Edith Cavell Totally Explained

Everything about Edith Cavell totally explained

Edith Louisa Cavell (December 4, 1865–October 12, 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 isn't 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”.

Early life and career

Edith Cavell (pronounced /ˈkævl/ to rhyme with 'travel') was born in 1865 at Swardeston in Norfolk, England, where her father, the Reverend Frederick Cavell, was vicar 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.

World War I and execution

Nurse Cavell helped hundreds of soldiers from the Allied forces to escape from occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands, in violation of military law. She was arrested on August 3, 1915 and charged with harboring Allied soldiers, not for espionage. She was jailed for 10 weeks; with the last two weeks being in solitary confinement and court-martialled by the Germans for this offence. UK and U.S. diplomats disagreed about whether anything could be done to help her case, with Sir Horace Rowland, from the Foreign Office suggesting, "I am afraid that it's likely to go hard with Miss Cavell, I'm afraid we're powerless." The sentiment was echoed by Lord Robert Cecil, who joined the coalition government in 1915 as an under secretary for foreign affairs after working for the Red Cross. "Any representation by us," he advised, "will do her more harm than good."
Representing the United States, which hadn't yet joined the war, 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. In a statement issued afterward, he noted:

"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'd rather see Miss Cavell shot than have harm come to one of the humblest German soldiers, and his only regret was that they hadn't 'three or four English old women to shoot.'"

Baron von der Lancken stated that Cavell should be pardoned for her crime because of her complete honest truth, and because she'd helped save so many lives of both Allied soldiers as well as German soldiers. However, the German military acted quickly to execute Cavell so that higher German authorities wouldn't issue the pardon .
   She made no defense, admitting her actions, and was ordered to be executed by firing squad at 2am on October 12. A degree of controversy attends the execution itself. According to some accounts, on the way to the Wall she became faint, stumbled and fell. While she was unconscious on the ground, the German commanding officer took a revolver and shot Cavell dead . However, eyewitness accounts by "one Pasteur Le Seur," who attended Cavell in her final hours, assert that the firing squad functioned normally, eight soldiers firing at Cavell while eight others executed a Belgian civilian, a Pierre Baucq. Regardless of the details, 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 throughout the war. The German medical officer assisting was the expressionist poet Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), who gave an account of the event.
   The night before her execution she told the Anglican chaplain, the Revd Father Gahan, who had been allowed to see her and to give her Holy Communion, "Patriotism isn't 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'm glad to die for my country."
   After the war, Edith Cavell's body was exhumed and returned to the UK. In order to exhume Cavell’s body from St. Gilles Prison “written permission from the minister of war at Berlin” needed to be obtained . A memorial service at Westminster Abbey led by King George V was followed by travel by special train to Thorpe Station, Norwich. She was reburied on Life's Green, at the east end of Norwich Cathedral. Every year a service is held before the grave.

Role in World War I propaganda

The execution of Edith Cavell was widely publicized by the British government through a large number of newspaper articles, pamphlets, images, and books in the months and years immediately following her death. She became an iconic propaganda figure for military recruitment in Britain, and to help increase favourable American sentiment towards the Allies. Cavell was an appealing public icon due to her sex and her nursing profession, and because she apparently approached her death with a considerable amount of heroism.
   Cavell’s 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. 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.
   One image of Cavell promoted in postcards and newspaper illustrations during the war depicted her as an innocent, girlish nurse who became one of the victims of the German war machine. These images implied that men must enlist in the armed forces immediately if they wished to stop the murder of innocent British females. The images depict Cavell, who was 49 years old when she was executed, as a much younger and more attractive-looking woman than photographs of her at the time depict.
   The second representation of Cavell that emerged during World War I was literature describing her as a mature, brave, patriotic woman who died to save the lives of others. In this representation, Cavell is depicted as a strong woman who has devoted her life to nursing. British propaganda emphasized the heroic, dignified nature of Cavell’s actions and denied or ignored anything that didn't fit this image. It was suggested at the time that Cavell, during her interrogation, had given information that incriminated other people. In November of 1915, the British Foreign Office issued a denial that Cavell had implicated anyone else in her testimony.
   During World War I, the French shot a number of women, including two German nurses who did the same thing for which Cavell was executed: for aiding prisoners of war to escape. The German government did nothing to publicize or propagandise the incident. When asked why the German press didn't comment on the executions, the German officer in charge of war propaganda replied, “What? Protest? The French had a perfect right to shoot them!”. While this may have been true, it didn't ultimately aid the German government in the World War I propaganda battle.
   Due to her sex and the British government’s decision to shape her story and use it as propaganda for military recruitment purposes, Cavell became the most prominent British female casualty of World War I. The execution of Cavell at the hands of the German army provided British propagandists with an opportunity to increase military numbers at home and to emphasize to neutral nations, particularly America, the barbarity of the Germans. This 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.

Memorials

Following her death, many memorials were created around the world to remember Cavell. One of the first occurred in 1917 when Queen Alexandra unveiled a monument near her grave in Norwich in front of a home for nurses which also bore her name.
Other memorials include:

A stone memorial, including a statue of Cavell, adjacent to Trafalgar Square in London.
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. Avenue Edith-Cavell, in Nice, France
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 (External Link), 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.
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. 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.

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