Mary Seacole

Jamaica, hospitality and trading. Before her fame as a Crimean War nurse, Seacole ran a boarding house in Kingston and stores and a hotel in Panama serving travellers on the route to the Californian goldfields. In 1855 she financed and built the British Hotel near Balaclava, selling food and supplies to officers and treating the sick. Her career is an early example of Caribbean enterprise following trade routes abroad.