Nurse Edith Cavell
Edith Louisa
Cavell was born on the 4th December 1865 and live at The Vicarage in
Swardeston, Norfolk, England. Her mother and father were Louisa and Frederick
Cavell. She had two younger sisters, Florence (born 1868) and Mary (born 1871)
and a brother, John (born 1873).
Edith worked as
a governess in Belgium, but returned to Swardeston to nurse her sick father.
This may have been the catalyst for her to become a nurse and she trained at
the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, London. Edith returned to Bussels in
1907, initially to nurse a sick child and went on to become Matron of the first
Nursing School in Belgium.
In 1914 Edith
was in Norfolk visiting her widowed mother when the First World War broke out.
When she returned to Brussels she found her clinic and nursing school had been
taken over by the Red Cross.
After the German
occupation of Brussels in November 1914, Edith Cavell helped to hide British,
French and Belgian soldiers from the Germans and get them to the Netherlands
with false papers. The Germans authorities became suspicious and on the 3rd
August 1915 after being betrayed by Gaston Quien, Edith was arrested and
charged with ‘harbouring Allied soldiers’. She was held in Saint-Gilles prison
for ten weeks. Whilst in custody she was questioned in French, but the session
was recorded in German., which may have given the questioner an opportunity to
misinterpret her answers, although she admitted that her house had been a
shelter for British, French and Belgians, helping them to reach the safety of
the Netherlands and make no effort to defend herself.
She
was court-martialled and sentenced to death for treason (rather than
espionage). The night before her execution she was Holy Communion by an
Anglican chaplain and she told him “Patriotism is not enough, I must have no
hatred or bitterness towards anyone.”
At
7.00 a.m. on the 12th October 1915 Edith Cavell and four Belgian men were
executed by firing squad at the Tir national shooting range in Schaerbeek.
At
an international First World War conference in London in August 1914 one
speaker was German and briefly mentioned Edith Cavell by saying “what did you
expect? She was helping the enemy.”
The
German response in 1915 was:
It was a pity that Miss Cavell had
to be executed, but it was necessary. She was judged justly...It is undoubtedly
a terrible thing that the woman has been executed; but consider what would
happen to a State, particularly in war, if it left crimes aimed at the safety
of its armies to go unpunished because committed by women.
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