Edith Cavell

Edith Cavell

A WW2 NURSE

Edith Cavell's Legacy

Ruth Guildea 4c History

Mount Edith Cavell

1865-1915

Edith Cavell’s character continues on today. Mount Edith Cavell in the Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada is a tribute to her. Anna Neagle made a film of her and Joan Plowright appeared in a a very successful play called ‘Cavell’.

There was a time when her name was associated with an extreme form of patriotism, despite her words that this is ‘not enough’.

Cavell continues to be an inspiration in the nursing world and is regarded as one of the best nurses of all time with Florence Nightingale.

Aftermath

Returning Home

Two members of the escape route team were arrested on July 31st, 1915. Five days later, Nurse Cavell was interned. During her interrogation she was told that the other prisoners had confessed. She believed the ploy and revealed everything. Edith was trained to protect life, even at the risk of her own. “Had I not helped”, she said, “they would have been shot”. Cavell willingly condemned herself by freely admitting at her trial that she had “successfully conducted allied soldiers to the enemy of the German people”. Herein lay her ‘guilt’, and this was a capital offence under the German penal code. She was guilty, so they must shoot her.

The German military authorities, having sentenced Edith and four others to death, were determined to carry out the executions immediately. Despite the intervention of neutral American and Spanish embassies, Cavell was ordered to be shot the next day, October 12th, at the National Rifle Range.The English chaplain managed to visit her on her last night.They repeated the words of ‘Abide with me’, and Edith received the Sacrament.

Lastly, she said, “I am thankful to have had these ten weeks of quiet to get ready. Now I have had them and have been kindly treated here. I expected my sentence and I believe it was just. Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone”.

In death, she forgave her executioners and admitted the justice of their sentence. This sentence was carried out hurriedly and furtively in the early hours of October 12th. Two firing squads, each of eight men, fired at their victims, including Cavell, from six paces.

Original grave site

Sacraments used on her last night

Edith in Brussels

The outcry that followed shocked the Germans and they realised they had made a huge mistake.Her execution was used as propaganda by the allies, who made Nurse Cavell into a martyr and those responsible for her execution as murderers.This was also opposed as Edith asked not to be remembered as a martyr but as a nurse who did her duty. The shooting of Cavell was used to sway neutral opinion against Germany and eventually helped to bring the U.S.A. into the war. Propaganda about her death caused recruiting to double for eight weeks after her death was announced.

Edith had been buried at the rifle range where she was shot and a plain wooden cross put over her grave. The shaft of this cross is now preserved at the back of (her church) Swardeston Church. When the war was over, arrangements were made for Edith’s reburial.

Her remains were escorted to Dover and from there to Westminster Abbey for the first part of the burial service on May 15th, 1919.A special train took the remains to Norwich Thorpe Station and from there, a procession to the Cathedral.She was laid to rest outside the Cathedral in a spot called Life’s Green.

Services are held annually on the Saturday nearest the anniversary of her death at Life's Green.

Edith's cell

Getting the train from Norwich

Edith and her nurses in Brussels.

Nurse Training

In 1907, after a short break, Edith returned to Brussels to nurse a child patient but she soon was transferred to more important work. Dr. Depage (the patient's doctor) wanted to pioneer the training of nurses in Belgium along the lines of Florence Nightingale. Until then, nurses cared for the sick but had no proper training. Edith Cavell, in her forties, was put in charge of a pioneer training school for lay nurses, ‘L’Ecole Belge d’Infirmieres Diplomees’, on the outskirts of Brussels. It was formed out of four adjoining houses and opened on October 10th, 1907.

Edith became a responsible nurse despite her poor punctuality.The work was quickly established, despite some resistance from the middle classes (men did not agree with women working). By 1912, Edith was providing nurses for three hospitals, 24 communal schools and 13 kindergartens. In 1914 she was giving four lectures a week to doctors and nurses alike, and finding time to care for a friend’s daughter who was a morphia addict, and a runaway girl, as well as her two dogs, Don and Jack.

