaps we could start by selecting those that City Parks has linked to a further description of "parks" and more than a couple of acres, unless noteworthy for some other reason (e.g., Pioneer Square). Lupinelawyer 22:34, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Criteria?
What, if anything, are the criteria for inclusion in this list? I just added Seattle Center—an absurd omission—but I notice, for example, that Pioneer Square and major viewpoints such as Jack Block Park and Bhy Kracke Park are missing, while relatively unknown parks such as Northacres Park and Alvin Larkins Park are included. All four parks in Montlake are mentioned, but neither Hiawatha Playfield, Parsons Gardens, nor the Ballard Commons make the list. The rather tiny Fremont Peak Park is listed, but Judkins Park is not. Etc. - Jmabel | Talk 06:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, is this a list only of parks in the Seattle Parks system? What about the Carl S. English, Jr., Botanical Gardens, or the privately owned Wisteria Park? - Jmabel | Talk 06:59, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Revisiting over a decade later: no mention of most of the parks owned and operated by the Port of Seattle. - Jmabel | Talk 23:18, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Guess I'll deal with this myself. - Jmabel | Talk 17:58, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of parks in Seattle


text: Category:1182 births

title: Category:1182 births


text:
Mary Seacole

Mary Jane Seacole (Grant;  23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a British nurse and businesswoman.

Seacole was born to a Creole mother in Kingston who ran a boarding house and had herbalist skills as a "doctress". In 1990, Seacole was (posthumously) awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit. In 2004, she was voted the greatest black Briton in a survey conducted in 2003 by the black heritage website Every Generation.

Seacole went to the Crimean War in 1855 with the plan of setting up the "British Hotel", as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers." However, chef Alexi Soyer told her that officers did not need overnight accommodation, so she instead made it into a restaurant/bar/catering service. It proved to be very popular and she and her business partner, a relative of her late husband, did well on it until the end of the war. Her memoir, Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, 1857, includes three chapters of the food she served and the encounters she had with officers, some of them high ranking, and including the commander of the Turkish forces.

Mrs Seacole missed the first three major battles of the war, as she was busy in London attending to her gold investments—she had arrived from Panama where she had provided services for prospectors going overland to the California Gold Rush. She gave assistance at the battlefield on three later battles, going out to attend to the fallen after serving wine and sandwiches to spectators.

She is often described as "nursing" on the battlefield, but she never called herself a "nurse", reserving that term for Florence Nightingale and her nurses. In her memoir, Mrs Seacole described several attempts she made to join that team; however, she did not start her informal inquiries until after both Nightingale and her initial team, and a later one, had left. When Seacole left, it was with the plan of joining her business partner and starting their business. She travelled with two black employees, her maid Mary, and a porter, Mac.

She was largely forgotten for almost a century after her death. Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857), was the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain. The erection of a statue of her at St Thomas' Hospital, London, on 30 June 2016, describing her as a "pioneer", generated some controversy and opposition, especially among those concerned with Florence Nightingale's legacy.

Early career and background
Mary Jane Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant on 23 November 1805 in Kingston, in the Colony of Jamaica as a member of the community of free black people in Jamaica. She was the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army. Her mother, Mrs Grant, nicknamed "The Doctress", was a healer who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal medicines. Mrs Grant also ran Blundell Hall, a boarding house at 7, East Street.

In the 18th century, Jamaican doctresses mastered folk medicine, including the use of hygiene and herbs. They had a vast knowledge of tropical diseases, and had a general practitioner's skill in treating ailments and injuries, acquired from having to look after the illnesses of fellow slaves on sugar plantations. At Blundell Hall, Seacole acquired her nursing skills, which included the use of hygiene, ventilation, warmth, hydration, rest, empathy, good nutrition and care for the dying. Blundell Hall also served as a convalescent home for military and naval staff recuperating from illnesses such as cholera and yellow fever. Seacole's autobiography says she began experimenting in medicine, based on what she learned from her mother, by ministering to a doll and then progressing to pets before helping her mother treat humans. Because of her family's close ties with the army, she was able to observe the practices of military doctors, and combined that knowledge with the West African remedies she acquired from her mother. In Jamaica in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, neonatal deaths were more than a quarter of total births. However, Seacole, using traditional West African herbal remedies and hygienic practices, boasted that she never lost a mother or her child.

Seacole was proud of both her Jamaican and Scottish ancestry and called herself a Creole In her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole, she writes: "I am a Creole, and have good Scots blood coursing through my veins. My father was a soldier of an old Scottish family." Her biographer Jane Robinson speculates that she may technically have been a quadroon. Seacole emphasises her personal vigour in her autobiography, distancing herself from the contemporary stereotype of the "lazy Creole", She was proud of her black ancestry, writing, "I have a few shades of deeper brown upon my skin which shows me related – and I am proud of the relationship – to those poor mortals whom you once held enslaved, and whose bodies America still owns."

Mary Seacole spent some years in the household of an elderly woman, whom she called her "kind patroness", before returning to her mother. She was treated as a member of her patroness's family and received a good education. As the educated daughter of a Scottish officer and a free black woman with a respectable business, Seacole would have held a high position in Jamaican society.

In about 1821, Seacole visited London, staying for a year, and visited her relatives in the merchant Henriques family. Although London had a number of black people, she records that a companion, a West Indian with skin darker than her own "dusky" shades, was taunted by children. Seacole herself was "only a little brown"; she was nearly white according to one of her biographers, Dr. Ron Ramdin. She returned to London approximately a year later, bringing a "large stock of West Indian pickles and preserves for sale". Her later travels would be without a chaperone or sponsor – an unusually independent practice at a time when women had limited rights.

