Edith Cavell

 “Someday, somehow, I am going to do something useful, something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy.”

Edith Louisa Cavell (1865 – 1915) was a British nurse who was killed by the Germans during the First World War. She is most praised for saving the lives of soldiers from both sides without discrimination, helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium. For this she was arrested and sentenced to death for treason. Despite international calls for mercy, she was shot by a German firing squad, provoking outrage across Europe.

Cavell was born in 1865 in Swardeston, a village near Norwich, the eldest of four children of a vicar and his wife.

After her eduction, she worked as a governess in Brussells, but returned home in 1895 to care for her father who was seriously ill. This inspired her to take up nursing once he had recovered. Aged 30, Cavell applied to become a nurse probationer at the London Hospital  and worked in various hosipitals across England. She later worked as a private travelling nurse, treating patients in their homes who were suffering from a range of illnesses including cancer, pneumonia, and pleurisy. She was also awarded the Maidstone Medal for her assistance during the typhoid epidemic of 1897.  

In 1906 she took a temporary post as matron of the Manchester and Salford Sick and Poor and Private Nursing Institution and worked there for about nine months. A year later, she was recruited to be matron of the newly established nursing school, L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées (or the Berkendael Medical Institute) in Ixelles, Brussels. By 1910, "Miss Cavell 'felt that the profession of nursing had gained sufficient foothold in Belgium to warrant the publishing of a professional journal' and, therefore, launched the nursing journal, L'infirmière". Within a year, she was training nurses for three hospitals, twenty-four schools, and thirteen nurseries in Belgium.

"I can’t stop while there are lives to be saved."

Cavell visiting her widowed mother in Norfolk when the First World War erupted. Her hospital had been taken over by the Red Cross and she quickly returned to Brussels to help. When the First World War broke out, she was visiting her widowed mother in Norfolk. She returned to Brussels, where her clinic and nursing school were taken over by the Red Cross.

She worked closely alongside the man who had enlisted her help, Dr Depage, and they realised that the care that was being provided by the religious institutions had not been keeping up with medical advances. In 1910, Cavell was assigned to the new secular hospital at Saint-Gilles.

In November 1914, after the German occupation of Brussels, Cavell began sheltering British soldiers and  smuggling them into the neutral Netherlands. She assisted with getting them enough money to cross the border, in direct violation of German military law. Her outspokenness against German occupation furthered German suspicions of her actions.

On August 3 1915, Edith was charged with harbouring Allied soldiers. She had been betrayed by Georges Gaston Quien, who was later convicted by a French court as a collaborator. She was imprisoned for ten weeks – the last two of which were spent in solitary confinement. Three statements made to the German police admitted her assistance of over 200 French and British soldiers and civilians looking to avoid enlistment, even sheltering them in her own house.  

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At her court-martial, she was prosecuted for aiding British and French soldiers, in addition to young Belgian men, to cross the Dutch border and eventually enter Britain. She admitted her guilt in writing a day before her trial. By confessing that she had helped the men reach Britain, Edith had betrayed that she had sent them into a country at war with Germany – not just a neutral safe haven – which proved to be the final nail in her coffin. Her fellow defendants included Princess Marie of Croÿ whose brother had also played an instrumental part in aiding Cavell’s missions. Cavell was sentenced to death: “at the time of war, anyone who with the intention of aiding a hostile power, or of causing harm to the German or allied troops…shall be punished with death for war treason". Specifically, Cavell was charged for "conveying troops to the enemy", a crime normally punishable by life imprisonment in peacetime. While the First Geneva Convention usually guaranteed protection of medical staff, her actions were seen to exclude her from that protection.

The British government could do nothing to help her, believing that their intervention would be detrimental to the cause. However, the US had notyet joined the war and thus were free to exert pressure on the Germans to show leniency as to murder Miss Cavell would be met with in ‘all civilised countries with horror and disgust’. Others stressed that Cavell had saved many lives, including those of “enemy” German soldiers. However, General von Sauberzweig, the military governor of Brussels, ordered that "in the interests of the State" the implementation of the death penalty against Cavell should be immediate, denying higher authorities an opportunity to consider mercy.  Out of 27 defendants, only 5 were sentenced to death. Three of those 5 were granted a reprieve. Sadly, Cavell was not one of them.

Cavell was arrested not for espionage, as many were led to believe, but for "war treason", despite not being a German national. There have been rumours that she may have been recruited by the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) but favoured her medical word instead, although this is largely speculation and not widely agreed among historians.

When in custody, Cavell was questioned in French, but her trial was minuted in German; which some assert gave the prosecutor the opportunity to misinterpret her answers. Although she may have been misrepresented, she made no attempt to defend her actions. She was assigned a German defence lawyer, rather than her own choice of attorney, further fuelling accusations that she stood little chance of escape.

