Edith Cavell

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Edith Cavell
Edith Cavell
Born	4 December 1865, Norfolk, England
Died	12 October 1915 (aged 49), Brussels, Belgium
Venerated in	Anglican church
Feast

Edith Louisa Cavell (4 December 1865–12 October 1915) was a British World War I nurse and humanitarian. She is celebrated for helping hundreds of Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium. Her subsequent execution received significant sympathetic press coverage worldwide. “Patriotism is not enough…” Her strong religious belief propelled Cavell to help all those who needed help - whether a member of the German forces or the Allied forces. “I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved”.^[1]

Contents 1 Early life and career 2 World War I and execution 3 Role in World War I propaganda 4 Memorials 5 Notes 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Early life and career

Edith Cavell (pronounced /ˈkævəl/ to rhyme with 'travel') was born in 1865 at Swardeston in Norfolk, England, where her father, the Reverend Frederick Cavell, was a priest for 45 years. She trained as a nurse at the Royal London Hospital and in 1907 was appointed matron of the Berkendael Institute, founded by Antoine Depage, in Brussels, Belgium. When World War I broke out, the hospital was taken over by the Red Cross. On 10 October 1907, Antoine Depage founded L'École d'Infirmière Dimplonier, and Edith Cavell became the first director of this new nursing school.

[edit] World War I and execution

Nurse Cavell helped hundreds of soldiers from the Allied forces to escape occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands, in violation of German military law. She was arrested on 3 August 1915 and charged with harbouring Allied soldiers, not for espionage. She was held in prison for 10 weeks, the last two in solitary confinement ^[2], and court-martialled. The British Government said they could do nothing to help her - Sir Horace Rowland of the Foreign Office said, "I am afraid that it is likely to go hard with Miss Cavell; I am afraid we are powerless." The sentiment was echoed by Lord Robert Cecil, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. "Any representation by us," he advised, "will do her more harm than good."

The United States, which had not yet joined the war, did not agree. Hugh Gibson, First Secretary of the American legation at Brussels, made clear to the German government that executing Cavell would further harm their nation's already damaged reputation. Later, he wrote:

"We reminded him (Baron von der Lancken) of the burning of Louvain and the sinking of the Lusitania, and told him that this murder would stir all civilized countries with horror and disgust. Count Harrach broke in at this with the rather irrelevant remark that he would rather see Miss Cavell shot than have harm come to one of the humblest German soldiers, and his only regret was that they had not 'three or four English old women to shoot.'"

Baron von der Lancken stated that Cavell should be pardoned because of her complete honesty, and because she had helped save so many lives, including those of German as well as Allied soldiers. However, the German military acted quickly to execute Cavell so higher authorities would not issue the pardon .^[3]

She made no defense, admitting her actions, and was ordered to be executed by firing squad at 2am on 12 October.

The night before her execution she told the Anglican chaplain, the Rev. Father Gahan, who had been allowed to see her and to give her Holy Communion, "Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." These words are inscribed on her statue in Saint Martin's Place, near Trafalgar Square in London.

Her final words to the German pastor, Le Seur, were recorded as, "Ask Father Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country."

There are conflicting reports of the execution: according to one account, on the way to the Wall she became faint, stumbled and fell; while she was unconscious, the German commanding officer took a revolver and shot her dead .^[4] However, the eyewitness account of "one Pasteur Le Seur," who attended Cavell in her final hours, asserts that the firing squad functioned normally, with eight soldiers firing at Cavell while eight others executed a Belgian civilian, Philippe Baucq.^[5] The German medical officer assisting was the expressionist poet Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), who gave an account of the event.

Cavell became a popular martyr and entered British history as a heroine. The execution took place at the Tir National, a State military site (today a memorial, near the State television buildings), where she was buried. Edith Cavell's case became an important article of British propaganda for the remainder of the war.^[6]

After the war, Edith Cavell's body was exhumed and returned to the UK. “Written permission from the minister of war at Berlin” had to be obtained for the exhumation.^[7] King George V and Queen Mary visited the site of her burial, as did King Albert I of Belgium. Her body was exhumed on March 17, 1919 and in May was transported by rail to Ostend where it was placed on the H.M.S. "Rowena". From Dover, the coffin was accompanied to London by family members in a special railway carriage, while schoolchildren lined the route. Cavell's coffin, covered by the Union Jack, was placed on a gun-carriage pulled by six horses. Crowds of people lined the route of the funeral procession from Victoria Station to Westminster Abbey, where her funeral, attended by the King, took place on May 15. The funeral cortege then travelled from Liverpool Street Station to Thorpe Station, Norwich, where the coffin was placed on a gun carriage and was escorted to Norwich Cathedral by the Norfolk Regiment, for burial on Life's Green at the east end of the cathedral. Every year a service is held at the grave.^[8]

