Edith Cavell was a pioneering British Red Cross nurse, working in German-occupied Belgium during the World War I. Despite the risks, she secretly helped hundreds of wounded British, French and Belgian soldiers escape from German custody into Holland. She was arrested and executed in October 1915 by a firing squad of German soldiers. Who was this courageous woman you likely never heard of?
Edith Louisa Cavell was born in 1865 in the English village of Swardeston, Norfolk. She was the daughter of a vicar and the eldest of four children. As a child, she raised funds for a new Sunday School room by selling her own artwork. Her favorite pastimes were tennis and dancing, and she once danced till her feet bled in a new pair of shoes. Educated in the UK, Cavell spent five years working as a governess with the Francoise family in Belgium and became fluent in both French and Dutch. She returned home in 1895 to care for her ill father. Nursing her father back to health inspired Cavell to completely change professions and become a nurse instead.
In 1896, she began her nursing training at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. Her instructor remarked that she was not punctual and therefore ‘not a nurse who could be relied upon.’ Edith took it as a challenge and would prove her wrong. She worked in hospitals in Shoreditch, Kings Cross and Manchester before moving back to Belgium. She came close to marriage, but never had a husband or children, devoting herself to her nursing passion instead.
In 1907, she accepted a position in Brussels as Matron in Belgium’s newly established training hospital and nursing school, ‘L’Ecole Belge d’Infirmieres Diplomees’ with Dr. Antoine Depage. There was no established nursing profession in Belgium at the time. Until then, nuns had been responsible for the care of the sick and, however well intentioned, they had no training.
Due to her pioneering work in new nursing techniques, she is considered the founder of modern nursing in that country. By 1910, she had so advanced the nursing profession in Belgium that she began a professional nursing journal, L’infirmiere. In 1911, she was a Training Nurse for three hospitals, 24 schools, and 13 kindergartens. By 1914, she was giving four lectures a week to doctors and nurses alike.
She was in Norfolk on holiday, visiting her mother in 1914, when World War I exploded across Europe. On hearing of the threat to Belgium from the advancing German troops, she felt it was her duty to not run from war but return to Brussels. Over her mother’s protests, she declared, “At a time like this, I am needed now more than ever.”
Edith Cavell headed back to the front line in Belgium.
Cavell worked in hospitals treating all soldiers who needed help, regardless of their nationality. When war was declared on Germany by England in August 1914, Cavell’s training school for nurses in Brussels was taken over by the Red Cross, treating casualties from the trenches on both sides, as well as civilians.
In November, the Germans occupied Brussels and it came under German military law. The Red Cross Journal later reported in November 1915: “Edith Cavell might have saved herself and left Brussels, but she elected to stay at her post. 60 English nurses were sent home. She remained.”
Edith ended up doing far more than nursing. She soon began to work with the Belgian underground intelligence network, La Dame Blanche. They smuggled Allied soldiers into neutral Holland and Edith stepped up to help. Knowing how dangerous this was, Cavell kept her work secret from her fellow nurses. She became part of a network of people who sheltered Allied soldiers, arranging their escape.
In December 1914, La Dame Blanche asked Edith to help two wounded British soldiers trapped behind German lines following the Battle of Mons. She treated the men in her hospital and then arranged to have them successfully smuggled out of Belgium into the neutral Netherlands. She gave one of the men her Bible with a letter to her mother in Norfolk.
Cavell then began harboring other British and French soldiers and smuggling them out of occupied Belgium. She provided them with false papers created by La Dame Blanche. They were then conducted by guides, often to her own house and others who were secretly a part of her cause. The men were then furnished with clothes, money, and led to the Dutch border.
Over the next 11 months, she helped over 200 British, French and Belgian soldiers, sheltering them first in the hospital or her home ,and arranging for guides to shuttle them to the border. She often heard back from the soldiers she helped, thanking her when they arrived safely in Britain.
This was a clear violation of the German military law now in effect in Belgium.
German authorities became increasingly suspicious of Edith Cavell as the source of the missing wounded prisoners. Adding to that suspicion was Cavell’s outspoken opinions about the cruelty of the German occupation. She did not shy away from speaking up publicly in Brussels.
The Germans arrested two members of the escape team on 31 July 1915. Under interrogation, they revealed Edith’s name. She had also been betrayed by a Frenchman, later convicted in French court as a German collaborator. After an investigation, on 5 August 1915, she was arrested by German military police and placed in solitary confinement in St Gilles Prison in Brussels. Edith was charged with harboring enemy Allied soldiers – a crime punishable by death.