"I have no fear or shrinking; I have seen death so often it is not strange, or fearful to me!"

Her final words to the German Lutheran prison chaplain, 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."

Ambassadors from the US, Spain, and Belgium pleaded for her life until the very last moment. However, her death was sanctioned on 11 October 1915. Two firing squads of 16 men were charged with the execution at 7:00 am on 12 October 1915. There are conflicting reports of the details of Cavell's execution. There is also a dispute over the sentencing imposed under the German Military Code. Supposedly, the death penalty relevant to the offence committed by Cavell was not officially declared until a few hours after her death.  The British however declared the death legally sound (#BritishValues).

Belgian women immediately buried her body next to Saint-Gilles Prison. After the war, her body was taken back to Britain for a memorial service at Westminster Abbey and then transferred to Norwich, having been granted a special exception to burial rights from the King.

"I do not believe that Miss Cavell wanted to be a martyr ... but she was ready to die for her country ... Miss Cavell was a very brave woman and a faithful Christian".

In the months and years following Cavell's death, her story was ubiquitous in news and popular media. Despite the dubious factual accuracy of some reports, she became an iconic propaganda figure for military recruitment in Britain, and to help increase favourable sentiment towards the Allies in the United States. She was a popular icon because of her sex, her nursing profession, and her apparently heroic approach to death. Her execution was used as a key example of German barbarism and moral depravity.

Because of the British government's decision to publicise Cavell's story as part of its propaganda effort, she became the most prominent British female casualty of the First World War.  Before the war, Cavell had not been known outside nursing circles. Some tried to suggest that she had betrayed fellow Brits during interrogation, but in November 1915, the British Foreign Office formally denied these claims.

One image commonly represented was of Cavell as an innocent victim of a ruthless and dishonourable enemy. Her story was presented in the British press as a means of fuelling a desire for revenge on the battlefield. These images implied that men must enlist in the armed forces immediately in order to stop forces that could arrange the judicial murder of an innocent British woman. I really hate the whole white-knight aspect of war/nationalism and have spent a lot of time studying it, however, it is sadly fairly successful in recruiting young men.

Another representation of a side of Cavell during the First World War saw her described as a serious, reserved, brave, and patriotic woman who devoted her life to nursing and died to save others. This portrayal has been illustrated in numerous biographical sources, from personal first-hand experiences of the Red Cross nurse.

"Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

The Imperial German Government  defended the execution saying that ‘it was a pity…but it was necessary…It is undoubtedly a terrible thing that the woman has been executed; but consider what would happen to a State, particularly in war, if it left crimes aimed at the safety of its armies to go unpunished because they were committed by women.^’

Germans feared that showing leniency to Cavell would have encouraged other women to act against them, believing that they too could escape punishment. German law did not distinguish between sexes apart from to state that a pregnant woman should not be executed. However, in  January 1916, the Kaiser decreed that, from then on, capital punishment should not be carried out on women without his explicit prior endorsement. I find it quite interesting that the Germans focussed on her gender in defending her murder. From what I can tell, Allied forces did not claim she should be shown mercy because of her sex – but because of her good deeds and her heroism in saving lives from all sides. That they tried to claim “well it would have been sexist not to kill her” is a weird defence, and perhaps shows their difficulty in defending their actions in the face of widespread condemnation   

On 19 May 1919, her body was reburied at the east side of Norwich Cathedral where a service is held for her every October. The railway van known as the Cavell Van that conveyed her remains from Dover to London is kept as a memorial on the Kent and East Sussex Railway and is usually open to view at Bodiam railway station. The memorial on her grave was renewed in 2016. She is also commemorated as a saint in the Church of England where her ‘saint day’ is her death anniversary. She has been remembered in song, art, sculpture, and on a commemorative coin for the centerary of the war.

Everyone remembers the men who fought and died for freedom during the First and Second World Wars – we learn their stories at school, see their silouettes used in memorials, see their names inscribed on monuments across the country. Of course, their sacrifice should never be underestimated or forgotten, but today I wanted to commemorate the female lives that were lost, changed, or ruined by war as their story is often lost among the traditional narrative. While we learnt at school that WW1 was generally positive for women in helping them achieve their social liberation, Edith Cavell stands as a reminder that some women died alongside their male comrades, defending their country from attack. In fact, Cavell is even more remarkable as she defended LIFE regardless of ethnicity, and was prosecuted for rescuing young men from almost certain death. To me, Cavell is a testament to the fruitlessness of war – that wars waged in the name of protection and honour usually go a long way in destroying both for the victors and the losers.