[edit] Role in World War I propaganda

In the months and years following Cavell's death, countless newspaper articles, pamphlets, images, and books publicised her story. She became an iconic propaganda figure for military recruitment in Britain, and to help increase favourable American sentiment towards the Allies. Cavell was a popular icon due to her sex, her nursing profession, and her apparently heroic approach to death.^[9] Her execution was represented as an act of German barbarism and moral depravity, as the title of one of the many biographies written about her in 1915 proclaims: The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell: The Life Story of the Victim of Germany’s Most Barbarous Crime.^[10] Along with the invasion of Belgium, and the sinking of the Lusitania, Cavell’s execution was widely publicized in both Britain and America by Wellington House, the British War Propaganda Bureau.^[11]

One image of Cavell promoted in postcards and newspaper illustrations during the war depicted her as an innocent, girlish nurse, in spite of the fact that she was 49 at the time of her death.^[12] These images implied that men must enlist in the armed forces immediately in order to stop the murder of innocent British females.

The second representation of Cavell during World War I described her as a mature, brave, patriotic woman who devoted her life to nursing and died to save others. British propaganda ignored anything that did not fit this image, including the suggestion that Cavell, during her interrogation, had given information that incriminated others. In November 1915, the British Foreign Office issued a denial that Cavell had implicated anyone else in her testimony.^[13]

During World War I, the French shot a number of women, including two German nurses who aided German prisoners of war to escape. The German government did nothing to publicize or propagandize the incident. When asked why not, the German officer in charge of war propaganda replied, “What? Protest? The French had a perfect right to shoot them!”.^[14]

Because of the British government’s decision to use her story as propaganda, Cavell became the most prominent British female casualty of World War I.^[15] The combination of heroic appeal and a resonant atrocity-story narrative made Cavell’s case one of the most effective in British propaganda of World War I.^[11]

[edit] Memorials

Following her death, many memorials were created around the world to remember Cavell. One of the first occurred in October 1918 when Queen Alexandra unveiled a monument in the grounds of Norwich Cathedral, near a home for nurses which also bore her name. On May 19, 1919 her body was interred near the memorial.^[16] Other memorials include:

• A stone memorial, including a statue of Cavell, adjacent to Trafalgar Square in London.
• Cavell Gardens, Inverness, Scotland, UK
• Cavell Avenue, Twin Cities, US
• A marble and stone memorial near The Shrine in Melbourne, Australia.
• Cavell Street, running next to the London Hospital in Whitechapel, where Cavell trained.
• Cavell Street, West Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
• An inscription on a war memorial, naming the 35 people executed by the German Army outside the gaol in which they were killed.
• Mount Edith Cavell, a peak in the Canadian Rockies, named in 1916.
• Rue Edith Cavell, a street in Brussels, Belgium.
• Edith Cavell Clinic, Brussels, Belgium.
• Avenue Edith-Cavell, in Nice, France.
• Rua Edith Cavell, a street in Lisbon, Portugal.
• Cavell Drive in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
• Edith Cavell Boulevard, a road in Port Stanley, Ontario.
• Cavell Avenue, in Trenton, New Jersey.
• Cavell Corona, a geological feature on Venus.
• Hospitals in Peterborough and the Brussel's borough of Uccle (Ukkel), a wing of the Toronto Western Hospital, schools in Vancouver, British Columbia (Edith Cavell Elementary School), St. Catharines, Ontario, Moncton, New Brunswick and Bedford, England, a building at the University of Queensland,a street in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, South Africa and a bridge in New Zealand.
• The Edith Cavell Trust was established by the New South Wales Nurses' Association which provides scholarships to nurses in NSW.
• The Edith Cavell Nursing Scholarship Fund is a philanthropy of the Dallas County Medical Society Alliance Foundation and provides scholarships to exceptional nursing students in Dallas, Texas and the surrounding area.
• University of East Anglia, Norwich, named its School of Nursing and Midwifery centre, the Edith Cavell building [1], when it opened next to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in 2006.
• A street in Port Louis, Mauritius.
• A car park in Peterborough.
• A middle school in Windsor, Ontario which closed in 1987.
• An elementary school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario which was later renamed to S.F. Howe.
• Edith Cavell Regional School of Nursing, in Belleville, Ontario.
• Cavell Building, Quinte Children's Treatment Centre, Belleville, Ontario.
• Edith Cavell Condominiums in Ontario Street, Windsor, Ontario.
• The English state boarding school Wymondham College has a boarding block named after her.
• A dedication on the war memorial in the grounds of Sacred Trinity Church, Chapel St, Salford.
• Variety of rose first bred in 1917 is named after her^[17]
• A YWCA camp in Lexington, Michigan.
• Edith became a popular French and Belgian girls' name after her execution. The French chanteuse Édith Piaf, born two months after she was executed, was the best known.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Daily News & Leader, The. “The Death of Edith Cavell.” London: H.C. & L., Ltd., 1915.
• Hill, William Thomson. The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell: The Life Story of the Victim of Germany’s Most Barbarous Crime. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1915.
• Hoehling, A.A. "The Story of Edith Cavell." The American Journal of Nursing. 57.10 (Apr. 1955).
• Hughes, Anne-Marie Claire. “War, Gender and National Mourning: The Significance of the Death and Commemoration of Edith Cavell in Britain.” European Review of History. 12.3 (Nov. 2005) 425-444. EBSCOhost. 5 November 2007.
• Judson, Helen. "Edith Cavell." The American Journal of Nursing. 41.7 (July 1941).
• Lasswell, Harold. Propaganda Technique in the World War. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1927.
• Marquis, Alice Goldfarb. “Words as Weapons: Propaganda in Britain and Germany During the First World War.” Journal of Contemporary History. 13.3 (Jul. 1978) 467-498. JSTOR. 5 November 2007.
• Peterson, H. C. Propaganda for War: The Campaign against American Neutrality, 1914-1917. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939.
• Roberts, Mary. "A Whisper of Eternity" and "The Mystery of Edith Cavell" by A.A. Hoehling. 58.7 (July 1958).
• Sarolea, Charles. The Murder of Nurse Cavell. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1915.
• Sconil, Elisabeth Robinson. "An Heroic Nurse." The American Journal of Nursing. 16.2 (Nov. 1915).

