1.
Napoleon III
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Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the only President of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I and he was the first President of France to be elected by a direct popular vote. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution, during the first years of the Empire, Napoleons government imposed censorship and harsh repressive measures against his opponents. Some six thousand were imprisoned or sent to penal colonies until 1859, thousands more went into voluntary exile abroad, including Victor Hugo. From 1862 onwards, he relaxed government censorship, and his came to be known as the Liberal Empire. Many of his opponents returned to France and became members of the National Assembly, Napoleon III is best known today for his grand reconstruction of Paris, carried out by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. He launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon, Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, greatly expanded and consolidated the French railway system, and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world. He promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, Napoleon III negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier free trade agreement with Britain and similar agreements with Frances other European trading partners. Social reforms included giving French workers the right to strike and the right to organize, womens education greatly expanded, as did the list of required subjects in public schools. In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and he was a supporter of popular sovereignty and of nationalism. In Europe, he allied with Britain and defeated Russia in the Crimean War and his regime assisted Italian unification and, in doing so, annexed Savoy and the County of Nice to France, at the same time, his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy. Napoleon doubled the area of the French overseas empire in Asia, the Pacific, on the other hand, his armys intervention in Mexico which aimed to create a Second Mexican Empire under French protection ended in failure. Beginning in 1866, Napoleon had to face the power of Prussia. In July 1870, Napoleon entered the Franco-Prussian War without allies, the French army was rapidly defeated and Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan. The French Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris, and Napoleon went into exile in England, charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, later known as Louis Napoleon and then Napoleon III, was born in Paris on the night of 20–21 April 1808. His presumed father was Louis Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. His mother was Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter by the first marriage of Napoleons wife Joséphine de Beauharnais, as empress, Joséphine proposed the marriage as a way to produce an heir for the Emperor, who agreed, as Joséphine was by then infertile. Louis married Hortense when he was twenty-four and she was nineteen and they had a difficult relationship, and only lived together for brief periods
2.
Visiting card
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A visiting card, also known as a calling card, is a small card with ones name printed on it, and often bearing an artistic design. Visiting cards became a tool of etiquette, with sophisticated rules governing their use. The essential convention was one person would not expect to see another person in his own home without first leaving his visiting card for the person at his home. Upon leaving the card, he would not expect to be admitted at first and this would serve as a signal that a personal visit and meeting at home would be welcome. On the other hand, if no card was forthcoming, or if a card was sent in an envelope, a personal visit was thereby discouraged. As an adoption from France, they were called une carte dadresse from 1615 to 1800, visiting cards became common among the aristocracy of Europe, and also in the United States. The whole procedure depended upon there being servants to open the door and receive the cards and it was, therefore, if a card was left with a turned corner it indicated that the card had been left in person rather than by a servant. Next day Paul found Stubbs card on his table, the turned up. Paul went to Hertford to call on Stubbs, but found him out and he left his card, the corner turned up. Some visiting cards included refined engraved ornaments, embossed lettering, however, the standard form visiting card in the 19th century in the United Kingdom was a plain card with nothing more than the bearers name on it. Sometimes the name of a gentlemens club might be added, visiting cards were kept in highly decorated card cases. The visiting card is no longer the feature of upper middle class and upper class life that it once was in Europe. Much more common is the card, in which contact details, including address. This has led to the inclusion of such details even on modern domestic visiting cards, a practice endorsed by modern books of etiquette, such as Debretts New Etiquette
3.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
4.
