Edith Cavell
By Edmund Perry
In 2015, Norfolk commemorated the centenary of Edith Cavell’s death, aged 49, at the hands of a German firing squad on 12th October, 1915.
There was much more to Edith's life than becoming an unwilling martyr and this article attempts to provide background information about her family, her achievements as a teacher and as “a nurse who tried to do her duty”, rather than dwell on those last fateful weeks.
Edith didn’t come from a Norfolk family. Her father, the Reverend Frederick V. Cavell (born10th August, 1824), was baptised at St. Andrew's, Holborn, London, one of five children born to John Cavell (1793-1863) and Margaret Scott (1794-1851). His paternal grandfather was Corry Cavell (1746-1829) married to Mary Strutt (1760-1831). He trained for the ministry at King’s College, London, and, whilst there, fell in love with his housekeeper's daughter, Louisa Sophia Warming (born 1835). They married and Frederick took up the job of curate in the small village of East Carleton roughly four miles south west of Norwich.
After some years there, in 1863, he accepted the living at nearby Swardeston, a slightly larger village which has become famous as the birthplace of one of Norfolk's heroines. Frederick liked Swardeston so much that he remained there for the rest of his ministry, some 46 years. At first the Cavells lived in a temporary parsonage away from the church at the bottom of the large common.
A new vicarage was built at Frederick’s expense and local people said it practically ruined him. He was always a 'poor parson.' The family lived frugally which suited Frederick’s puritan tastes but to manage a large house and keep up appearances, they employed staff on subsistence wages. Scratched on an attic bedroom wall by a maid in 1876 are the words: "The pay is small, the food is bad, I wonder why I don't go mad."
Nevertheless the family were concerned to help their even poorer parishioners: excess food from the Sunday lunch was given to hungry cottagers. Edith Louisa (born 4th December 1865); Florence Mary (born 1867); Mary Lilian (born 1870); and John Frederick Scott (born 1873) were brought up at the vicarage in a safe and loving environment. It was a strict late Victorian household, without much fun and games although it is said that Rev. Frederick (when he wasn’t marrying, baptising, burying, visiting parishioners or writing lengthy sermons) could be tempted to disguise himself as a bear and cause the Cavell children to shriek with delight.
Edith spent many happy hours wandering the large common, painting flowers, animals, the church and the vicarage. Soon she became an accomplished artist: Swardeston Church has two drawings of reindeer by her dated 10th October,1882. A favourite winter pastime was ice skating by the ford at nearby Intwood, or on the moat at the Old Rectory where the water often froze in winter. Other hobbies were tennis and dancing and she loved playing with the pet dogs. She described her childhood as a time when 'life was fresh and beautiful and the country so desirable and sweet’.
When still a girl, Edith used her artistic talent to help her father raise money to build a church room as a Sunday School for the village children. She wrote to the Bishop of Norwich, John Thomas Pelham, asking for help. He agreed provided the village could raise some of the cost. Edith and her sisters painted cards which were sold to help raise £300 to build the room adjoining the vicarage Mrs Cavell taught Sunday School there as did Edith later on.
Both women acted as Godmothers to a number of local children who were given signed copies of the Bible and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. “Some day, somehow, I am going to do something useful. I don't know what it will be. I only know that it will be something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy,” Edith said.
The Cavell children received their early education at home – a very Christian upbringing which stayed with Edith all her life and consoled her at the end whilst in solitary confinement awaiting execution. As a teenager in 1881 she temporarily attended the Norwich High School at the Assembly House, Theatre Street, Norwich, a walking distance of over four miles from her home. Evidently she developed a romantic attachment to her cousin Eddie (E. D. Cavell), but he decided not to marry her because of an inherited nervous condition. They appear to have been in love and Edith never forgot him, for she wrote on the fly leaf of her copy of “The Imitation of Christ “ With love to E. D. Cavell' on the day of her execution.