In the Caribbean, 1826–51
After returning to Jamaica, Seacole cared for her "old indulgent patroness" through an illness, finally returning to the family home at Blundell Hall after the death of her patroness a few years later. Seacole then worked alongside her mother, occasionally being called to provide nursing assistance at the British Army hospital at Up-Park Camp. She also travelled the Caribbean, visiting the British colony of New Providence in the Bahamas, the Spanish colony of Cuba, and the new Republic of Haiti. Seacole records these travels, but omits mention of significant current events, such as the Christmas Rebellion in Jamaica of 1831, the abolition of slavery in 1833, and the abolition of "apprenticeship" in 1838.

She married Edwin Horatio Hamilton Seacole in Kingston on 10 November 1836. Her marriage, from betrothal to widowhood, is described in just nine lines at the conclusion of the first chapter of her autobiography. Robinson reports the legend in the Seacole family that Edwin was an illegitimate son of Lord Nelson and his mistress, Emma Hamilton, who was adopted by Thomas, a local "surgeon, apothecary and man midwife" (Seacole's will indicates that Horatio Seacole was Nelson's godson: she left a diamond ring to her friend, Lord Rokeby, "given to my late husband by his godfather Viscount Nelson", but there was no mention of this godson in Nelson's own will or its codicils.) Edwin was a merchant and seems to have had a poor constitution. The newly married couple moved to Black River and opened a provisions store which failed to prosper. They returned to Blundell Hall in the early 1840s.

During 1843 and 1844, Seacole suffered a series of personal disasters. She and her family lost much of the boarding house in a fire in Kingston on 29 August 1843. Blundell Hall burned down, and was replaced by New Blundell Hall, which was described as "better than before". Then her husband died in October 1844, followed by her mother. After a period of grief, in which Seacole says she did not stir for days, she composed herself, "turned a bold front to fortune", and assumed the management of her mother's hotel. She put her rapid recovery down to her hot Creole blood, blunting the "sharp edge of [her] grief" sooner than Europeans who she thought "nurse their woe secretly in their hearts".

Seacole absorbed herself in work, declining many offers of marriage. She later became known to the European military visitors to Jamaica who often stayed at Blundell Hall. She treated and nursed patients in the cholera epidemic of 1850, which killed some 32,000 Jamaicans.

In Central America, 1851–54
In 1850, Seacole's half-brother Edward moved to Cruces, Panama, which was then part of the Republic of New Granada. There, approximately 45 mi up the Chagres River from the coast, he followed the family trade by establishing the Independent Hotel to accommodate the many travellers between the eastern and western coasts of the United States (the number of travellers had increased enormously, as part of the 1849 California Gold Rush). Cruces was the limit of navigability of the Chagres River during the rainy season, which lasts from June to December. Travellers would ride on donkeys approximately 20 mi along the Las Cruces trail from Panama City on the Pacific Ocean coast to Cruces, and then 45 mi down-river to the Atlantic Ocean at Chagres (or vice versa). In the dry season, the river subsided, and travellers would switch from land to the river a few miles farther downstream, at Gorgona. Most of these settlements have now been submerged by Gatun Lake, formed as part of the Panama Canal.

In 1851, Seacole travelled to Cruces to visit her brother. Shortly after her arrival, the town was struck by cholera, a disease which had reached Panama in 1849. Seacole was on hand to treat the first victim, who survived, which established Seacole's reputation and brought her a succession of patients as the infection spread. The rich paid, but she treated the poor for free. Many, both rich and poor, succumbed. She eschewed opium, preferring mustard rubs and poultices, the laxative calomel (mercurous chloride), sugars of lead (lead(II) acetate), and rehydration with water boiled with cinnamon. While she believed her preparations had moderate success, she faced little competition, the only other treatments coming from a "timid little dentist", who was an inexperienced doctor sent by the Panamanian government, and the Roman Catholic Church.

The epidemic raged through the population. Seacole later expressed exasperation at their feeble resistance, claiming they "bowed down before the plague in slavish despair". She performed an autopsy on an orphan child for whom she had cared, which gave her "decidedly useful" new knowledge. At the end of this epidemic she herself contracted cholera, forcing her to rest for several weeks. In her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, she describes how the residents of Cruces responded: "When it became known that their "yellow doctress" had the cholera, I must do the people of Cruces the justice to say that they gave me plenty of sympathy, and would have shown their regard for me more actively, had there been any occasion."

Cholera was to return again: Ulysses S. Grant passed through Cruces in July 1852, on military duty; a hundred and twenty men, a third of his party, died of the disease there or shortly afterwards en route to Panama City.

Despite the problems of disease and climate, Panama remained the favoured route between the coasts of the United States. Seeing a business opportunity, Seacole opened the British Hotel, which was a restaurant rather than a hotel. She described it as a "tumble down hut," with two rooms, the smaller one to be her bedroom, the larger one to serve up to 50 diners. She soon added the services of a barber.

As the wet season ended in early 1852, Seacole joined other traders in Cruces in packing up to move to Gorgona. She records a white American giving a speech at a leaving dinner in which he wished that "God bless the best yaller woman he ever made" and asked the listeners to join with him in rejoicing that "she's so many shades removed from being entirely black". He went on to say that "if we could bleach her by any means we would [...] and thus make her acceptable in any company[,] as she deserves to be". Seacole replied firmly that she did not "appreciate your friend's kind wishes with respect to my complexion. If it had been as dark as any nigger's, I should have been just as happy and just as useful, and as much respected by those whose respect I value." She declined the offer of "bleaching" and drank "to you and the general reformation of American manners". Salih notes Seacole's use here of eye dialect, set against her own English, as an implicit inversion of the day's caricatures of "black talk". Seacole also comments on the positions of responsibility taken on by escaped African-American slaves in Panama, as well as in the priesthood, the army, and public offices, commenting that "it is wonderful to see how freedom and equality elevate men". She also records an antipathy between Panamanians and Americans, which she attributes in part to the fact that so many of the former had once been slaves of the latter.

