Edith Louisa Cavell (
Swardeston, 4 December 1865 –
Schaerbeek, 12 October 1915) was a
British nurse and
humanitarian. She is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from all sides without distinction and in helping some 200
Allied soldiers escape from
German-occupied
Belgium during
World War I, for which she was arrested. She was court-martialled and found guilty of
treason. She was sentenced to death and shot by firing squad. She received worldwide sympathetic press coverage.
She is well-known for her statement that "patriotism is not enough." Her strong
Anglican
beliefs propelled her to help all those who needed it, both German and
Allied soldiers. She was quoted as saying, "I can’t stop while there are
lives to be saved".
Cavell was also an influential pioneer of modern nursing in Belgium.
Edith Cavell was born on 4 December 1865
in
Swardeston, a village near
Norwich, where her father, the Reverend Frederick Cavell, was priest for 45 years.
She was the eldest of four children and was taught to always share with
the less fortunate, despite her family’s meagre earnings.
After a period as a governess, including for a family in
Brussels 1900 -1905, she trained as a nurse at the
London Hospital under Matron
Eva Luckes. In 1907, Cavell was recruited by Dr.
Antoine Depage to be matron of a newly established nursing school by the name of
L'École Belge d’Infirmières Diplômées on the
Rue de la Culture in 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.
A year later, she was a training nurse for three hospitals, 24 schools, and 13 kindergartens in Belgium.
When World War I broke out, she was visiting her widowed mother in
Norfolk in the
East of England. She returned to Brussels where her clinic and nursing school were taken over by the
Red Cross.
In late 1914, after the German occupation of Brussels, Cavell began
sheltering British soldiers and funnelling them out of occupied Belgium
to the neutral
Netherlands.
In the following months, an underground organisation developed,
allowing her to guide some 200 Allied soldiers to safety, which placed
Cavell in violation of German military law.
German authorities became increasingly suspicious of the nurse's actions, which were backed up by her outspokenness.
She was arrested on 3 August 1915 and charged with harbouring Allied
soldiers. She was held in St Gilles prison for 10 weeks, the last two in
solitary confinement,
and was court-martialled. She was then prosecuted for aiding British
and French soldiers, in addition to young Belgian men, to cross the
border and enter Britain. She admitted her guilt when she signed a
statement the day before the trial, thus reaffirming the crime in the
presence of all other prisoners and lawyers present in the court at the
beginning of the trial. Cavell gave the German prosecution a much
stronger case against her when she declared that the soldiers she had
helped escape thanked her in writing when arriving safely in Britain.
This admission proved hard to ignore because it not only confirmed that
Cavell had helped the soldiers navigate the Dutch frontier, but it also
established that she helped them escape to a country at war with
Germany.
As the case stood, the sentence according to German military law was
death. Paragraph 58 of the German Military Code says: “Will be sentenced
to death for treason any person who, with the intention of helping the
hostile Power, or of causing harm to the German or allied troops, is
guilty of one of the crimes of paragraph 90 of the German Penal Code.”
The case referred to in the above-mentioned paragraph 90 consists of "Conducting soldiers to the enemy."
Additionally, the penalties according to paragraph 160 of the German
Code, in case of war, apply to both foreigners as well as Germans.
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 however had not yet joined the war and was in a position to apply diplomatic pressure.
Hugh S. Gibson,
First Secretary of the U.S. legation at Brussels, made clear to the
German government that executing Cavell would further harm Germany'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 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.'
The German civil governor, Baron von der Lancken, is known to have
stated that Cavell should be pardoned because of her complete honesty
and because she had helped save so many lives, German as well as Allied.
However, the German military acted quickly to execute Cavell and so
deny higher authorities the opportunity to consider clemency.
Cavell was not arrested for espionage, as many were led to believe, but for treason.
Of the 27 put on trial, Cavell and four others were condemned to death, among them
Philippe Baucq,
an architect in his thirties who had also been instrumental in the
escapes. Evidence has recently emerged that Cavell was in fact a spy
working for the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), but her
espionage role was compromised by her helping prisoners to escape.
When in custody, Cavell was questioned in French, but the session was
minuted in German. This gave the interrogator the opportunity to
misinterpret her answers. Although she may have been misrepresented, she
made no attempt to defend herself. Cavell was provided with a defender
approved by the German military governor. A previous defender, who was
chosen for Cavell by her assistant, Elizabeth Wilkins,
was ultimately rejected by the governor.
The night before her execution, she told the Reverend Stirling Gahan,
the Anglican chaplain 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 St Martin's Place, near Trafalgar Square in London. Her final words to the German
Lutheran
prison chaplain, Paul 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."
Despite efforts by
Brand Whitlock, the U.S. minister to Belgium, and by the
Marquis de Villalobar, the Spanish minister, on Cavell's behalf, on 11 October, Baron von der Lancken allowed the execution to proceed.
Sixteen men, forming two firing squads, carried out the sentence pronounced on her and on four Belgian men
at Tir National
shooting range
in
Schaerbeek,
at 6:00 am on 12 October 1915. There are conflicting reports of the
details of Cavell's execution. However, according to the eyewitness
account of the Reverend Le Seur, who attended Cavell in her final hours,
eight soldiers fired at Cavell while the other eight executed Philippe
Baucq.
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.
On instructions from the Spanish minister, Belgian women immediately buried her body next to St. Gilles Prison.
After the War, her body was taken back to Britain for a memorial service at
Westminster Abbey and then transferred to Norwich, to be laid to rest at Life's Green.
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