She was held in prison for almost 3 months. When German authorities interrogated her, she proudly told truth. She was responsible for harboring and transporting out of the country, 80 British soldiers, 25 French soldiers, and about 100 French and Belgian citizens. Edith was tried at a court martial on 7 October 1915, along with 34 other people involved in or connected to the secret network.
She freely admitting at her trial that she had “successfully conducted allied soldiers to the enemy of the German people,” Edith willingly signed a written statement, confirming her involvement, though never named her co-conspirators. She offered no defense of her actions other than she was simply doing her duty as a nurse.
According to German law, such an offense was punishable by death, a law that also applied to foreigners. Ordinarily, the Geneva Convention protected medical personnel. The German court stated that Cavell’s actions were belligerent and that she had thus forfeited such protection. Most of the 34 were sentenced to hard labor – but not Cavell.
Edith Cavell was found guilty and sentenced to death.
British government officials stated that they were sadly powerless to assist Miss Cavell. There was an international plea for mercy. The United States had not entered the war yet but they did apply diplomatic pressure on Germany, stating that if Germany executed Cavell their already sullied reputation would be irrevocably damaged. The German civil governor was told that, along with the sinking of the Lusitania, the execution of Cavell would cause disgust in the civilized world.
The German civil governor recommended that Cavell be pardoned because of the humanitarian work she did as a nurse. The military governor, however, ordered her execution. The Germans worried that if they gave her lenience, an upsurge of resistance would occur because they would have no fear of retribution.
The night before her execution, she told a British minister, who provided her Holy Communion that, “I expected my sentence. Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity. Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness to anyone.” These words are inscribed on a statue of Cavell in Trafalgar Square in central London. Edith’s most treasured possessions during her incarceration were the roses sent by her nurses, which she kept in her cell long after they wilted.
Her final words, spoken to a German priest the next day, were “Tell my loved ones that my soul is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.” Edith Cavell was shot dead by an 8 member firing squad at six paces at the Tir National, the Brussels firing range, at 7 am on 12 October 1915. She was buried in Brussels next to the prison. She was 49 years old. German Private Rimmel is said to have thrown down his rifle when ordered to fire at Nurse Cavell, and to have been shot by a German officer for refusing to obey orders.
Her execution caused outrage in Britain and the United States.
She became a symbol of the Allied cause. Her memory was invoked in recruitment posters and messages in Britain and around the world. News about her death caused British recruiting to double for 8 weeks after her death. Edith’s dying played an important role in further forming American opinion about Germany. The disgust at her treatment eased America’s entry into the war in 1917.
That same year, two British newspapers raised funds in memory of Edith Cavell, dedicated to the creation of six rest homes for nurses around England. Many nurses had also suffered greatly in the war and needed long term care as well.
After the war, her body was exhumed and escorted to Britain. On May 1919, in the Westminster Abbey, a memorial service was held for her. She was laid to rest in Norwich Cathedral, near her birthplace. The Red Cross Journal at the time reported that Edith Cavell was “a brave and patriotic lady, a distinguished member of the nursing profession who had done nothing worthy of death.”
Then Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith said: “We cannot at this moment forget, the imperishable story of the last hours of Edith Cavell. Thank God we have examples of all the qualities which have sustained our Empire. Let us be worthy of them.”
Edith Cavell was indeed a brave and patriotic woman who devoted her life to nursing and her country. Perhaps the truest assessment of her would be to recognize her as she saw herself – as simply ‘a nurse who tried to do her duty.’ These values have lived on in her legacy, as she continues to inspire women.
A memorial statue for Edith Cavell was built near Trafalgar Square for her extraordinary life. The Red Cross remembered her with a bronze medal showing her portraits. On the back it says: 1915 REMEMBER! The Church of England recognizes October 12th as the day for commemoration of Edith Cavell, patriot and nurse. In 2015, exhibitions took place to mark the 100th anniversary of her death. The Royal Mint created £5 coins featuring her portrait.
As a nurse, Edith Cavell did not shrink from death. “I have seen death so often it is not strange, or fearful to me!” She wrote to her fellow nurses while in prison, “I have told you that devotion will give you real happiness. Your whole duty and a good heart will be your greatest support in the hard moments of life and even in the face of death.”