Edith Cavell

Edith Louisa Cavell (December 4th 1865 - October 12th 1915) is a heroin of the First World War.

Edith Cavell is born in 1865 with Swardeston, in the Norfolk, where his/her father, the reverend Frederick Cavell, is vicar during 45 years. She is formed as nurse in Royal London Hospital and, in 1907, is named nurse as a chief in Berkendael Institute, with Brussels (Belgium). In 1909, it founds in Brussels a school of infirmères. When the First World War bursts, the hospital is taken in hand by the Red Cross; Edith Cavell and her pupils look after the casualties of the allied and German armies. The Cavell nurse helps of the hundreds of soldiers combined to pass from Belgium occupied towards the neutral Netherlands, in violation of the military law. In 1915, it is stopped and led before a martial court by the Germans.

It is not defended, admitting the acts which are reproached to him and is shot by a firing squad at 2 o'clock in the morning, on October 12th, becoming a martyr popular and entering the British history like a heroin. The execution took place with the National Shooting, a military site (today a memorial, close to the building of public television), where it was buried. The business Edith Cavell became an important component of British propaganda during the war. The doctor German officer the assistant is the poet expressionnist Gottfried Ben (1886-1956), who left an account of the event.

The night preceding its execution, she speaks to the chaplain Anglican, the reverend Gahan, who was authorized to see it to give him the communion. “Patriotism is not enough, I should have neither hatred nor bitterness towards whoever. ” These words are registered on the statue of St Martin' S Place, close to Trafalgar Square, with London.

After the war, the body of Edith Cavell is exhumed and brought back to the United Kingdom. After a service mémoriel with the Abbaye of Westminster leads by the king George V, he is led by special train to Thorpe Station, in Norwich. It is reinterred in Life' S Green, at the end is cathedral of Norwich. Each year, a service is rendered in front of its tomb.

A street as well as a medical institute bear the name of Edith Cavell to Brussels, in the commune of Ixelles.

Monument

With Paris, in the Garden of Tileries a monument with the memory of Edith Cavell, offered to the Town of Paris by the newspaper the Morning , was inaugurated the June 12th 1920. Had with the scissors of Gabriel Pech he was leant with the Eastern wall of Jeu de Paume. He was destroyed the June 14th 1940, as of the entry of the German troops in Paris.

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