In Gorgona, Seacole briefly ran a females-only hotel. In late 1852, she travelled home to Jamaica. Already delayed, the journey was further made difficult when she encountered racial discrimination while trying to book passage on an American ship. She was forced to wait for a later British boat. In 1853, soon after arriving home, Seacole was asked by the Jamaican medical authorities to provide nursing care to victims of a severe outbreak of yellow fever. She found that she could do little, because the epidemic was so severe. Her memoirs state that her own boarding house was full of sufferers and she saw many of them die. Although she wrote, "I was sent for by the medical authorities to provide nurses for the sick at Up-Park Camp," she did not claim to bring nurses with her when she went. She left her sister with some friends at her house, went to the camp (about a mile, or 1.6 km, from Kingston), "and did my best, but it was little we could do to mitigate the severity of the epidemic." However, in Cuba Seacole is remembered with great fondness by those she nursed back to health, where she became known as "the Yellow Woman from Jamaica with the cholera medicine".

Seacole returned to Panama in early 1854 to finalise her business affairs, and three months later moved to the New Granada Mining Gold Company establishment at Fort Bowen Mine some 70 mi away near Escribanos. The superintendent, Thomas Day, was related to her late husband. Seacole had read newspaper reports of the outbreak of war against Russia before she left Jamaica, and news of the escalating Crimean War reached her in Panama. She determined to travel to England to volunteer as a nurse with experience in herbal healing skills, to experience the "pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war" as she described it in Chapter I of her autobiography. A part of her reasoning for going to Crimea was that she knew some of the soldiers that were deployed there. In her autobiography she explains how she heard that soldiers whom she had cared for and nursed back to health in the 97th and 48th regiments were being shipped back to England in preparation for the fighting on the Crimean Peninsula.

Crimean War, 1853–56
The Crimean War lasted from October 1853 until 1 April 1856 and was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the United Kingdom, France, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Ottoman Empire. The majority of the conflict took place on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea and Turkey.

Many thousands of troops from all the countries involved were drafted to the area, and disease broke out almost immediately. Hundreds perished, mostly from cholera. Hundreds more would die waiting to be shipped out, or on the voyage. Their prospects were little better when they arrived at the poorly staffed, unsanitary and overcrowded hospitals which were the only medical provision for the wounded. In Britain, a trenchant letter in The Times on 14 October triggered Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War, to approach Florence Nightingale to form a detachment of nurses to be sent to the hospital to save lives. Interviews were quickly held, suitable candidates selected, and Nightingale left for Turkey on 21 October.

Seacole travelled from Navy Bay in Panama to England, initially to deal with her investments in gold-mining businesses. She then attempted to join the second contingent of nurses to the Crimea. She applied to the War Office and other government offices, but arrangements for departure were already underway. In her memoir, she wrote that she brought "ample testimony" of her experience in nursing, but the only example officially cited was that of a former medical officer of the West Granada Gold-Mining Company. However, Seacole wrote that this was just one of the testimonials she had in her possession. Seacole wrote in her autobiography, "Now, I am not for a single instant going to blame the authorities who would not listen to the offer of a motherly yellow woman to go to the Crimea and nurse her ‘sons’ there, suffering from cholera, diarrhœa, and a host of lesser ills. In my country, where people know our use, it would have been different; but here it was natural enough – although I had references, and other voices spoke for me – that they should laugh, good-naturedly enough, at my offer."

Seacole also applied to the Crimean Fund, a fund raised by public subscription to support the wounded in Crimea, for sponsorship to travel there, but she again met with refusal. Seacole questioned whether racism was a factor in her being turned down. She wrote in her autobiography, "Was it possible that American prejudices against colour had some root here? Did these ladies shrink from accepting my aid because my blood flowed beneath a somewhat duskier skin than theirs?" An attempt to join the contingent of nurses was also rebuffed, as she wrote, "Once again I tried, and had an interview this time with one of Miss Nightingale's companions. She gave me the same reply, and I read in her face the fact, that had there been a vacancy, I should not have been chosen to fill it." Seacole did not stop after being rebuffed by the Secretary-at-War, she soon approached his wife, Elizabeth Herbert, who also informed her "that the full complement of nurses had been secured" (Seacole 78, 79).

Seacole finally resolved to travel to Crimea using her own resources and to open the British Hotel. Business cards were printed and sent ahead to announce her intention to open an establishment, to be called the "British Hotel", near Balaclava, which would be "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers". Shortly afterwards, her Caribbean acquaintance, Thomas Day, arrived unexpectedly in London, and the two formed a partnership. They assembled a stock of supplies, and Seacole embarked on the Dutch screw-steamer Hollander on 27 January 1855 on its maiden voyage, to Constantinople. The ship called at Malta, where Seacole encountered a doctor who had recently left Scutari. He wrote her a letter of introduction to Nightingale.

Seacole visited Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari, where she asked for a bed for the night. Seacole wrote of Selina Bracebridge, an assistant of Nightingale, "Mrs. B. questions me very kindly, but with the same look of curiosity and surprise. What object has Mrs. Seacole in coming out? This is the purport of her questions. And I say, frankly, to be of use somewhere; for other considerations I had not, until necessity forced them upon me. Willingly, had they accepted me, I would have worked for the wounded, in return for bread and water. I fancy Mrs. B— thought that I sought for employment at Scutari, for she said, very kindly – "Miss Nightingale has the entire management of our hospital staff, but I do not think that any vacancy – " Seacole informed Bracebridge that she intended to travel to Balaclava the next day to join her business partner. She reports that her meeting with Nightingale was friendly, with Nightingale asking "What do you want, Mrs. Seacole? Anything we can do for you? If it lies in my power, I shall be very happy." Seacole told her of her "dread of the night journey by caïque" and the improbability of being able to find the Hollander in the dark. A bed was then found for her and breakfast sent her in the morning, with a "kind message" from Bracebridge. A footnote in the memoir states that Seacole subsequently "saw much of Miss Nightingale at Balaclava," but no further meetings are recorded in the text.

