Mary Seacole by Albert Charles Challen

Challen's is the only known painting of the Victorian nurse voted the greatest black Briton.

Mary Seacole, born a free black Jamaican in 1805, was taught herbal remedies and folk medicine by her mother. She was repeatedly denied admittance as an army nurse by the British government because she was a woman.

After the government reversed its course and allowed women to serve as nurses in the Crimean war, she was then denied a place on a team put together by Florence Nightingale.

Not to be denied, she finally set up a field hospital at her own expense, nearly three days closer to the action than Nightingale's. Seacole was known to venture onto the field of battle in rescuing wounded British soldiers.