Possibly, this was the reason she was sent away, aged 16, to St. Margaret’s Bushey – a boarding school for poor clergy’s offspring in Kensington, London. Then to Clevedon near Bristol where she was confirmed (15th March 1884) Later, at Laurel Court, Peterborough, she continued her talent for painting and showed an aptitude for the French language, a skill which proved very useful for the rest of her life. There she learnt to become a pupil teacher and took several jobs as a governess, first to a clergy family at Steeple Bumpstead, then for a short time to some of the Gurney children at nearby Keswick New Hall and to the Barclay Family at Colney Hall.
She was fondly remembered as full of fun, always smiling and kind to the children in her charge. Left a small legacy, Edith decided to take a continental holiday visiting Austria and Bavaria where she was deeply impressed with a free hospital run by a Dr. Wolfenberg. She endowed the hospital with some of the legacy and returned to Norfolk with a growing interest in nursing. However, despite the example of Florence Nightingale, this wasn’t viewed as a respectable occupation for young women. So in 1890, Edith took up the position of Governess to the Francois family in Brussels, staying there for the next five years with a growing fondness for the city.
Summer breaks were spent back in Swardeston playing tennis and painting. Edith wrote to her cousin Eddy: 'I’d love to have you visit, but not on a Sunday. It’s too dreadful, family devotions morning and evening. And father’s sermons are so dull.’
In 1895, when her father became very ill, Edith returned home, restoring him back to health. This act probably inspired her to pursue a career as a nurse. After spending a few months at the Fountains Fever Hospital, Tooting, London, she was accepted in April 1896, aged 30, for training at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, under Eva Luckes. During the summer of 1897, an epidemic of typhoid broke out in Maidstone, Kent. Edith was one of six nurses sent to help the 1,700 people who contracted the disease (only 132 died) and received the Maidstone Medal for her efforts However, she didn’t immediately impress Miss Luckes who wrote “Edith Cavell had a self-sufficient manner, which was very apt to prejudice people against her”, she has “plenty of capacity for her work, when she chooses to exert herself” and that “she was not at all punctual” but then her hours were rather demanding (7 a.m. to 9 p.m with half an hour for lunch) and the pay a miserly £10 per annum.
Edith went into private nursing in 1898 dealing with cases of pleurisy, pneumonia, typhoid and appendicitis. By 1899 she was back on the front line as a night superintendent at St. Pancras, a Poor Law Institution for destitutes, where many died of chronic illness. At Shoreditch Infirmary, where she became Assistant Matron in 1903, she pioneered follow-up work by visiting patients after their discharge. In 1906, she went to Manchester as a nurse at the Ashton New Road District Nursing Home in a temporary position of assistant superintendent for three months.
Her sister, Florence, followed her example and also became a nurse. In September, 1907, Edith went back to Brussels at the request of Dr Antoine Depage to nurse a child patient of his. On 10th October, Depage opened his pioneering 'L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées', at his Berkendael Institute on the outskirts of Brussels. He asked Edith Cavell to run it, and train nurses along the lines of Florence Nightingale. Her training programme produced well-qualified nurses for three hospitals, 24 communal schools and 13 kindergartens. In doing so, Edith was responsible for raising the profile and standard of nursing and promoting it as a profession for women. Nevertheless she wrote home: "The old idea that it is a disgrace for women to work is still held in Belgium and women of good birth and education still think they lose caste by earning their own living."
Queen Elisabeth of Belgium was impressed and asked for one of Edith's nurses to treat her broken arm. Edith still found time to visit her mother who, after her father’s death in 1910, lived in College Road, Norwich (she died 1918) and they often went on holidays to the North Norfolk coast. Edith was weeding her mother’s garden when she heard the news of Germany’s invasion of Belgium. She could have stayed in England but felt it was her duty to help the wounded: "At a time like this", she said, "I am more needed then ever".
By August 1914, she was back in Brussels at the Institute which became a Red Cross Hospital. She nursed injured personnel from both sides but went one step further in helping Allied soldiers get back to France and England, with tragic results for her. The rest, as they say, is history.