After transferring most of her stores to the transport ship Albatross, with the remainder following on the Nonpareil, she set out on the four-day voyage to the British bridgehead into Crimea at Balaclava. Lacking proper building materials, Seacole gathered abandoned metal and wood in her spare moments, with a view to using the debris to build her hotel. She found a site for the hotel at a place she christened Spring Hill, near Kadikoi, some 3+1/2 mi along the main British supply road from Balaclava to the British camp near Sevastopol, and within a mile of the British headquarters. The hotel was built from the salvaged driftwood, packing cases, iron sheets, and salvaged architectural items such as glass doors and window-frames, from the village of Kamara, using hired local labour. The new British Hotel opened in March 1855. An early visitor was Alexis Soyer, a noted French chef who had travelled to Crimea to help improve the diet of British soldiers. He records meeting Seacole in his 1857 work A Culinary Campaign and describes Seacole as "an old dame of a jovial appearance, but a few shades darker than the white lily". Seacole requested Soyer's advice on how to manage her business, and was advised to concentrate on food and beverage service, and not to have beds for visitors because the few either slept on board ships in the harbour or in tents in the camp.

The hotel was completed in July at a total cost of £800. It included a building made of iron, containing a main room with counters and shelves and storage above, an attached kitchen, two wooden sleeping huts, outhouses, and an enclosed stable-yard. The building was stocked with provisions shipped from London and Constantinople, as well as local purchases from the British camp near Kadikoi and the French camp at nearby Kamiesch. Seacole sold anything – "from a needle to an anchor"—to army officers and visiting sightseers. Meals were served at the hotel, cooked by two black cooks, and the kitchen also provided outside catering.

Despite constant thefts, particularly of livestock, Seacole's establishment prospered. Chapter XIV of Wonderful Adventures describes the meals and supplies provided to officers. They were closed at 8 pm daily and on Sundays. Seacole did some of the cooking herself: "Whenever I had a few leisure moments, I used to wash my hands, roll up my sleeves, and roll out pastry." When called to "dispense medications," she did so. Soyer was a frequent visitor, and praised Seacole's offerings, noting that she offered him champagne on his first visit.

To Soyer, near the time of departure, Florence Nightingale acknowledged favourable views of Seacole, consistent with their one known meeting in Scutari. Soyer's remarks—he knew both women—show pleasantness on both sides. Seacole told him of her encounter with Nightingale at the Barrack Hospital: "You must know, M Soyer, that Miss Nightingale is very fond of me. When I passed through Scutari, she very kindly gave me board and lodging." When he related Seacole's inquiries to Nightingale, she replied "with a smile: 'I should like to see her before she leaves, as I hear she has done a deal of good for the poor soldiers.'" Nightingale, however, did not want her nurses associating with Seacole, as she wrote to her brother-in-law. In this letter, Nightingale reportedly wrote, "I had the greatest difficulty in repelling Mrs Seacole's advances, and in preventing association between her and my nurses (absolutely out of the question!)...Anyone who employs Mrs Seacole will introduce much kindness - also much drunkenness and improper conduct".

Seacole often went out to the troops as a sutler, selling her provisions near the British camp at Kadikoi, and nursing casualties brought out from the trenches around Sevastopol or from the Tchernaya valley. She was widely known to the British Army as "Mother Seacole".

Apart from serving officers at the British Hotel, Seacole also provided catering for spectators at the battles, and spent time on Cathcart's Hill, some 3+1/2 mi north of the British Hotel, as an observer. On one occasion, attending wounded troops under fire, she dislocated her right thumb, an injury which never healed entirely. In a dispatch written on 14 September 1855, William Howard Russell, special correspondent of The Times, wrote that she was a "warm and successful physician, who doctors and cures all manner of men with extraordinary success. She is always in attendance near the battlefield to aid the wounded and has earned many a poor fellow's blessing." Russell also wrote that she "redeemed the name of sutler", and another that she was "both a Miss Nightingale and a [chef]". Seacole made a point of wearing brightly coloured, and highly conspicuous, clothing—often bright blue, or yellow, with ribbons in contrasting colours. While Lady Alicia Blackwood later recalled that Seacole had "... personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as could comfort or alleviate the suffering of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pay ...".

Her peers, though wary at first, soon found out how important Seacole was for both medical assistance and morale. One British medical officer described Seacole in his memoir as "The acquaintance of a celebrated person, Mrs. Seacole, a coloured women who out of the goodness of her heart and at her own expense, supplied hot tea to the poor sufferers [wounded men being transported from the peninsula to the hospital at Scutari ] while they are waiting to be lifted into the boats…. She did not spare herself if she could do any good to the suffering soldiers. In rain and snow, in storm and tempest, day after day she was at her self-chosen post with her stove and kettle, in any shelter she could find, brewing tea for all who wanted it, and they were many. Sometimes more than 200 sick would be embarked in one day, but Mrs. Seacole was always equal, to the occasion". But Seacole did more than carry tea to the suffering soldiers. She often carried bags of lint, bandages, needles and thread to tend to the wounds of soldiers.

In late August, Seacole was on the route to Cathcart's Hill for the final assault on Sevastopol on 7 September 1855. French troops led the storming, but the British were beaten back. By dawn on Sunday 9 September, the city was burning out of control, and it was clear that it had fallen: the Russians retreated to fortifications to the north of the harbour. Later in the day, Seacole fulfilled a bet, and became the first British woman to enter Sevastopol after it fell. Having obtained a pass, she toured the broken town, bearing refreshments and visiting the crowded hospital by the docks, containing thousands of dead and dying Russians. Her foreign appearance led to her being stopped by French looters, but she was rescued by a passing officer. She looted some items from the city, including a church bell, an altar candle, and a three-metre (10 ft) long painting of the Madonna.

