Edith Cavell

Edith Cavell was a British nurse, born in 1865 in Swardeston, Norfolk, the daughter of the village vicar. She came to nursing in her thirties, after working as a governess and caring for her ailing father, and trained at the London Hospital, where she nursed private patients and served in the Maidstone typhoid epidemic of 1897. In 1907 she became matron of a new nursing school in Brussels and helped found a Belgian nursing journal, training nurses for hospitals, schools and kindergartens. After the German occupation of Belgium in 1914 she treated wounded soldiers of both sides and sheltered Allied soldiers, helping about two hundred of them reach the neutral Netherlands. She was arrested in August 1915, court-martialled for war treason and shot on 12 October 1915. Her execution drew worldwide condemnation, and her words that patriotism is not enough are remembered in her memorials.