Name a famous Victorian...

Maggie

Almost everything written and taught about Mary Seacole is made up so I consider it perfectly ok to invent my own unsubstantiated history of Mary Seacole. In my opinion she was following the army about in order to earn a living offering them "comforts" and was probably no better than she ought to be.
The people who have bigged up the story of Mary Seacole are the same charlatans who go round insulting the reputations of real British heroes and heroines so its perfectly reasonable to pour scorn on their fantasy heroines.

Craypride Kent

Try and take your little lions to the "Ragged" Victorian school in East London. They get to play a child of that era, including learning copperplate writing and sitting straight in their chairs.

Mohammed Choudhury

Yeah. I did History at Uni and her name never cropped up. They're just looking for someone black that ain't a sportsman or singer.

Karla

Political correctness is a devise deliberately created for the purpose of stifling freedom of speech. Clearly, gossiping is regarded by some as a very dangerous undertaking.

Beer Moth

Spot on.

At that age, there's a good chance your lads will soon get clubbed over the head by their English teacher, with 'Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry'. Subtitle: black = good, white = beyond contempt.

Same programme from the same box of vapid fools as the Seacole-lauding historians.

Dixon

Not just in primary schools either. I suffered this tripe at the hands of the Open University also. One of their textbooks holds her up as an illustration of a sourcec of "knowledge" equal to though less "privileged" than that of actual scientists of her ( or anyones ) era!

ndm

The begnning of their respective Wikipedia entries tells us pretty much all we need to know to understand why one is famous and the other is treated shoddily by Rod Liddle. (Clive Davis is typically perceptive on this issue.)

-- Florence Nightingale was born into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and was named after the city of her birth.

-- Mary Jane Seacole (1805 – 14 May 1881), sometimes known as Mother Seacole or Mary Grant, was a Jamaican-born British nurse best known for her involvement in the Crimean War.

History is not written by the poor.

rod liddle

Who mentioned Nightingale? Not me, ndm.

Dixon

re "ndm"...being poor doesnt make you a fountain of wisdom either.

Reza

Great blog Rod

I’d never heard of Mary Seacole. But I suppose that’s because we didn’t have ‘Black History Month’ when I was at school.

And I believe that had she not been ‘mixed race’ then hardly anyone else would have heard of her either.

Making people to learn about someone, not because of their historical importance but because of their race is, well, ‘racist’.

ndm

Rod Liddle responds "Who mentioned Nightingale? Not me, ndm"

He is correct in that he did not name Florence Nightingale. When Liddle mocked Mary Seacole with "[s]he didn't even have a bloody lamp," he was presumably aluding to the character whose Wikipedia entry contains the following

-- The original story of Aladdin is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It concerns an impoverished young ne'er-do-well named Aladdin, in a Chinese city, who is recruited by a sorcerer from the Maghreb (who passes himself off as the brother of Aladdin's late father) to retrieve a wonderful oil lamp from a booby-trapped magic cave. After the sorcerer attempts to double-cross him, Aladdin finds himself trapped in the cave. Fortunately, Aladdin retains a magic ring lent to him by the sorcerer. When he rubs his hands in despair, he inadvertently rubs the ring, and a djinni appears, who takes him home to his mother. Aladdin is still carrying the lamp, and when his mother tries to clean it, a second, far more powerful djinni appears, who is bound to do the bidding of the person holding the lamp. With the aid of the djinni of the lamp, Aladdin becomes rich and powerful and marries princess Badroulbadour, the Emperor's daughter. The djinni builds Aladdin a wonderful palace - far more magnificent than that of the Emperor himself.

I somehow doubt Mary Seacole shared in the good fortune. I see little harm in clearing the dust from some of the myths and legends that inform popular history.

Reza

The multiculturalists and the far-left know exactly what they're doing.

Solzhenitsyn wrote:

"To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots."

George

The first I heard about Mary Seacole was in one of your columns, Rod. And now again in your blog. How ironic. Somebody alert Alanis, I think she needs to pen another verse.

rod liddle

I assume that's because you're not of school age, George.

Matthew Wilson

I think your brats are on to something, Rod. However, if the Romans are better than the Tudors, that begs the question of whether anyone was better than the Romans.

One way to settle the question might be by reference to the novels of Robert Harris. Having set his first (and still best) novel, Fatherland, in alternate-reality Nazi Germany, he moved on to WWII Britain (Enigma) and post-Communist Russia (Archangel), before writing two Roman novels (Pompeii, Imperium) followed by a present-day roman a clef (The Ghost). Next up is the sequel to Imperium. So on the basis that Harris will have set three novels in Rome, we can conclude that it is better than any other historical period.

Beer Moth

ndm.

Did you have to trail us through all that Aladdin stuff? It didn't illustrate anything much.

Archie Wedderspoon

When I was a child, nearly 50 years ago now, we were taught that it was very, very naughty to use the word 'spastic' as term of abuse. I see your boys are manfully upholding the great traditions of childhood.

Rosa

The first thing one is taught when embarking on a BA / MA / MPhil / PhD in history is that there is room in this broadest of disciplines for all approaches: military, Marxist, social, political, cultural or whatever tickles your fancy-bone. Queen Victoria (head of Empire and instiutions, indicative of political and diplomatic history from above) and Mary Seacole (black nurse, indicative of cultural history from below) seem to me to be two figures ideally placed to illustrate, at this earliest of educational stages, the breadth of experiences in the long nineteenth century. Non?