After the fall of Sevastopol, hostilities continued in a desultory fashion. The business of Seacole and Day prospered in the interim period, with the officers taking the opportunity to enjoy themselves in the quieter days. There were theatrical performances and horse-racing events for which Seacole provided catering.

Seacole was joined by a 14-year-old girl, Sarah, also known as Sally. Soyer described her as "the Egyptian beauty, Mrs Seacole's daughter Sarah", with blue eyes and dark hair. Nightingale alleged that Sarah was the illegitimate offspring of Seacole and Colonel Henry Bunbury. However, there is no evidence that Bunbury met Seacole, or even visited Jamaica, at a time when she would have been nursing her ailing husband. Ramdin speculates that Thomas Day could have been Sarah's father, pointing to the unlikely coincidences of their meeting in Panama and then in England, and their unusual business partnership in Crimea.

Peace talks began in Paris in early 1856, and friendly relations opened between the Allies and the Russians, with a lively trade across the River Tchernaya. The Treaty of Paris was signed on 30 March 1856, after which the soldiers left Crimea. Seacole was in a difficult financial position, her business was full of unsaleable provisions, new goods were arriving daily, and creditors were demanding payment. She attempted to sell as much as possible before the soldiers left, but she was forced to auction many expensive goods for lower-than-expected prices to the Russians who were returning to their homes. The evacuation of the Allied armies was formally completed at Balaclava on 9 July 1856, with Seacole "... conspicuous in the foreground ... dressed in a plaid riding-habit ...". Seacole was one of the last to leave Crimea, returning to England "poorer than [she] left it". Though she had left poorer, her impact on the soldiers was invaluable to the soldiers she treated, changing their perceptions about her as described in the Illustrated London News: "Perhaps at first the authorities looked askant at the woman-volunteer; but they soon found her worth and utility; and from that time until the British army left the Crimea, Mother Seacole was a household word in the camp...In her store on Spring Hill she attended many patients, cared for many sick, and earned the good will and gratitude of hundreds".

Sociology professor Lynn McDonald is co-founder of The Nightingale Society, which promotes the legacy of Nightingale, who did not see eye-to-eye with Seacole. McDonald believes that Seacole's role in the Crimean War was overplayed:

"Mary Seacole, although never the 'black British nurse' she is claimed to have been, was a successful mixed-race immigrant to Britain. She led an adventurous life, and her memoir of 1857 is still a lively read. She was kind and generous. She made friends of her customers, army and navy officers, who came to her rescue with a fund when she was declared bankrupt. While her cures have been vastly exaggerated, she doubtless did what she could to ease suffering, when no effective cures existed. In epidemics pre-Crimea, she said a comforting word to the dying and closed the eyes of the dead. During the Crimean War, probably her greatest kindness was to serve hot tea and lemonade to cold, suffering soldiers awaiting transport to hospital on the wharf at Balaclava. She deserves much credit for rising to the occasion, but her tea and lemonade did not save lives, pioneer nursing or advance health care."

However, historians maintain that claims dismissing Seacole's work as mainly "tea and lemonade" do a disservice to the tradition of Jamaican "doctresses", such as Seacole's mother, Cubah Cornwallis, Sarah Adams and Grace Donne, who all used herbal remedies and hygienic practices in the late eighteenth century, long before Nightingale took up the mantle. Social historian Jane Robinson argues in her book Mary Seacole: The Black Woman who invented Modern Nursing that Seacole was a huge success, and she became known and loved by everyone from the rank and file to the royal family. Mark Bostridge pointed out that Seacole's experience far outstripped Nightingale's, and that the Jamaican's work comprised preparing medicines, diagnosis, and minor surgery. The Times war correspondent William Howard Russell spoke highly of Seacole's skill as a healer, writing "A more tender or skilful hand about a wound or a broken limb could not be found among our best surgeons."

Back in London, 1856–60
After the end of the war, Seacole returned to England destitute and in poor health. In the conclusion to her autobiography, she records that she "took the opportunity" to visit "yet other lands" on her return journey, although Robinson attributes this to her impecunious state requiring a roundabout trip. She arrived in August 1856 and opened a canteen with Day at Aldershot, but the venture failed through lack of funds. She attended a celebratory dinner for 2,000 soldiers at Royal Surrey Gardens in Kennington on 25 August 1856, at which Nightingale was chief guest of honour. Reports in The Times on 26 August and News of the World on 31 August indicate that Seacole was also fêted by the huge crowds, with two "burly" sergeants protecting her from the pressure of the crowd. However, creditors who had supplied her firm in Crimea were in pursuit. She was forced to move to 1, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden in increasingly dire financial straits. The Bankruptcy Court in Basinghall Street declared her bankrupt on 7 November 1856. Robinson speculates that Seacole's business problems may have been caused in part by her partner, Day, who dabbled in horse trading and may have set up as an unofficial bank, cashing debts. 4

At about this time, Seacole began to wear military medals. These are mentioned in an account of her appearance in the bankruptcy court in November 1856. A bust by George Kelly, based on an original by Count Gleichen from around 1871, depicts her wearing four medals, three of which have been identified as the British Crimea Medal, the French Légion d'honneur and the Turkish Order of the Medjidie medal. Robinson says that one is "apparently" a Sardinian award (Sardinia having joined Britain and France in supporting Turkey against Russia in the war). The Jamaican Daily Gleaner stated in her obituary on 9 June 1881 that she had also received a Russian medal, but it has not been identified. However, no formal notice of her award exists in the London Gazette, and it seems unlikely that Seacole was formally rewarded for her actions in Crimea; rather, she may have bought miniature or "dress" medals to display her support and affection for her "sons" in the Army.

