Hello and welcome to Home School History. I'm Greg Jenner, the historian behind TV's

Horrible Histories, and the host of the BBC Radio 4 podcast, you're dead to me. I'm

here to deliver a snappy history lesson to entertain and educate the whole family,

who says that homeschooling can't be fun. And today we are going back to the 19th century

to meet an extraordinary woman who travelled the world all whilst helping the sick and injured,

it's the marvelous Mary Seacol. Mary was born Mary Grant in 1805 on the Caribbean

island of Jamaica, which at the time was a British colony. It would have been jam-packed with soldiers

and sailors. Mary's dad was a Scottish army officer called James Grant. Sadly, we don't

know Mary's mum's name, but we know that she was a mixed-raced Jamaican woman who owned a hotel

in Kingston called Blondle Hall. Mary also had a sister, Louisa, and a half-brother, Edward.

Blondle Hall was considered one of the best hotels in Jamaica's capital, Kingston. Mary was

fascinated by healing. Her mum was known as a Doctress, meaning she practiced traditional African

and Jamaican herbal medicine. And when she was a little girl, Mary practiced her healing skills

on her dolls. She said there was no disease in Kingston that her poor dollies didn't catch

at some point. But it wasn't all make-believe. Some of the British officers staying in Mary's

mum's hotel caught nasty diseases such as yellow fever. So Mary would have seen some very

poorly people. And growing up, Mary was also supported by a wealthy woman. It was a bit like a

grandmother to her. She gave Mary an education, while Mary's mum showed her how to run a hotel

business. Mary visited London twice as a teenager, and in those days the journey from Jamaica to

Britain took at least six weeks by boat. Bad luck if you got easily ceasing. And that wasn't the

only thing that Mary had to worry about. She was a young, mixed-raced woman, and she later wrote

that her Jamaican friends got bullied in London for the colour of their skin. Horrible.

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