Beer Moth

Rosa.

You are talking about the 'profession' of History.

Most people don't get to that level and have to make do with what they have been taught at school. All the more essential then, that this teaching should ensure that the most important parts are covered first.

And yet fringe figures, for whatever reason, are pushed in at the expense of those whose lives were centrally important to what was going on.

This has been the practice for decades now. Thus we have layers of generations now, who don't have any grasp at all, of the characters and issues at work to make up that part - as all the rest - of this nation's history.

All a part of the dismantling of the country prior to re-assembly.

ndm

-- Thus we have layers of generations now, who don't have any grasp at all, of the characters and issues at work to make up that part - as all the rest - of this nation's history.

Because, God forbid, ordinary folk have no place in "this nation's history."

Beer Moth

ndm

Not at all. I come from a long line of ordinary folk who funnily enough, were part of this nation's history.

Just seems to be a certain predictable trend to these things these days. Some are more ordinary than others it seems.

Suki

ndm, the post isn't about rich vs poor. It's about whether children are learning about the substantive figures in history.

Mary Seacole, lovely as I'm sure she was, isn't one of them. So why are are schoolchildren going around with only Queen Victoria and Mary Seacole emblazoned on their memory after their history lessons if it's not because all the Marxoids who decide the syllabus are not trying put undue focus on people for the sole reason that they are black?

ed hall

ndm, as they say in France, ntm.

David Davis

Mary Seacole has been in the "history" "syllabus" of the "National(ised) Curriculum" for some years. Rod, if you didn't know that, then you need to get out more.

Of course everybody else like Brunel, Michael Faraday, Palmerston, Lord Melbourne, Prince Albert (who did a lot for us too) Cardinal Newman, Lord Salisbury etc etc etc has been erased, you fat so-and-so: how could you have supposed it was to be otherwise?

You need to talk to more lefties and just get how far the GramscoFabian project has progressed, which they have been relentlessly pushing for about 100 years.

toby forward

I think people have rather overlooked the fact that there's precious little worth knowing about Queen Victoria either. She's just about as uninteresting as Mary Seacole. Apart from the fact that nearly three-quarters of the century is named after her and she lived a long time what did she achieve? What did she contribute to knowledge or art? bugger all.
Teach the nippers about some really important people.

David Ossitt

toby forward.

"What did she contribute to knowledge or art? bugger all."

Your post is pure asinine drivel; you are wrongly named Sir you should be called ‘backward’ rather than forward.

The achievements of Queen Victoria; her spouse and their family are and were vast, these are too numerous to mention, but many are all around us to this day, and our world has benefited from her long and glorious reign.

The fact that you are unaware of this illustrates quite nicely the point that Rod Liddle was making.

toby forward

David Ossett, thanks for your contribution. I'm especially impressed by your ready wit which reversed my surname from 'forward' to 'backward'. I'm surprised that in a longish life I've never heard that before. Well done.
Now, you say that Victoria's contributions to knowledge or art are 'too numerous to mention'. Please, don't tire yourself out with all of them, just tell me three.

toby forward

Nothing from David Ossett? I thought not. Ask for the facts behind his assertion, and, collapse of stout party.

Kevin

And she was a Catholic....so not very PC there then?
Most on the Left won't know that though.............

Sebastian Crankshaw

Who decides what history is important? What exactly makes figure X more important than figure Y? Maybe Seacole didn't invent anything, but it seems to me that being a prominent black figure in Victorian Britain actually makes her important precisely because it would be such a rare thing, much like Marie Curie is in some ways especially important because of her gender (not that her achievements are in any way to be sniffed at).

Besides, this may be the only chance your children get to learn about Mary Seacole. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the poor wee lambs are going to go through the rest of their school education without hearing about the likes of Darwin?

Not to mention that there's all the education they'll get from your good self, and TV, and newspapers and books and the like. Given that I know nothing about Seacole, have seen nothing about her on TV etc and learned nothing about her in school, yet I know plenty about, say, Darwin who we also didn't specifically cover in school, I would suggest you need not fear that those important figures will be written out of their historical eductation.

I'll tell you what thouh, let's scratch Seacole from the Victorian history books. Let's instead teach your kids about a far more important aspect of that period that I don't remember learning about at school.

Namely that the great Victorian achievements were built on the profits of slavery. There's a much better contribution black people made to our society - they built it. It's something well worth remembering every time you visit, say, a Tate Gallery, or insignificant parochial cities like Bristol, or Liverpool, or, erm, London.

They had a significant hand in building the Roman Empire too.

Sebastian Crankshaw

David Ossit:

That's a fantastic comment. Pure gold. On being challenged to name the achievements of Queen Victoria:

"Splutter! Cough! Righteous indignation! Don't you know she had a very large family, you ignoramous!!??!!!!"

Well, that sure put that poster in their place. Queen Victoria, unique among noble (and otherwise) women of the time, had a very large family.

Thanks for setting us straight on that score! That surely does beat the railways, or caring for the sick, or setting out the theory of evolution, or discovering electricity! Incredible stuff!

Deborah

Entirely unimpressed with this blog. Same old same old, from a person transfixed by skin colour. Racism will never die until we learn to ignore the colour and see the person. I am not claiming that you personally are racist, just that your nonsense observations would just serve to fuel the fire for others. I suggest you spend a little more time with your children, perhaps then they wouldn't be spewing such filthy language, or did they get it from you in the first place?.