Seacole's plight was highlighted in the British press. As a consequence a fund was set up, to which many prominent people donated money, and on 30 January 1857, she and Day were granted certificates discharging them from bankruptcy. Day left for the Antipodes to seek new opportunities, but Seacole's funds remained low. She moved from Tavistock Street to cheaper lodgings at 14 Soho Square in early 1857, triggering a plea for subscriptions from Punch on 2 May. However, in Punch's 30 May edition, she was heavily criticised for a letter she sent begging her favorite magazine, which she claimed to have often read to her British Crimean War patients, to assist her in gaining donations. After quoting her letter in full the magazine provides a satiric cartoon of the activity she describes, captioned "Our Own Vivandière," describing Seacole as a female sutler. The article observes: "It will be evident, from the foregoing, that Mother Seacole has sunk much lower in the world, and is also in danger of rising much higher in it, than is consistent with the honour of the British army, and the generosity of the British public." While urging the public to donate, the commentary's tone can be read as ironic: "Who would give a guinea to see a mimic-sutler woman, and a foreigner, frisk and amble about on the stage, when he might bestow the money on a genuine English one, reduced to a two-pair back, and in imminent danger of being obliged to climb into an attic?" In researching his biography of Florence Nightingale, the first major biography in fifty years, Mark Bostridge uncovered a letter in the archive at the home of Nightingale's sister Parthenope, which showed that Nightingale had made a contribution to Seacole's fund, indicating that she saw value at that time in Seacole's work in the Crimea. Further fund-raising and literary mentions kept Seacole in the public eye. In May 1857 she wanted to travel to India, to minister to the wounded of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, but she was dissuaded by both the new Secretary of War, Lord Panmure, and her financial troubles. Fund-raising activities included the "Seacole Fund Grand Military Festival", which was held at the Royal Surrey Gardens, from Monday 27 July to Thursday 30 July 1857. This successful event was supported by many military men, including Major General Lord Rokeby (who had commanded the 1st Division in Crimea) and Lord George Paget; more than 1,000 artists performed, including 11 military bands and an orchestra conducted by Louis Antoine Jullien, which was attended by a crowd of circa 40,000. The one-shilling entrance charge was quintupled for the first night, and halved for the Tuesday performance. However, production costs had been high and the Royal Surrey Gardens Company was itself having financial problems. It became insolvent immediately after the festival, and as a result Seacole only received £57, one quarter of the profits from the event. When eventually the financial affairs of the ruined Company were resolved, in March 1858, the Indian Mutiny was over. Writing of his 1859 journey to the West Indies, the British novelist Anthony Trollope described visiting Mrs. Seacole's sister's hotel in Kingston in his The West Indies and the Spanish Main (Chapman & Hall, 1850). Besides remarking on the pride of the servants and their firm insistence that they be treated politely by guests, Trollope remarked that his hostess, "though clean and reasonable in her charges, clung with touching tenderness to the idea that beefsteak and onions, and bread and cheese and beer, comprised the only diet proper to an Englishman."

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands
A 200-page autobiographical account of her travels was published in July 1857 by James Blackwood as Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, the first autobiography written by a black woman in Britain. Priced at one shilling and six pence (1/6) a copy, the cover bears a portrait of Seacole in red, yellow and black ink. Robinson speculates that she dictated the work to an editor, identified in the book only as W.J.S., who improved her grammar and orthography. In the work Seacole deals with the first 39 years of her life in one short chapter. She then expends six chapters on her few years in Panama, before using the following 12 chapters to detail her exploits in Crimea. She avoids mention of the names of her parents and precise date of birth.

In the first chapter, Seacole talks about how her practice of medicine began on animals, such as cats and dogs. Most of the animals caught diseases from their owners, and she would cure them with homemade remedies. Within the book, Seacole discusses how when she returned from the Crimean War she was poor, whereas others in her same position returned to England rich. Seacole shares the respect she gained from the men in the Crimean War. The soldiers would refer to her as "mother" and would ensure her safety by personally guarding her on the battlefield. A short final "Conclusion" deals with her return to England, and lists supporters of her fund-raising effort, including Rokeby, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of Newcastle, William Russell, and other prominent men in the military. Also within the Conclusion, she describes all of her career adventures experienced in the Crimean War as pride and pleasure. The book was dedicated to Major-General Lord Rokeby, commander of the First Division. In a brief preface, the Times correspondent William Howard Russell wrote, "I have witnessed her devotion and her courage ... and I trust that England will never forget one who has nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead."

The Illustrated London News received the autobiography favourably agreeing with the statements made in the preface "If singleness of heart, true charity and Christian works – of trials and sufferings, dangers and perils, encountered boldly by a helpless women on her errand of mercy in the camp and in the battlefield can excite sympathy or move curiosity, Mary Seacole will have many friends and many readers".

In 2017 Robert McCrum chose it as one of the 100 best nonfiction books, calling it "gloriously entertaining".

Later life, 1860–81

Seacole joined the Roman Catholic Church circa 1860, and returned to a Jamaica changed in her absence as it faced economic downturn. She became a prominent figure in the country. However, by 1867 she was again running short of money, and the Seacole fund was resurrected in London, with new patrons including the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Cambridge, and many other senior military officers. The fund burgeoned, and Seacole was able to buy land on Duke Street in Kingston, near New Blundell Hall, where she built a bungalow as her new home, plus a larger property to rent out.

By 1870, Seacole was back in London, living at 40 Upper Berkley St., St. Marylebone. Robinson speculates that she was drawn back by the prospect of rendering medical assistance in the Franco-Prussian War. It seems likely that she approached Sir Harry Verney (the husband of Florence Nightingale's sister Parthenope) Member of Parliament for Buckingham who was closely involved in the British National Society for the Relief of the Sick and Wounded. It was at this time Nightingale wrote her letter to Verney insinuating that Seacole had kept a "bad house" in Crimea, and was responsible for "much drunkenness and improper conduct".

In London, Seacole joined the periphery of the royal circle. Prince Victor (a nephew of Queen Victoria; as a young Lieutenant he had been one of Seacole's customers in Crimea) carved a marble bust of her in 1871 that was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in 1872. Seacole also became personal masseuse to the Princess of Wales who suffered with white leg and rheumatism.

