Edith Cavell (1865-1915) was the daughter of a parson in Norfolk. After inheriting some money in 1895, she spent several weeks touring Austria and Bavaria and accidentally discovered a free hospital run by Dr Wolfenberg in Bavaria. Cavell was very impressed.
Edith returned to her childhood home in 1895 to nurse her sick father. This experience, and her experience in the Bavarian hospital, convinced Edith that a career in nursing was for her. After a few months spent at the Fountains Fever Hospital in Tooting, Edith started nursing training at the Royal London Hospital. A typhoid epidemic broke out in Maidstone in Kent, so Edith went with five other nurses to help. Successfully. Three years later, after completing her training, Edith went into private nursing, gaining experience in pleurisy, pneumonia and typhoid.
Fluent in French, Edith Cavell returned to Brussels in 1907 where Dr Antoine Depage opened the pioneering Belgian Medical Institute. Edith ran the organisation and created a training programme to produce well qualified nurses for three hospitals, 24 communal schools and 13 kindergartens.
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Edith returned to her childhood home in 1895 to nurse her sick father. This experience, and her experience in the Bavarian hospital, convinced Edith that a career in nursing was for her. After a few months spent at the Fountains Fever Hospital in Tooting, Edith started nursing training at the Royal London Hospital. A typhoid epidemic broke out in Maidstone in Kent, so Edith went with five other nurses to help. Successfully. Three years later, after completing her training, Edith went into private nursing, gaining experience in pleurisy, pneumonia and typhoid.
Fluent in French, Edith Cavell returned to Brussels in 1907 where Dr Antoine Depage opened the pioneering Belgian Medical Institute. Edith ran the organisation and created a training programme to produce well qualified nurses for three hospitals, 24 communal schools and 13 kindergartens.
Cavell in Brussels pre-war, 1914
Imperial War Museum Archives
When the war broke out, she was at home in the safety of Norfolk but insisted on returning to Europe. Many dedicated Christians refused to wield guns in WW1, but Edith Cavell was willing to fight in another way. She worked as a nurse in German-occupied Belgium where she helped save the lives of soldiers from both sides!!
After the city of Brussels was captured by the Germans in the first month of war and brought under German military legislation, Cavell chose to remain at her post, tending to both German and Belgian soldiers. Many refugees from all over the country went to the Netherlands, which was neutral, or to France, which was Britain’s closest ally.
By late 1914, many soldiers from the British and French armies were cut off from their units. They hid themselves as best they could, and hoped to escape with the aid of the Belgian farmers, sympathetic towns people or Edith Cavell. Despite understanding clearly that, if she was caught assisting Allied soldiers, she too could be executed, Cavell worked with an underground network. They smuggled Allied patients of the hospital into the neutral Netherlands, and to safety. This informal group smuggled up to 1000 allied soldiers out.
She was betrayed and arrested in August 1915, only 9 months after the underground network had been established. Except for her detailed confessions, the prosecution would have had no hard evidence that Cavell had personally enabled military escapees to reach the UK. So the Germans were pleased to try her for treason and to find her guilty. Despite appeals for clemency from abroad, she was shot in Brussels in October 1915, aged 49.
Here are some of the questions that still disturb me. Why did Cavell give detailed and accurate evidence against herself? Why was the British Foreign Office powerless to intervene on her behalf? Nurse Cavell was never a spy so why did the Germans gun her to death? Surely they should have allowed her to continue treating seriously wounded German soldiers, as she had before.
Imperial War Museum Archives
When the war broke out, she was at home in the safety of Norfolk but insisted on returning to Europe. Many dedicated Christians refused to wield guns in WW1, but Edith Cavell was willing to fight in another way. She worked as a nurse in German-occupied Belgium where she helped save the lives of soldiers from both sides!!
After the city of Brussels was captured by the Germans in the first month of war and brought under German military legislation, Cavell chose to remain at her post, tending to both German and Belgian soldiers. Many refugees from all over the country went to the Netherlands, which was neutral, or to France, which was Britain’s closest ally.
By late 1914, many soldiers from the British and French armies were cut off from their units. They hid themselves as best they could, and hoped to escape with the aid of the Belgian farmers, sympathetic towns people or Edith Cavell. Despite understanding clearly that, if she was caught assisting Allied soldiers, she too could be executed, Cavell worked with an underground network. They smuggled Allied patients of the hospital into the neutral Netherlands, and to safety. This informal group smuggled up to 1000 allied soldiers out.
She was betrayed and arrested in August 1915, only 9 months after the underground network had been established. Except for her detailed confessions, the prosecution would have had no hard evidence that Cavell had personally enabled military escapees to reach the UK. So the Germans were pleased to try her for treason and to find her guilty. Despite appeals for clemency from abroad, she was shot in Brussels in October 1915, aged 49.
Here are some of the questions that still disturb me. Why did Cavell give detailed and accurate evidence against herself? Why was the British Foreign Office powerless to intervene on her behalf? Nurse Cavell was never a spy so why did the Germans gun her to death? Surely they should have allowed her to continue treating seriously wounded German soldiers, as she had before.
Cavell memorial, 1920
Charing Cross, London
by Sir George Frampton
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Charing Cross, London
by Sir George Frampton
Cavell memorial, 1919
close to Norwich Cathedral
After the war her body was repatriated to the UK (in May 1919) and re-buried in Norwich Cathedral. Beautiful and imposing memorials were erected in Norwich, Brussels, London and other places around the world. 100 years later Edith Cavell was featured on a new commemorative £5 coin, marking the centenary of WW1.
There is a touch of the Florence Nightingale story in the themes of Christianity and nursing, and there are also reminders of Joan of Arc in Cavell's service to nation "at any cost". Readers might like to locate the Dictionary of National Biography Archive - its biography was published in 1927.
close to Norwich Cathedral
After the war her body was repatriated to the UK (in May 1919) and re-buried in Norwich Cathedral. Beautiful and imposing memorials were erected in Norwich, Brussels, London and other places around the world. 100 years later Edith Cavell was featured on a new commemorative £5 coin, marking the centenary of WW1.
There is a touch of the Florence Nightingale story in the themes of Christianity and nursing, and there are also reminders of Joan of Arc in Cavell's service to nation "at any cost". Readers might like to locate the Dictionary of National Biography Archive - its biography was published in 1927.