History Focus
October 12

A Norfolk Heroine

English Nurse in W.W.I. She was executed by a firing squad for helping others to freedom.

Edith Louisa Cavell was born in Swardeston in 1865. Her father was Reverend Frederick Cavell. He was a minister at Swardeston for 46 years. The family was poor, but always willing to share whatever they had with their poorer parishioners. Both Mrs. Cavell and Edith taught in the Sunday School and acted as godmothers to a number of local babies. Edith had a great respect and love of nature and she seems always to have surrounded herself with plants and animals. Flowers were a fascination to her and she would collect and draw them as they grew on the common. She became a very accomplished artist.

Edith had her early education at home with her younger sisters. Later in 1881, Edith spent a few months at Norwich High School. From sixteen to nineteen years old, Edith went to three boarding schools. Edith was taught French and showed a flair for it. As a result she was recommended for a post in Brussels in 1890. Prior to this, she took several jobs as a governess. Edith was left a small legacy and spent it on a trip. While visiting Austria and Bavaria she was deeply impressed with a free hospital run by a Dr. Wolfenberg. She endowed the hospital with some of her legacy and returned with a growing interest in nursing.

After five years in Brussels as a governess with the Francois family, she returned to Swardeston 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. At age 30, she was accepted for nurse 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 Lückes Nurses, including Edith, were sent to help. Of 1700 who contracted the disease, only 132 died. Edith received the Maidstone Medal for her work there.

From 1898 through 1907, Edith had many varied experiences in nursing. She worked as both as a private nurse and also as a Night Superintendent for a hospital for dying destitutes. In 1907, Dr. Antoine Depage, placed Edith in charge of a pioneer training school for lay nurses on the outskirts of Brussels. 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.

After the German invasion of Belgium continued to work at her training school. She impressed on others that their first duty was to care for the wounded irrespective of 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, Miss Wilkins remained. In the Autumn of 1914, two stranded British soldiers found their way to Nurse Cavell's training school and were sheltered for two weeks. Others followed, all of them spirited away to neutral territory in Holland. Quickly an 'underground' lifeline was established. Some 200 allied soldiers were helped to escape. The organization lasted for almost a year, despite the risks. All those involved knew they could be shot for harboring allied soldiers.

Edith believed that the protection, concealment and smuggling away of hunted men was as humanitarian an act as the tending of the sick and wounded. Edith was prepared to face what she understood to be the just consequences. By August of 1915, the underground activities of Edith and the others was discovered. Nurse Cavell was captured and jailed. She confessed to her activities during her interrogation. She was trained to protect life, even at the risk of her own. "Had I not helped", she said, "they would have been shot". Edith trusted her German captors, and 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. Despite the intervention of neutral American and Spanish embassies, Miss Cavell was executed on October 12th, at the National Rifle Range. Edith was magnanimous in her death, forgiving her executors. She even admitted the justice of the sentence. The outcry that followed her execution made the Germans realize they had committed a serious blunder. The execution was used as propaganda by the allies, who acclaimed Nurse Cavell as a martyr and those responsible for her execution as murdering monsters. The shooting of this brave nurse was not forgotten or forgiven and 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.

Sources: On This Day | Various