Mary Jane Seacole (née Grant; 23 November 1805 – 14 May 1881) was a British nurse and businesswoman. Seacole was born in Kingston to a Creole mother who ran a boarding house and had herbalist skills as a "doctress". In 1990, Seacole was (posthumously) awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit. In 2004, she was voted the greatest black Briton in a survey conducted in 2003 by the black heritage website Every Generation. Seacole went to the Crimean War in 1855 with the plan of setting up the "British Hotel", as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Seacole