Brownie (camera)
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Brownie is the name of a long-running popular series of simple and inexpensive cameras made by Eastman Kodak. The Brownie camera, introduced in February 1900, invented low-cost photography by introducing the concept of the snapshot to the masses, the Brownie was a very basic cardboard box camera with a simple meniscus lens that took 2 1/4-inch square pictures on 117 roll film. The Brownie camera was conceived and marketed for sales of Kodak roll films, because of its simple controls and initial price of $1 along with the low price of Kodak roll film and processing, The Brownie camera achieved and surpassed its marketing goal. The Brownie is among the most important cameras in history, the first model of the camera was invented by Frank A. Brownell. The name comes from the brownies in popular Palmer Cox cartoons, consumers responded, and over 150,000 Brownie cameras were shipped in the first year of production. An improved model, called No.2 Brownie came in 1901, in 1908, the Austrian architectural critic Joseph August Lux wrote a book called Künstlerische Kodakgeheimnisse in which he championed the use of the camera for its cultural potential. Brownies were extensively marketed to children, with Kodak using them to popularise photography and they were also taken to war by soldiers. As they were so ubiquitous, many shots were taken on brownies. The cameras continued to be popular, and spawned many varieties, improvements continued, such as in 1940, when Kodak released the Six-20 Flash Brownie. The camera was Kodaks first internally synchronized flash camera, using General electric bulbs, then in 1957, Kodak produced the Brownie Starflash, Kodaks first camera with a built in flash. One of the most popular Brownie models was the Brownie 127, the Brownie 127 was a simple bakelite camera for 127 film which featured a simple meniscus lens and a curved film plane to compensate for the deficiencies of the lens. Another simple camera was the Brownie Cresta which was sold between 1955 and 1958 and it used 120 film and had a fixed-focus lens. The last official Brownie cameras made were anniversary model,110 film models in the early 1980s, the Kodak Brownie Number 2 is a box camera that was manufactured by the Eastman Kodak Company from 1901 to 1935. There were five models, A through F, and it was the first camera to use 120 film and it also came with a viewfinder and a handle. The Brownie Number 2 was made of three materials, cardboard, costing US$2.00, aluminum, costing US$2.75, and it was a very popular and affordable camera, and many are still in use by film photographers. The Beau Brownie range was available from 1930 to 1933, visually, they had a different enameled two-tone front plate in a geometric Art Deco design, the work of American designer Walter Dorwin Teague. They were available in five color combinations, black and burgundy, brown and tan, two-tone blue, two-tone green, the rose and green cameras were produced only in 1930 and 1931, and are therefore rarer than the others. They were encased in a faux-leatherette casing
5.
John Wilkes Booth
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John Wilkes Booth was an American actor and assassin, who murdered President Abraham Lincoln at Fords Theatre in Washington, D. C. on April 14,1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and and he was also a Confederate sympathizer, vehement in his denunciation of Lincoln, and strongly opposed to the abolition of slavery in the United States. Of the conspirators, only Booth was completely successful in carrying out his part of the plot and he shot Lincoln once in the back of the head, and the President died the next morning. Seward was severely wounded but recovered, and Vice-President Johnson was never attacked at all, following the assassination, Booth fled on horseback to southern Maryland, eventually making his way to a farm in rural northern Virginia 12 days later, where he was tracked down. Booths companion gave himself up, but Booth refused and was shot by Boston Corbett, eight other conspirators or suspects were tried and convicted, and four were hanged shortly thereafter. Booths parents were noted British Shakespearean actor Junius Brutus Booth and his mistress Mary Ann Holmes and they purchased a 150-acre farm near Bel Air, Maryland, where John Wilkes Booth was born in a four-room log house on May 10,1838, the ninth of ten children. He was named after English radical politician John Wilkes, a distant relative, Junius wife Adelaide Delannoy Booth was granted a divorce in 1851 on grounds of adultery, and Holmes legally wed Junius on May 10,1851, the youths 13th birthday. As a boy, Booth was athletic and popular, and he became skilled at horsemanship, each day he rode back and forth from farm to school, taking more interest in what happened along the way than in reaching his classes on time. At the Milton school, students recited classical works by authors as Cicero, Herodotus. Students at St. Timothys wore military uniforms and were subject to a regimen of daily formation drills, Booth left school at 14, after his fathers death. His sister recalled that Booth wrote down the palm-readers prediction, showed it to his family and others, Booth aspired to follow in the footsteps of his father