In the census of 3 April 1881, Seacole is listed as a boarder at 3 Cambridge Street, Paddington. Seacole died on 14 May 1881 at her home, 3 Cambridge Street (later renamed Kendal Street) in Paddington, London; the cause of death was noted as "apoplexy". She left an estate valued at more than £2,500. After some specific legacies, many of exactly 19 guineas, the main beneficiary of her will was her sister, (Eliza) Louisa. Lord Rokeby, Colonel Hussey Fane Keane, and Count Gleichen (three trustees of her Fund) were each left £50; Count Gleichen also received a diamond ring, said to have been given to Seacole's late husband by Lord Nelson. A short obituary was published in The Times on 21 May 1881. She was buried in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery, Harrow Road, Kensal Green, London.

Recognition

While well known at the end of her life, Seacole rapidly faded from public memory in Britain. She has been better remembered in Jamaica, where significant buildings were named after her in the 1950s: the headquarters of the Jamaican General Trained Nurses' Association was christened "Mary Seacole House" in 1954, followed quickly by the naming of a hall of residence of the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, and a ward at Kingston Public Hospital was also named in her memory. More than a century after her death, Seacole was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1990.

Her grave in London was rediscovered in 1973; a service of reconsecration was held on 20 November 1973, and her gravestone was also restored by the British Commonwealth Nurses' War Memorial Fund and the Lignum Vitae Club. Nonetheless, when scholarly and popular works were written in the 1970s about the Black British presence in Britain, she was absent from the historical record, and went unrecorded by Dominican-born scholar Edward Scobie and Nigerian historian Sebastian Okechukwu Mezu.

The centenary of her death was celebrated with a memorial service on 14 May 1981 and the grave is maintained by the Mary Seacole Memorial Association, an organization founded in 1980 by Jamaican-British Auxiliary Territorial Service corporal, Connie Mark. An English Heritage blue plaque was erected by the Greater London Council at her residence in 157 George Street, Westminster, on 9 March 1985, but it was removed in 1998 before the site was redeveloped. A "green plaque" was unveiled at 147 George Street, in Westminster, on 11 October 2005. However, another blue plaque has since been positioned at 14 Soho Square, where she lived in 1857.

By the 21st century, Seacole was much more prominent. Several buildings and entities, mainly connected with health care, were named after her. She was, for example, the namesake of Seacole Way in Shrewsbury, part of the Copthorne Grange housing estate developed in 2011–12 on site of the former Copthorne Hospital, near the present Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. In 2005, British politician Boris Johnson wrote of learning about Seacole from his daughter's school pageant and speculated: "I find myself facing the grim possibility that it was my own education that was blinkered, and that my children are now receiving a more faithful account of heroism in imperial Britain than I did." In 2007 Seacole was introduced into the National Curriculum, and her life story is taught at many primary schools in the UK alongside that of Florence Nightingale.

She was voted into first place in an online poll of 100 Great Black Britons in 2004 carried out by the website Every Generation. The portrait identified as Seacole in 2005 was used for one of ten first-class stamps showing important Britons, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the National Portrait Gallery. British buildings and organisations now commemorate her by name. One of the first was the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice at Thames Valley University, which created the NHS Specialist Library for Ethnicity and Health, a web-based collection of research-based evidence and good practice information relating to the health needs of minority ethnic groups, and other resources relevant to multi-cultural health care. There is another Mary Seacole Research Centre, this one at De Montfort University in Leicester, and a problem-based learning room at St George's, University of London is named after her. Brunel University in West London houses its School of Health Sciences and Social Care in the Mary Seacole Building. New buildings at the University of Salford and Birmingham City University bear her name, as does part of the new headquarters of the Home Office at 2 Marsham Street. There is a Mary Seacole ward in the Douglas Bader Centre in Roehampton. There are two wards named after Mary Seacole in Whittington Hospital in North London, and also, there is the Mary Seacole Nursing Home, situated at 39 Nuttall Street, Shoreditch. The Royal South Hants Hospital in Southampton named its outpatients' wing "The Mary Seacole Wing" in 2010, in honour of her contribution to nursing. The NHS Seacole Centre in Surrey was opened on 4 May 2020, following a campaign led by Patrick Vernon, a former NHS manager. It is a community hospital which will first provide a temporary rehabilitation service for patients recovering from COVID-19. The building was previously called Headley Court.

An annual prize to recognise and develop leadership in nurses, midwives and health visitors in the National Health Service was named Seacole, to "acknowledge her achievements". The NHS Leadership Academy has developed a six-month leadership course called the Mary Seacole Programme, which is designed for first time leaders in healthcare. An exhibition to celebrate the bicentenary of her birth opened at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London in March 2005. Originally scheduled to last for a few months, the exhibition was so popular that it was extended to March 2007.

A campaign to erect a statue of Seacole in London was launched on 24 November 2003, chaired by Clive Soley, Baron Soley. The design of the sculpture by Martin Jennings was announced on 18 June 2009. There was significant opposition to the siting of the statue at the entrance of St Thomas' Hospital, but it was unveiled on 30 June 2016. The words written by Russell in The Times in 1857 are etched on to Seacole's statue: "I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead." The making of the Jennings statue was recorded in the ITV documentary David Harewood: In the Shadow of Mary Seacole (2016) along with her life story.

A biopic of her life was proposed in 2019 by Racing Green Pictures and producer Billy Peterson, with Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Mary Seacole. It was intended to release the film in 2020. A short animation about Mary Seacole was adapted from a book entitled Mother Seacole, published in 2005 as part of the bicentenary celebrations. Seacole is featured in BBC's Horrible Histories, where she is portrayed by Dominique Moore. Viewer complaints about the show led the BBC Trust to conclude that the episode's portrayal of "racial issues was materially inaccurate".

