It Appears We Have Been Told A Lie, I Wonder Why?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2712683/How-Mary-Seacole-saint-Florence-Nightingake-smeared-twisting-history.html

[Peter Pedant]

AOG - yes I have read EMinent Victorians by Lytton Stachey.
odd fellow - Bloomsbury group

it was written as 'debunkinng biography' and not meant to be serious scholarship.

It is parallel to saying - the only thing I know about Richard III is shakespeare. - but you know he always talks in verse - did they do that in 1485 >

[jennyjoan]

I hated History in school - any wonder.

[tonyav]

I'd never heard of Mary Seacole until a couple of years ago.

[Peter Pedant]

.

Florence Nightingale by Cecil Woodham Smith

v cheap snd hand copies aailabel at Amazon from 0.01p

er and I know why ....

[tonyav]

Anyhoo we had our own famous nurse ( famous in my neck of the woods anyway ).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Dora

[Peter Pedant]

Edith Cavell at St Leonards Hospital shoreditch ?

[woofgang]

Did Florence Nightingale actually write "Nursing, What It Is And What It Is Not"? because that is an excellent book.

[naomi24]

This woman came to the fore in the melee of disingenuous nonsense that the determination to impose political correctness upon society has created. She is the ‘token’ black – and if that’s not politically correct I make no apology. I don't 'do' political correctness

[sp1814]

I remember being taught about Mary Seacole when I was at school, and that was 30 odd years ago before the age of political correctness. I thought at the time that it set a dangerous precedent, because we were being taught the achievements of a non-white woman, and our school was in danger of making her some kind of positive role model.

I think it's dangerous to show black people in a good light, or to acknowledge that any black person deserves to be mentioned in the History curriculum, unless the topic is slavery, and even then, they should be referred to as 'indentured agricultural field management staff'.

[naomi24]

sp, What’s dangerous is re-writing history in order to portray people of any colour in a false light – as seems to have happened to both Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole – the first purposefully undermined, the second purposefully falsely lauded. Your sarcasm is an affront to everyone who values the truth – and an insult to some truly great human beings – not least the likes of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. This permanent victim mentality does nothing to eradicate colour prejudice - it exacerbates it.

[New Judge]

Ah, Peter, happy memories!

St. Leonard's hospital Shoreditch was a former workhouse. Edith Cavell was Assistant Matron there from 1903 to 1906. I was dealt with at St Leonard's in 1971 when suffering from Quinsy:

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Family/Question1351100.html

Without the prompt care I received from the ENT consultant I may not have lived to tell this tale.

Nearby in Kingsland Road was Edith Cavell secondary school where a number of my friends attended. Not sure if it still there.

The hospital closed in 1984 and some of the buildings were converted to a primary healthcare centre.

[Slapshot]

What Naomi said....

You cannot rewrite history without falsifying something. Unfortunately the PC world we exist in must have commensurate "Black/Muslim/Hindu/Oriental" to set beside the stamdard achievements of history.... sad isn't it.

I've read many books on the Crimea, military history is a bit of an obsession; I found William Russel's book "Eyewitness Accounts Battles of the Crimean War" very good as is Lady Alicia Blackwood's "A Narrative Of Personal Experiences & Impressions During A Residence On The Bosphorus Throughout The Crimean War", long title for a diary.

[sp1814]

History is rewritten all the time. New facts emerge which changes our perception of historical figures.

Just because this professor and the Daily Mail have taken one view, doesn't necessarily mean that all others who have written about Mary Seacole is a liar.

Sickens me that people will assume that those historians are liars, just because what they believe doesn't chime with the Mail agenda.

But then again...hey ho...doesn't really matter. Opinions are like anuses. Everyone has one.

[boxtops]

History is often written to suit the audience.... my OH, as some know, is a Scot, and what he learned in history lessons at school is a very different record of events to what I learned in an English school.

[sp1814]

boxtops

Exactly - history is not static. Stories and lives are re-evaluated by academics all the time.

If a biography of Alan Turing was written in 1950, would it have the same tone as one written now?

And a biography of J Edgar Hoover?

The death if Margaret Thatcher showed us that different people can interpret the events of a life completely differently depending on their own outlooks, perspectives and prejudices.

[sp1814]

I think it's a sad truth that for some people, any praise of black people is somehow of little worth.

I have had someone on AB ask me whether my successful career in IT was due to positive discrimination. For some, it's almost inconceivable that black people can be successful outside the world of sport or perhaps music.

Sad, but unfortunately true.

[boxtops]

SP, that is shocking to hear that you have been asked that. However - I do remember many years ago when I landed a decent job in a commercial organisation, it was muttered in my hearing that they wondered who I'd had to sleep with to get that job - I couldn't possibly have got it on merit, being a woman :-(

[Slapshot]

I disagree praise should be there if it's earned no matter colour creed or religion. My point was that in rewriting history often without other EVIDENCE just perspective somewhere something is falsified... Unless evidence backs it up, history is pure perspective on too many occasions.

[mushroom25]

boxtops, some years ago a group of workers in one of the company depots were utilizing some rather unconventional (and unsafe) maintenance techniques that came to the attention of a visitor who was there on other business. the visitor went over to the workers to offer helpful advice; they told her (as she was female) that she'd do well to mind her own business as being female she couldn't possibly have any idea. at this point she identified herself as a government inspector and proceeded to throw the book at them, resulting in the company receiving a prohibition notice.

[sp1814]

boxtops

Funnily enough, I remember working with older men back in the days when I was employed by Nat West, who literally would not believe that any woman who had made it into management grades, had done it on talent alone.

I always thought that the best response to that easy, "Perhaps if you didn't have such a teeny penis, perhaps you could sleep your way to the top too?"