By Edmund Perry
In 2015, Norfolk commemorated the centenary of Edith Cavell’s death, aged 49, at the hands of a German firing squad on 12th October, 1915.
There was much more to Edith's life than becoming an unwilling martyr and this article attempts to provide background information about her family, her achievements as a teacher and as “a nurse who tried to do her duty”, rather than dwell on those last fateful weeks.
Edith didn’t come from a Norfolk family. Her father, the Reverend Frederick V. Cavell (born10th August, 1824), was baptised at St. Andrew's, Holborn, London, one of five children born to John Cavell (1793-1863) and Margaret Scott (1794-1851). His paternal grandfather was Corry Cavell (1746-1829) married to Mary Strutt (1760-1831). He trained for the ministry at King’s College, London, and, whilst there, fell in love with his housekeeper's daughter, Louisa Sophia Warming (born 1835). They married and Frederick took up the job of curate in the small village of East Carleton roughly four miles south west of Norwich.
After some years there, in 1863, he accepted the living at nearby Swardeston, a slightly larger village which has become famous as the birthplace of one of Norfolk's heroines. Frederick liked Swardeston so much that he remained there for the rest of his ministry, some 46 years. At first the Cavells lived in a temporary parsonage away from the church at the bottom of the large common.
A new vicarage was built at Frederick’s expense and local people said it practically ruined him. He was always a 'poor parson.' The family lived frugally which suited Frederick’s puritan tastes but to manage a large house and keep up appearances, they employed staff on subsistence wages. Scratched on an attic bedroom wall by a maid in 1876 are the words: "The pay is small, the food is bad, I wonder why I don't go mad."
Nevertheless the family were concerned to help their even poorer parishioners: excess food from the Sunday lunch was given to hungry cottagers. Edith Louisa (born 4th December 1865); Florence Mary (born 1867); Mary Lilian (born 1870); and John Frederick Scott (born 1873) were brought up at the vicarage in a safe and loving environment. It was a strict late Victorian household, without much fun and games although it is said that Rev. Frederick (when he wasn’t marrying, baptising, burying, visiting parishioners or writing lengthy sermons) could be tempted to disguise himself as a bear and cause the Cavell children to shriek with delight.
Edith spent many happy hours wandering the large common, painting flowers, animals, the church and the vicarage. Soon she became an accomplished artist: Swardeston Church has two drawings of reindeer by her dated 10th October,1882. A favourite winter pastime was ice skating by the ford at nearby Intwood, or on the moat at the Old Rectory where the water often froze in winter. Other hobbies were tennis and dancing and she loved playing with the pet dogs. She described her childhood as a time when 'life was fresh and beautiful and the country so desirable and sweet’.
When still a girl, Edith used her artistic talent to help her father raise money to build a church room as a Sunday School for the village children. She wrote to the Bishop of Norwich, John Thomas Pelham, asking for help. He agreed provided the village could raise some of the cost. Edith and her sisters painted cards which were sold to help raise £300 to build the room adjoining the vicarage Mrs Cavell taught Sunday School there as did Edith later on.
Both women acted as Godmothers to a number of local children who were given signed copies of the Bible and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. “Some day, somehow, I am going to do something useful. I don't know what it will be. I only know that it will be something for people. They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy,” Edith said.
The Cavell children received their early education at home – a very Christian upbringing which stayed with Edith all her life and consoled her at the end whilst in solitary confinement awaiting execution. As a teenager in 1881 she temporarily attended the Norwich High School at the Assembly House, Theatre Street, Norwich, a walking distance of over four miles from her home. Evidently she developed a romantic attachment to her cousin Eddie (E. D. Cavell), but he decided not to marry her because of an inherited nervous condition. They appear to have been in love and Edith never forgot him, for she wrote on the fly leaf of her copy of “The Imitation of Christ “ With love to E. D. Cavell' on the day of her execution.