WORLD WAR ONE

Edith’s returned to Swardeston in 1895 to nurse her father through a brief illness. Helping to restore her father to health made Edith resolve to take up nursing as a career.Edith (Aged 30) was then accepted for training at the London Hospital under Eva Lückes in April 1896.

In the summer of 1897, an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in Maidstone. Six of Miss Lücke's (her ward sister) Nurses were volunteered to help, including Edith. Of 1700 who contracted the disease, only 132 died. Edith received the Maidstone Medal for her work which is the only medal she was ever to receive from her country.

Edith also did private nursing in 1898 at Miss Lücke's reommendation.She soon moved back into the front line of nursing and in 1899 was a Night Superintendent at St. Pancras, a Poor Law Institution for destitutes. At Shoreditch Infirmary, she became Assistant Matron in 1903 where she pioneered follow up work by visiting patients after their discharge.

In 1906, Edith went to work for one of the Queen’s District Nursing Homes, in a temporary position for three months. However, since the Matron, Miss Hall, became ill, she filled in as Matron. This was etremely rare as Edith was not fully qualified at this point.

Edith and her dogs

Edith was weeding her mother’s garden when she heard the news of the German invasion of Belgium. She would not be persuaded to stay in England. “At a time like this”, she said, “I am more needed than ever”.

By August 3rd 1914, she was back in Brussels dispatching nurses and teaching them to treat the wounded despite their nationality.The clinic became a Red Cross Hospital, German soldiers receiving the same attention as Belgian. When Brussels fell, the Germans commandeered the Royal Palace for their own wounded and 60 English nurses were sent home. Edith Cavell and her chief assistant stayed.

In the Autumn of 1914, two stranded British soldiers found their way to Nurse Cavell’s training school, were sheltered for two weeks and others followed. One from the 1st Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment recognised a print of Norwich Cathedral on the wall of her office; she was always delighted to receive someone from her beloved Norfolk, asking a private Arthur Wood to take home her Bible and a letter for her Mother. Quickly an ‘underground’ lifeline was established, which with the help of Cavell allowed some 200 allied soldiers helped to escape. This organisation lasted for almost a year, despite the risks. All those, including Cavell, involved knew they could be shot for harbouring allied soldiers.

Edith also was a ‘protected’ member of the Red Cross, she should have remained detached.. To her, the protection, the concealment and the smuggling away of hunted men was as humanitarian an act as the tending of the sick and wounded. By August 1915 a Belgian traitor had passed through Edith’s hands. The school was searched while a soldier slipped out through the back garden, Nurse Cavell remained calm – no incriminating papers were ever found (her Diary she sewed up in a cushion). Edith was too thorough and she had even managed to keep her ‘underground’ activities from her nurses so as not to incriminate them.

Edith's Early Life

Edith as matron

Edith and her team at war

Edith Cavell

Frederick Cavell (Edith's father) was a reverend at Swardeston Church and married his housekeeper's daughter. Their daughter, Edith Louisa Cavell was born, on December 4th, 1865.

Edith grew up in Cavell. She has three younger siblings: Florence, Lilian and John. No cards, no books allowed except the Bible in Edith's house as he father was a strict Puritan, however, her father was a happy man and she had a enjoyable childhood.

Edith was always wanting to help. When a Church room was needed for the education of young children, Edith raised £300 and got the help of a bishop's funds to help build the room.

In Laurel Court, her secondary school, she fell in love with French and excelled at it. Her love for the language brought her to Brussels where she was a governess for a few families. It was when she was governing thjat she became fluent.

Soon after, she was impressed by a free hospital run by Dr.Wolfenberg in Bavaria and it is believed that this hospital inspired her to become a nurse.

Edith Cavell was the World War I British nurse who is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers in Brussels from all sides without distinction. She and Belgian and French colleagues helped over 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.

She was arrested, tried with 33 others by a German military court, found guilty of ‘assisting men to the enemy’ and shot by a German firing squad on October 12 1915.

She is widely known for her bravery and was truly important to the WW2 cause.

Edith and a child patient