Edith Cavell
Edith Louisa Cavell (4 December 1865 – 12 October 1915) was a British nurse.
She saved the lives of soldiers from both sides. She helped some 200 Allied soldiers to escape from German-occupied Belgium during the First World War. She was arrested and accused of treason, found guilty by a court-martial and sentenced to death. Despite international pleas for mercy, she was shot by a German firing squad. Her execution received worldwide condemnation and extensive press coverage.[1][2]
Edith Cavell was born on the 4th of December 1865 near Norfolk and was the oldest of four children. Her father was a vicar, who always taught her the importance of loving and caring for others. In 1890, she became a governess for a family in Belgium, before returning home to care for her sick father. She enrolled in nursing school in 1896, and graduated in 1898. In 1907, she became a matron at the nursing school in Belgium.
Edith Cavell Media
Cavell in a garden in Brussels with her two dogs before the outbreak of war
Cavell (seated centre) with a group of multinational student nurses whom she trained in Brussels
Florence Nightingale and Cavell on a postage stamp marking 60 years of the Costa Rican Red Cross
A propaganda stamp issued shortly after Cavell's death
George Bellows, The Murder of Edith Cavell, 1918, Princeton University Art Museum
An anti-German post-First World War poster from the British Empire Union, including Cavell's grave
Edith Cavell sculpture (Uccle 2015) by Nathalie Lambert, marking the centenary of her death
Interior of the Cavell Van at Bodiam railway station
Memorial to Cavell outside Norwich Cathedral
References
- ↑ Hughes, Anne-Marie Claire 2005. War, gender and national mourning: the significance of the death and commemoration of Edith Cavell in Britain. European Review of History. 12 (3): 425–44. [1]
- ↑ Hull, Isabel V. 2014. A Scrap of Paper: breaking and making of onternational law during the Great War. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-5273-4