Possibly, this was the reason she was sent away, aged 16, to St. Margaret’s Bushey – a boarding school for poor clergy’s offspring in Kensington, London. Then to Clevedon near Bristol where she was confirmed (15th March 1884) Later, at Laurel Court, Peterborough, she continued her talent for painting and showed an aptitude for the French language, a skill which proved very useful for the rest of her life. There she learnt to become a pupil teacher and took several jobs as a governess, first to a clergy family at Steeple Bumpstead, then for a short time to some of the Gurney children at nearby Keswick New Hall and to the Barclay Family at Colney Hall.
She was fondly remembered as full of fun, always smiling and kind to the children in her charge. Left a small legacy, Edith decided to take a continental holiday visiting Austria and Bavaria where she was deeply impressed with a free hospital run by a Dr. Wolfenberg. She endowed the hospital with some of the legacy and returned to Norfolk with a growing interest in nursing. However, despite the example of Florence Nightingale, this wasn’t viewed as a respectable occupation for young women. So in 1890, Edith took up the position of Governess to the Francois family in Brussels, staying there for the next five years with a growing fondness for the city.
Summer breaks were spent back in Swardeston playing tennis and painting. Edith wrote to her cousin Eddy: 'I’d love to have you visit, but not on a Sunday. It’s too dreadful, family devotions morning and evening. And father’s sermons are so dull.’
In 1895, when her father became very ill, Edith returned home, restoring him back to health. This act probably inspired her to pursue a career as a nurse. After spending a few months at the Fountains Fever Hospital, Tooting, London, she was accepted in April 1896, aged 30, for training at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, under Eva Luckes. During the summer of 1897, an epidemic of typhoid broke out in Maidstone, Kent. Edith was one of six nurses sent to help the 1,700 people who contracted the disease (only 132 died) and received the Maidstone Medal for her efforts However, she didn’t immediately impress Miss Luckes who wrote “Edith Cavell had a self-sufficient manner, which was very apt to prejudice people against her”, she has “plenty of capacity for her work, when she chooses to exert herself” and that “she was not at all punctual” but then her hours were rather demanding (7 a.m. to 9 p.m with half an hour for lunch) and the pay a miserly £10 per annum.
Edith went into private nursing in 1898 dealing with cases of pleurisy, pneumonia, typhoid and appendicitis. By 1899 she was back on the front line as a night superintendent at St. Pancras, a Poor Law Institution for destitutes, where many died of chronic illness. At Shoreditch Infirmary, where she became Assistant Matron in 1903, she pioneered follow-up work by visiting patients after their discharge. In 1906, she went to Manchester as a nurse at the Ashton New Road District Nursing Home in a temporary position of assistant superintendent for three months.
Her sister, Florence, followed her example and also became a nurse. In September, 1907, Edith went back to Brussels at the request of Dr Antoine Depage to nurse a child patient of his. On 10th October, Depage opened his pioneering 'L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées', at his Berkendael Institute on the outskirts of Brussels. He asked Edith Cavell to run it, and train nurses along the lines of Florence Nightingale. Her training programme produced well-qualified nurses for three hospitals, 24 communal schools and 13 kindergartens. In doing so, Edith was responsible for raising the profile and standard of nursing and promoting it as a profession for women. Nevertheless she wrote home: "The old idea that it is a disgrace for women to work is still held in Belgium and women of good birth and education still think they lose caste by earning their own living."
Queen Elisabeth of Belgium was impressed and asked for one of Edith's nurses to treat her broken arm. Edith still found time to visit her mother who, after her father’s death in 1910, lived in College Road, Norwich (she died 1918) and they often went on holidays to the North Norfolk coast. Edith was weeding her mother’s garden when she heard the news of Germany’s invasion of Belgium. She could have stayed in England but felt it was her duty to help the wounded: "At a time like this", she said, "I am more needed then ever".
By August 1914, she was back in Brussels at the Institute which became a Red Cross Hospital. She nursed injured personnel from both sides but went one step further in helping Allied soldiers get back to France and England, with tragic results for her. The rest, as they say, is history.