and his actor brothers Edwin and Junius Brutus, Jr. He began practicing elocution daily in the woods around Tudor Hall, the editors introduction of the 1874 memoir of Booths sister Asia Booth Clarke states that no individual church was preeminent in the Booth household during her childhood. Booths mother was Episcopalian, and his father was described as a spirit who was open to the great teachings of all religions. On January 23,1853, the 14-year-old Booth was baptized at St. Timothys Protestant Episcopal Church, the Booth family had traditionally been Episcopalian. Clergyman Charles Chiniquy, however, stated that Booth was really a convert to Roman Catholicism later in life, historian Constance Head also declared that Booth was of this religion. Testimony given at the trial of John Surratt showed that at his death, Booth had a Catholic medal on his person, Court evidence showed his attending a Roman Catholic church service on at least two occasions. Like his sister Asia, he received education at a school established by an official of the Catholic Church, Constance Head states, In any case, it seems certain that Booth did not publicize his conversion during his lifetime. Booth made his debut at age 17 on August 14,1855 in the supporting role of the Earl of Richmond in Richard III at Baltimores Charles Street Theatre
6.
American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U. S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to eleven states, it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona. The Confederacy was never recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North, the war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865. The war had its origin in the issue of slavery. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed, but before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, the first seven with state legislatures to resolve for secession included split majorities for unionists Douglas and Bell in Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%. Alabama had voted 46% for those unionists, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession, outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincolns March 4,1861 inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war, speaking directly to the Southern States, he reaffirmed, I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed, the Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on King Cotton that they would intervene, but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12,1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, while in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaigns into Maryland and Kentucky failed, dissuading British intervention, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, the 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lees Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg, Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grants command of all Union armies in 1864
7.
Abraham Lincoln
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Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and perhaps its greatest moral, constitutional, in doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in Kentucky. Largely self-educated, he became a lawyer in Illinois, a Whig Party leader, elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln promoted rapid modernization of the economy through banks, tariffs, and railroads. Reentering politics in 1854, he became a leader in building the new Republican Party, in 1860, Lincoln secured the Republican Party presidential nomination as a moderate from a swing state. Though he gained little support in the slaveholding states of the South. Subsequently, on April 12,1861, a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter inspired the North to enthusiastically rally behind the Union. Politically, Lincoln fought back by pitting his opponents against each other, by carefully planned political patronage and his Gettysburg Address became an iconic endorsement of the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. Lincoln initially concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war and his primary goal was to reunite the nation. He suspended habeas corpus, leading to the ex parte Merryman decision. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including his most successful general, Lincoln tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another, until finally Grant succeeded. As the war progressed, his moves toward ending slavery included the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. On April 14,1865, five days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton launched a manhunt for Booth, and 12 days later on April 26, Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as among the greatest U. S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was born February 12,1809, the child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville. He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk to its namesake of Hingham, samuels grandson and great-grandson began the familys western migration, which passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Lincolns paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786. His children, including eight-year-old Thomas, the presidents father
8.