A two-dimensional sculpture of Seacole was erected in Paddington in 2013. On 14 October 2016, Google celebrated her with a Google Doodle.

Controversy
Seacole's recognition is seen as controversial, primarily by members of the Nightingale Society, an organization founded by Sociology professor Lynn McDonald in 2012 to "[promote] knowledge of the great contribution to nursing and public health reform made by Florence Nightingale and its relevance today, and [defend] her reputation and legacy when necessary." McDonald argues that Seacole has been promoted at the expense of Florence Nightingale, and has written on the ways that "...support for Seacole has been used to attack Nightingale's reputation as a pioneer in public health and nursing." There was opposition to the siting of a statue of Mary Seacole at St Thomas' Hospital on the grounds that she had no connection with this institution, whereas Florence Nightingale did. Sean Lang has stated that she "does not qualify as a mainstream figure in the history of nursing", while a letter to The Times from the Florence Nightingale Society and signed by members including historians and biographers asserted that "Seacole's battlefield excursions ... took place post-battle, after selling wine and sandwiches to spectators. Mrs Seacole was a kind and generous businesswoman, but was not a frequenter of the battlefield "under fire" or a pioneer of nursing." An article by Lynn McDonald in The Times Literary Supplement asked "How did Mary Seacole come to be viewed as a pioneer of modern nursing?", comparing her unfavourably with Kofoworola Pratt who was the first black nurse in the NHS, and concluded "She deserves much credit for rising to the occasion, but her tea and lemonade did not save lives, pioneer nursing or advance health care".

Jennings has suggested that Seacole's race has played a part in the resistance by some of Nightingale's supporters. The American academic Gretchen Gerzina has also agreed with this theory, claiming that many of the supposed criticisms leveled at Seacole are due to her race. One criticism of Seacole made by supporters of Nightingale is that she was not trained at an accredited medical institution. However, Jamaican women such as 18th century practitioners Nanny of the Maroons and Mrs Grant (Seacole's mother), developed their nursing skills from West African healing traditions, such as the use of herbs, which became known as obeah in Jamaica. According to the writer Helen Rappaport, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the West African and Jamaican creole "doctress", such as Cubah Cornwallis and Sarah Adams, who both died in the late 1840s, often had greater success than the European-trained doctor who practised what was then traditional medicine. These doctresses of Jamaica practised hygiene decades before Nightingale adopted it as one of her key reforms in her book Notes on Nursing in 1859.

Seacole's name appears in an appendix to the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum, as an example of a significant Victorian historical figure. There is no requirement that teachers include Seacole in their lessons. At the end of 2012 it was reported that Mary Seacole was to be removed from the National Curriculum. Opposing this, Greg Jenner, historical consultant to Horrible Histories, has stated that while he thought her medical achievements may have been exaggerated, removing Seacole from the curriculum would be a mistake. Susan Sheridan has argued that the leaked proposal to remove Seacole from the National Curriculum is part of "a concentration solely on large-scale political and military history and a fundamental shift away from social history." Many commentators do not accept the view that Seacole's accomplishments were exaggerated. British social commentator Patrick Vernon has opined that many of the claims that Seacole's achievements were exaggerated have come from an establishment that is determined to suppress and hide the black contribution to British history. Helen Seaton claims that Nightingale fitted the Victorian ideal of a heroine more than Seacole, and that Seacole managing to overcome racial prejudice makes her "a fitting role model for both blacks and non-blacks". In The Daily Telegraph, Cathy Newman argues that Michael Gove's plans for the new history curriculum "could mean the only women children learn anything about will be queens".

In January 2013 Operation Black Vote launched a petition to request Education Secretary Michael Gove to drop neither Seacole nor Olaudah Equiano from the National Curriculum. Rev. Jesse Jackson and others wrote a letter to The Times protesting against the mooted removal of Mary Seacole from the National Curriculum. This was declared successful on 8 February 2013 when the DfE opted to leave Seacole on the curriculum.

In popular culture
Seacole was portrayed by the actress Sara Powell in a 2021 episode of the BBC science fiction drama Doctor Who titled "War of the Sontarans", alongside Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor.

Seacole is the subject of biodrama "Marys Seacole" (2019) by Jackie Sibblies Drury, which explores her life and imagines her in contemporary settings.

title: Mary Seacole


text:
User:Kiwinewt

Kiwinewt - An ub3r 1337 ha><or...

born and bred in the UK, moved to Kaitaia,New Zealand in 1997.

Moved to Christchurch, New Zealand for a year in 2004.

Moved back to the UK again in 2005 for a year.

Currently residing in Christchurch, New Zealand, doing a BICT at CPIT

Still with my long time tender but rough lover and soulmate, Andy <3

Can be found online at: http://kiwinewt.geek.nz

title: User:Kiwinewt


text:
Cressona

Cressona is a genus of shield bugs in the subfamily Phyllocephalinae, erected by William Sweetland Dallas in 1851.

Species
The following are included in BioLib.cz:
 * 1) Cressona divaricata L.Y. Zheng & Zou, 1982
 * 2) Cressona rufa Zhang & Lin, 1984
 * 3) Cressona valida Dallas, 1851 - type species, Myanmar

title: Cressona


text: Category:1180s births

title: Category:1180s births


text: Category:1193 births

title: Category:1193 births


text:
Crestview

Crestview may refer to:

Places

 * Canada
 * Crestview, Ottawa, Ontario

 * United States
 * Crestview Lodge, in Mono County
 * Crestview, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
 * Crestview, Florida
 * Crestview, Georgia
 * Crestview, Hawaii
 * Crestview, Kentucky
 * Crestview, New Mexico
 * Crestview, Austin, Texas, a neighborhood
 * Crestview, Rock County, Wisconsin

Train stations

 * Crestview station, a commuter rail station in Austin, Texas
 * Crestview station (Florida), defunct

title: Crestview


text: Category:1210s births

title: Category:1210s births