black history – Man of Tin blog

March 8th is International Women’s Day.

Today’s offering, left over from the FEMbruary figure challenge, is Mary Seacole the Jamaican nurse or sutleress who supported British troops during the disastrous Crimean War.

Mary Seacole as sculpted in 28mm by Martin Baker, special figure at the Other Partizan 2016

A quick wipeover with brown Acrylic and wipeoff with cloth before it dries brings out the details of the figure (a technique known as “pewtering”)

Rear view of this figure with fine clothing details.

Conversion possibilities for other Mary Seacole figures

Whilst Florence Nightingale figures are fairly scarce, Mrs. Seacole figures are even more so.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/fembruary-post-2-a-few-more-female-figures-and-a-florence/

Before I found this smaller 28mm figure I was a bit stumped about where to find a suitable larger figure to convert. I was considering a conversion of a 54mm Queen Victoria figure.

Until I found the 28mm figure, I was considering converting this rather stern looking Queen Victoria 54mm casting from Dorset Soldiers into a suitable Mary Seacole figure.

The other alternative I have found in 54mm is an old bashed Britain’s aged civilian lady sitting down, set 5028, who arrived oddly repainted in a job lot of scrap figures. She could easily paint up as Mother Seacole.

A possible conversion figure for Mother Seacole, this seated 54mm lead civilian woman from Britain’s Ltd. Already repainted from a job lot, she arrived appropriately with a roughly repainted nurse figure. Military nurse figures would make a good future FEMbruary blogpost.

The other figure that looks fit for conversion is a OO HO twenty mm Airfix female figure from their superb Wild West pioneer Waggon Train set, sadly now out of production but available secind hand online. One of the figures has a potential look of a tiny Mary Seacole.

The central female civilian from the Airfix Waggon Train set has a Mary Seacole look about her. To her left is a another female figure from this OO HO 20mm set, a useful gaming figure who crops up in gaming scenarios as the Governor General’s Daughter, Daughter of the Regiment etc (and usually armed with a handy pistol). Not quite painted yet.

I had no plans to complete this 28mm Mary Seacole figure in this FEMbruary 2018 challenge as I had enough targets already. She will be painted at some point during the year or next FEMbruary! When I get around to painting this 28mm miniature figure, there are many useful illustrations of her and an interesting story behind her National Portrait Gallery portrait.

https://www.npg.org.uk/learning/digital/history/mary-seacole

To read more about Mary Seacole (1805 -1881) and her British Hotel in the Crimea, a good place to start is her Wikipedia entry

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole

Useful colour and details from her portrait that have been used on the small metal figure.

Mary Seacole’s gravestone in London has recently been restored. Her autobiography is still in print, a Penguin Classic. There are lots of Mary Seacole book and web resources, many of them aimed at children, thanks to her inclusion and retention with Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell in the Primary school History curriculum in Britain.

Punch Magazine at the time dubbed her “Our Own Vivandiere“. Daughter of a Scottish soldier and a Caribbean mother, Mary was born in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars. Mary Seacole topped the Top 100 Black Britons in a recent 2004 poll.

http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/bios/mary_seacole.html

She might not have many tiny metal figures, however Mary Seacole now has a fine new 10 foot high statue by sculptor Martin Jennings in London, complete with a cast of the ground of the Crimean battlefield where she had her base. It is believed to be the first statue in the UK to honour a named black woman.

It is inscribed with words written in 1857 by The Times’ Crimean War correspondent, Sir William Howard Russell: “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.”

Mary Seacole is also celebrated at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London. She features on their website with some interesting contemporay Crimean prints shown.

http://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/resources/mary-seacole/?v=79cba1185463

http://www.florence-nightingale.co.uk/2017/07/23/museum-poetry-mother-seacole/?v=79cba1185463

More about International Women’s Day

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/fembruary-post-no-4-a-womans-right-to-vote-and-serve-march/

and the ‘Celebrate the Ladies Month’ March challenge on the Cupcakes and Machetes blog, featuring a range of blog links from reading female authors to others painting more female fantasy miniatures projects.

https://cupcakesandmachetes.wordpress.com/2018/02/28/celebrate-the-ladies-blog-event/

https://cupcakesandmachetes.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/celebrate-the-ladies-weekly-update-1/

Reading more of Emily, Charlotte, Ann (and Branwell) Bronte’s juvenile fictional worlds of GlassTown, Gondal and Angria to look for further gaming scenarios probably counts as my literary contribution to reading female authors.

B.P.S. Blog Post Script

I was quite amused searching through for Seacole figures to find this accidental head and shoulders portrait. 🙂

Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN 8 March 2018 on International Women’s Day 2018.

Tag: black history

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Mary Seacole and the Crimean War