Ulysses S. Grant
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Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States. As Commanding General, Grant worked closely with President Abraham Lincoln to lead the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War and he implemented Congressional Reconstruction, often at odds with President Andrew Johnson. His presidency has often criticized for tolerating corruption and for the severe economic depression in his second term. Grant graduated in 1843 from the United States Military Academy at West Point, after the war he married Julia Boggs Dent in 1848, their marriage producing four children. Grant initially retired from the Army in 1854 and he struggled financially in civilian life. When the Civil War began in 1861, he rejoined the U. S. Army, in 1862, Grant took control of Kentucky and most of Tennessee, and led Union forces to victory in the Battle of Shiloh, earning a reputation as an aggressive commander. He incorporated displaced African American slaves into the Union war effort, in July 1863, after a series of coordinated battles, Grant defeated Confederate armies and seized Vicksburg, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River and dividing the Confederacy in two. After his victories in the Chattanooga Campaign, Lincoln promoted him to lieutenant general, Grant confronted Robert E. Lee in a series of bloody battles, trapping Lees army in their defense of Richmond. Grant coordinated a series of devastating campaigns in other theaters, as well, in April 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, effectively ending the war. Historians have hailed Grants military genius, and his strategies are featured in history textbooks. After the Civil War, Grant led the armys supervision of Reconstruction in the former Confederate states and he also used the army to build the Republican Party in the South. After the disenfranchisement of some former Confederates, Republicans gained majorities, in his second term, the Republican coalitions in the South splintered and were defeated one by one as redeemers regained control using coercion and violence. In May 1875, Grant authorized his Secretary of Treasury Benjamin Bristow to shut down and his peace policy with the Indians initially reduced frontier violence, but is best known for the Great Sioux War of 1876. Grant responded to charges of corruption in executive offices more than any other 19th Century president and he appointed the first Civil Service Commission and signed legislation ending the corrupt moiety system. In foreign policy, Grant sought to trade and influence while remaining at peace with the world. His administration successfully resolved the Alabama claims by the Treaty of Washington with Great Britain, Grant avoided war with Spain over the Virginius Affair, but Congress rejected his attempted annexation of the Dominican Republic. His administration implemented a standard and sought to strengthen the dollar. Grant left office in 1877 and embarked on a two-year diplomatic world tour that captured the nations attention, in 1880, Grant was unsuccessful in obtaining the Republican presidential nomination for a third term
9.
Hector Berlioz
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Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts. Berlioz made significant contributions to the orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works, and he also composed around 50 songs. His influence was critical for the development of Romanticism, especially in composers like Richard Wagner, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss. Hector Berlioz was born in France at La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, Louis was an agnostic, with a liberal outlook, his mother, Marie-Antoinette, was a devout Roman Catholic. He had five siblings in all, three of whom did not survive to adulthood, the other two, Nanci and Adèle, remained close to Berlioz throughout his life. Berlioz was not a prodigy, unlike some other famous composers of the time, he began studying music at age 12, writing small compositions. As a result of his fathers discouragement, he never learned to play the piano and he became proficient at guitar, flageolet and flute. He learned harmony from textbooks alone—he was not formally trained, the majority of his early compositions were romances and chamber pieces. While yet at age twelve, as recalled in his Mémoires, he experienced his first passion for a woman and he also began to visit the Paris Conservatoire library, seeking out scores of Glucks operas and making personal copies of parts of them. He recalled in his Mémoires his first encounter with Luigi Cherubini, Cherubini attempted to throw the impetuous Berlioz out of the library since he was not a formal music student at that time. Berlioz also heard two operas by Gaspare Spontini, a composer who influenced him through their friendship, and whom he later championed when working as a critic, from then on, he devoted himself to composition. He was encouraged in his endeavors by Jean-François Le Sueur, director of the Royal Chapel, in 1823, he wrote his first article—a letter to the journal Le corsaire defending Spontinis La vestale. Despite his parents disapproval, in 1824 he formally abandoned his studies to pursue a career in music. This work was rehearsed and revised after the rehearsal but not performed until the following year, Berlioz later claimed to have burnt the score, but it was re-discovered in 1991. Later that year or in 1825, he began to compose the opera Les francs-juges, the work survives only in fragments, the overture has been much recorded and is sometimes played in concert. In 1826 he began attending the Conservatoire to study composition under Jean-François Le Sueur and he also submitted a fugue to the Prix de Rome, but was eliminated in the primary round. Winning the prize would become an obsession until he won it in 1830
10.
