IWD2018 – 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.

My FEMBruary Challenge Number 1 has been going well, to photograph, share and celebrate some of the female figures in my toy soldier collection.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/fembruary-hobby-challenge-conversions/

Today’s figure combines the women’s right to vote Centenary on 6 February 2018 and the wider focus on women’s role in the war as part of WW100 and the First World War Centenary Partnership.

A handy little biography is included with each figure.

Emmeline Pankhurst – Part of the 2006 Corgi Forward March range

At the outbreak of war in 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), one of the leading voices for women’s suffrage, had firmly decided to embrace the war effort.

She halted their increasingly militant and destructive campaign for women’s suffrage for the duration of the war. This move divided her family and the suffragette movement.

Emmeline Pankhurst redirected her efforts to push for an increased role for women in support of the war, particularly in industrial jobs, so that women could directly help the war effort.

The “shell scandal” of lack of artillery shells and munitions for the British troops in 1915 saw a need to put more workers into the munitions factories to replace those male workers left for military service.

On March 17 1915 the Board of Trade set up the Women’s War Service Register to pair willing women with jobs in war industries. Some parts of the British government was not overly enthusiastic about the plan. By the end of 1915, only 8500 of the 42000 registered women had been matched to jobs.

On July 17 1915, Emmeline Pankhurst and the WSPU organized the Women’s Right to Serve march in London, in support of the hiring of women in the munitions industry, demanding the same pay as men.

This “Right To Serve” would doubly contribute to the war effort, both by producing munitions and freeing up men to serve on the front.

The Women’s Right to Serve march received direct support from Lloyd George’s Ministry of Munitions. Despite these efforts, hiring of women into jobs vacated by men via the government Register set up for the purpose remained lacklustre throughout the rest of 1915.

More about the women’s Right to Serve March at

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/history-of-the-first-world-war-in-100-moments/a-history-of-the-first-world-war-in-100-moments-british-women-demand-a-share-of-the-burden-9322644.html

Photographs at the National Archive of the Right to Serve March

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/britain1906to1918/g4/cs4/g4cs4s1a.htm

There is an interesting photograph on this Alexander Palace blog showing Emmeline Pankhurst with Maria Bochkariev.

“Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, who had arrived in Russia in June 1917, showed her appreciation of the wonderful sacrifice made by the women of the the Battalion of Death by becoming an ardent champion of Maria Bochkarieva. The latter, in turn, appreciated Mrs. Pankhurst’s sympathy, and a warm friendship sprang up between these two leaders of women.”

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/thompson/93pankhurst.html

Mrs Pankhurst and the Battalion of Death – There’s a FEMbruary double for you that I didn’t expect.

Time is running out with only a week left of FEMBruary, I’m not sure if my third FEMbruary challenge, converting a Mexican peasant woman figure into a Suffragette will be complete in a week. If only I could find an extension of the FEMbruary painting challenge into March somehow?

Maybe I could finish my suffragette over the next week or two. Aha! There’s always #MARCH, the MARCHing figure, MARCHing parade or MARCHing band painting challenge that I just thought of. Sweet Procrastination!

It is according to the blog of CupcakesandMachetes, also Women’s History Month in March, and so has already linked to blogger Imperial Rebel Ork, who was my accidental introduction to FEMbruary via the Suburban Militarism blog.

https://cupcakesandmachetes.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/blog-event-celebrate-the-ladies/

Women’s History Month is always held in March so that it coincides with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8. In 2018, Women’s History Month will run from March 1 to March 31 and is marked in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has occurred for well over a century, with the first March 8 IWD gathering supported by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. Prior to this the Socialist Party of America, United Kingdom’s Suffragists and Suffragettes, and further groups campaigned for women equality. Today, IWD belongs to all groups collectively everywhere. IWD is not country, group or organisation specific. Make IWD your day! – everyday! https://www.internationalwomensday.com

It probably started in 1908 / 1909 New York and has been on March 8th since 1913 http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/history.shtml

In 2011, former US President Barack Obama coined or proclaimed March to be ‘Women’s History Month’.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/international-womens-day-did-start-important/

Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN on 21st FEMbruary 2018.

Tag: IWD2018

Mary Seacole and the Crimean War

FEMbruary Post No. 4 A Woman’s Right to Vote and Serve MARCH