Edith Louisa Cavell

Edith Louisa Cavell was born in Swardeston, Norfolk, England, where her father served as vicar for forty-six years. After working as a governess in Brussels, Cavell trained as a nurse at the Royal London Hospital under the pioneer matron Eva Lückes. In 1907, Cavell was recruited to Brussels by Dr. Antoine Depage to establish a pioneering training school for lay nurses, L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées, modernizing Belgian hospital nursing along Nightingale lines.

When German forces invaded and occupied Brussels in August 1944, Cavell's nursing institute became a Red Cross hospital. Adhering strictly to the humanitarian ethic of the Red Cross, Cavell treated wounded German soldiers with the same care and tenderness as Belgian, French, and British casualties. However, after caring for British soldiers left behind after the Battle of Mons, Cavell became involved with an underground escape network headed by Prince Réginald de Croÿ and Philippe Baucq.

For eleven months, Cavell sheltered Allied soldiers in her clinic, provided them with civilian clothes and money, and arranged guides to smuggle them across the Dutch border to safety. Betrayed by a collaborator in August 1915, Cavell was arrested by German military police. At her court-martial, she refused to lie to save herself, admitting to helping some two hundred men escape. Despite international diplomatic appeals from the United States and Spain, she was executed by firing squad at Tir national in Brussels at dawn on 12 October 1915, uttering her immortal final words to the Anglican chaplain Stirling Gahan.