Our newsletter this month contains details of an exciting photographic find, plus new material from our partners here in the UK and overseas.

In this summer before the 70th anniversary of the start of World War Two, we also look at the lead up to war and some of the steps taken to assist civilian safety.

A new photograph of Mary Seacole

We are delighted to be representing a newly-discovered photograph of pioneering Crimean War nurse Mary Seacole, found inside a scrapbook at Winchester College, Hampshire. Photographs of Mary Seacole are extremely rare, and only a handful of images of her exist, so we are thrilled to be able to present this new picture to a wider audience.

Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1805 to a free Jamaican mother who ran a boarding house for British military, and a Scottish army officer father. Mary had a natural affinity with nursing, gaining knowledge of Creole medicine from her mother and European medical ideas from her extensive travels. On one of these trips to Britain in 1854, Mary Seacole (she had married and been widowed) approached the War Office asking to be sent as a nurse to the Crimea to support the work of Florence Nightingale who by that time was in Turkey. Despite the lack of good nurses, Mrs Seacole, a black woman in a prejudicial Victorian society, was turned down. Undeterred, she arranged her own passage to the Crimea and set up the British Hotel near Balaclava to provide care for the sick and injured soldiers she referred to as ‘my sons’. When the war finished she returned to Britain destitute but with a reputation rivalling that of Florence Nightingale. However, after her death in 1881 her achievements were largely forgotten.

More recently the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal highlighted the fact that no public commemoration of Mrs Seacole existed, and have worked to rectify this omission. The winning statue design, to be erected in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital in London, was announced last month.

For more information on the appeal and the timely discovery of this wonderful photograph, please click here. A proportion of all sales of the image, whether through licensing or from our print site www.prints-online.com will go towards the memorial fund.

The Second World War, 70 years on

This September will mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two in Europe, with the invasion of Poland on 1st September by Nazi Germany. Two days later Poland’s western allies including Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war.

The Munich Agreement in September 1938, in which the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia was handed to Germany in exchange for a promise from Hitler to go no further, had failed. French prime minister, Edouard Daladier was under no illusion, telling the British in April 1938 that Hitler’s real aim was to secure "a domination of the Continent in comparison with which the ambitions of Napoleon were feeble.” In addition, secret negotiations between Hitler and Stalin since spring 1939 had led to the shock announcement of a Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact on 23rd August 1939, and a covert agreement to carve up Poland into German and Soviet zones. Less than a year after Neville Chamberlain’s ‘Peace for our time’ speech had been greeted with delight in London, the world was at war.

Click here for our selection of images of some of the key moments leading up to World War Two, and reaction and mobilisation in the first weeks.

We’ll also be adding many more images from the Robert Hunt Library of military history over the coming months and will keep you posted.

Seventies Style

Fans of bubble perms, lycra jumpsuits, Afghan fur trim and flares (and that’s just the men) need look no further than this collection of kitsch and retro fashion images from the Adams Picture Library. This fabulous collection of photographs from the 1960s and 1970s reminds us why Crimplene has yet to make a comeback. Click here for a fuller flavour.

Pictures from around the world

We continue to add new photography, fine art and illustration to our website from our international partners. Nearly four thousand more images from Italian picture library De Agostini, Austrian archive Imagno, and IC Worldwide, the innovative Paris-New York collaboration, are now available to our clients in the UK.

Here’s a small selection to get you started.

A Really Lovely Occasion

We’re happy to report that Mary Evans Picture Library continues to increase its productivity with the birth of Hilary and Mary’s third grandchild, a baby boy called Arlo, to their daughter Valentine and son-in-law Damian. Many congratulations!

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Let us know what you think

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Best wishes,

Mary Evans Picture Library