[edit] Further reading

• Kindred Spirit: Memory, Landscape and the Martyrdom of Edith Cavell, by Katie Pickles, Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (due for publication June 2007), ISBN 1-4039-8607-X
• The Edith Cavell Nurse from Massachusetts—The War Letters of Alice Fitzgerald, an American Nurse Serving in the British Expeditionary Force, Boulogne-The ... ... Trial, And Death of Nurse Edith Cavell by Alice L. Fitzgerald, E. Lymon Cabot (July 2006), Publisher: Diggory Press, ISBN 1-84685-202-1
• A Journal from our Legation in Belgium bu Hugh Gibson, Doubleday vPage, New York, 1917.
• Edith Cavell by Sally Grant, David Yaxley and Robert Yaxley (illustrators), Publisher: The Larks Press (May 1995) ISBN 0-948400-28-5
• A whisper of eternity;: The mystery of Edith Cavell by A. A Hoehling, Publisher: T. Yoseloff (1957), ASIN B0007DUAIC
• Friend Within the Gates: The Story of Nurse Edith Cavell, by Elizabeth Grey, Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co (June 1971), ISBN 0-395-06786-3
• The Story of Edith Cavell, by Iris Vinton, Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap (1959), ASIN B0007DY2FE
• Dawn;: A biographical novel of Edith Cavell, by Reginald Cheyne Berkeley, Publisher: Sears (1928), ASIN B00085XCEI
• Edith Cavell, by Rowland Ryder, Publisher: Hamilton (1975), ISBN 0-241-89173-6
• Edith Cavell: Nurse, Spy, Heroine, by Leeuwen, Published: G. P. Putnams Sons (1968), ASIN B000J6G6OY
• Edith Cavell, heroic nurse, by Juliette Elkon Hamelecourt, Publisher: J. Messner (1956), ASIN B0007ETGGI
• The Secret Task of Nurse Cavell: A Story about Edith Cavell, by Jan Johnson, Publisher: Harper San Francisco (1979), ISBN 0-03-041661-2
• A noble woman: The life story of Edith Cavell, by Ernest Protheroe, Publisher: C.H. Kelly; 3rd ed edition (1918), ASIN B0008AH3RU
• With Edith Cavell in Belgium, by Jacqueline Van Til, Publisher: H.W. Bridges (1922), ASIN B00088GV84
• Ready to Die: The Story of Edith Cavell (Faith in Action Series), by Brian Peachment, Publisher: Canterbury Press, ISBN 0-08-024189-1
• In memoriam: Edith Cavell, by William S. Murphy, Publisher: Stoneham (1916), ASIN B0008BTZ5C
• The case of Edith Cavell: A study of the rights of non-combatants, by James M. Beck, Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, ASIN B00087OKN8
• The secret trial: An unhistorical charade suggested by the life and death of Edith Cavell, by Richard Heron Ward, ASIN B0007JC7Q4
• The Dutiful Edith Cavell, by Noel Boston, Publisher: Norwich Cathedral (1955), ASIN B0007JR6U6

[edit] External links

• "The Heroine who humbled me": extract from the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown's book Courage Eight Portraits
• Guardian report about the release of foreign office memos relating to her arrest and death
• About the Brussels hospital (also in English language)
• Find A Grave - about the Brussels memorial
• Find A Grave - about the grave in Norwich
• "No reprieve for angel of mercy", BBC News (2002-05-09). Retrieved on 2008-08-08. 

Persondata
NAME	Cavell, Edith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
DATE OF BIRTH	4 December 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH	Norfolk, England
DATE OF DEATH	1915-10-12
PLACE OF DEATH	Brussels, Belgium