Sojourner Truth
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Sojourner Truth was an African-American abolitionist and womens rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, after going to court to recover her son, in 1828 she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man. She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Womens Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became known during the Civil War by the title Aint I a Woman. A variation of the original speech re-written by someone using a stereotypical Southern dialect, whereas Sojourner Truth was from New York. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit troops for the Union Army, after the war. In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazines list of the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time, Truth was one of the ten or twelve children born to James and Elizabeth Baumfree. Charles Hardenbergh inherited his fathers estate and continued to enslave people as a part of that estates property, when Charles Hardenbergh died in 1806, nine-year-old Truth, was sold at an auction with a flock of sheep for $100 to John Neely, near Kingston, New York. Until that time, Truth spoke only Dutch and she later described Neely as cruel and harsh, relating how he beat her daily and once even with a bundle of rods. Neely sold her in 1808, for $105, to Martinus Schryver of Port Ewen, a tavern keeper, Schryver sold her in 1810 to John Dumont of West Park, New York. Around 1815, Truth met and fell in love with a slave named Robert from a neighboring farm, roberts owner forbade their relationship, he did not want the people he enslaved to have children with people he was not enslaving, because he would not own the children. One day Robert sneaked over to see Truth, when Catton and his son found him, they savagely beat Robert until Dumont finally intervened, and Truth never saw Robert again. He later died some years later, perhaps as a result of the injuries, Truth eventually married an older slave named Thomas. She bore five children, James, her firstborn, who died in childhood, Diana, fathered by either Robert or John Dumont, and Peter, Elizabeth, and Sophia, all born after she and Thomas united. The state of New York began, in 1799, to legislate the abolition of slavery, Dumont had promised to grant Truth her freedom a year before the state emancipation, if she would do well and be faithful. However, he changed his mind, claiming an injury had made her less productive. She was infuriated but continued working, spinning 100 pounds of wool, late in 1826, Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter, Sophia. She had to leave her children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order until they had served as bound servants into their twenties
11.
Mary Seacole
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Mary Jane Seacole OM was a Jamaican business woman who set up the British Hotel behind the lines during the Crimean War. She described this as a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers and she was posthumously awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit in 1991. In 2004 she was voted the greatest black Briton and she acquired knowledge of herbal medicine in the Caribbean. When the Crimean War broke out, she applied to the War Office to assist but was refused and she travelled independently and set up her hotel and assisted battlefield wounded. She became extremely popular among service personnel, who raised money for her when she faced destitution after the war, after her death, she was largely forgotten for almost a century but today is celebrated as a woman who successfully combated racial prejudice. Her autobiography, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs, the erection of a statue of her at St Thomas Hospital, London on 30 June 2016, describing her as a pioneer nurse, has generated controversy. Earlier controversy broke out in the United Kingdom late in 2012 over reports of a proposal to remove her from the UKs National Curriculum. Mary Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant in Kingston, Jamaica, the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army, here Seacole acquired her nursing skills. In her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole, she records her bloodline thus, I am a Creole and my father was a soldier of an old Scottish family. Legally, she was classified as a mulatto, a person with limited political rights. The West Indies were an outpost of the British Empire in the late 18th century, Britains economic interests were protected by a massive military presence, with 69 line infantry regiments serving there between 1793 and 1801, and another 24 between 1803 and 1815. Seacole spent some years in the household of an elderly woman and she was treated as a member of her patronesss family and received a good education. As the educated daughter of a Scottish officer and a black woman with a respectable business. In about 1821, Seacole visited London, staying for a year, although London had a number of black people, she records that a companion, a West Indian with skin darker than her own dusky shades, was taunted by children. Seacole herself was only a little brown, she was nearly white according to Ramdin and she returned to London approximately a year later, bringing a large stock of West Indian pickles and preserves for sale. Her later travels would be as a woman, without a chaperone or sponsor—an unusual practice. Seacole returned to Jamaica in 1825, after returning to Jamaica, Seacole nursed her old indulgent patroness through an illness, finally returning to the family home at Blundell Hall after the death of her patroness a few years later. While doing this she got serious injuries and had skin cancer from an age of 5
