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Edith Cavell

1865 - 1915

Sally Grant

The Larks Press ;

Pocket biographies No. |

“Ti
 SCHOOLS LIBRARY SERVICE

PETERS

First printed by the Larks Press 1995

Printed at the Lanceni Press
October 2000
Reprinted August 2005

Photographs printed by kind permission of

The Vicar and Parochial Church Council
of
Swardeston, Norfolk.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library

Copyright - Sally Grant 1995

ISBN 0 948400 28 5
 EDITH CAVELL

1865 - 1915

Edith Louisa Cavell was born in 1865 in the small

village of Swardeston in Norfolk, in a low red-brick
Georgian farmhouse, tucked almost out of sight
between barns and rolling farmland. It is still known
as Cavell House. Her father, Frederick Cavell, fond
of claiming that he was ‘descended from an Admiral
Cavell’, was vicar of the parish, which lies about
four miles south-west of Norwich. The village rests
in a hollow between three estates, bordered by
meadows, small rivers and bluebell woods, and the
Cavells seem to have been delighted to accept the
living when it became vacant. They must already
have known Swardeston when they moved from the
neighbouring village of East Carlton, where
Frederick Cavell had been curate, in 1863. Two
years later their first child was born.
The Reverend Cavell appears to have been
something of a character, and was known locally as
‘the one-sermon vicar’ because of his habit of
repeating one particular sermon. As he preached at
the village church of St Mary’s for nearly 46 years,
most of his parishioners may have known the sermon
as well as the vicar. Edith herself wrote to her
l
favourite cousin Eddie inviting him to stay, and
complaining with a note of daughterly desperation
that ‘father’s sermons are so long and dull’.
The vicar’s patient worshippers, watching the
small girl fidgetting in the front. pew under her
mother’s loyal and watchful eye, accompanied by her
sisters, Lilian and Florence, and small brother Jack,
could surely never have imagined that one day her
death would be mourned by the whole British nation.
How could they guess that no less a personage than
Queen Alexandra would attend the impressive and
solemn ceremony in Westminster Abbey?
Young Frederick Cavell had fallen in love with
his housekeeper’s pretty daughter, Louisa, while
studying for the ministry at King’s College, London.
In 1851 he moved to Norfolk, and in 1863 he and his
young wife settled happily into the small village,
whose roads still spread outwards like the spokes of
the wheel from a natural common, covered during the
summer in dog-roses, willow herb and clusters of
creamy white hog-weed. Even today Swardeston
remains much as it did when Edith lived there, its 40
acres of common land a haven for birds and wild
flowers.
As a child Edith loved to pick and draw the many
wild flowers on the common as they came into
season, often presenting her friends in the village with
delicate paintings of roses or animals, several of
which are still kept and treasured. A beautifully-
executed powder bowl, given to a Mrs Emma
Burgess at the birth of her baby, and two fine chalk
drawings of reindeer belonging to the church and
dated October 10th, 1882, testify to her developing
talent, and to her obvious pleasure in drawing and
painting.
Other favourite treats were the impromptu family
picnics, organised on sunny days by her mother, often
joined by the vicar. As the children grew, these
became longer excursions, often with friends and
cousins on sturdy, large-wheeled bicycles.
Edith also loved skating in the winter on the
flooded water meadows and fords surrounding her
home, when the whole village turned out to enjoy
themselves. Certainly within living memory, these
meadows were fiooded for this event. Swardeston
always seems to have had a strong sense of
community and an elderly member of the Gurney
family remembered the little girl skating happily on
the frozen ford that crosses the road below Cavell
House.
Shortly after his daughter’s birth, Mr Cavell
decided to build, at his own expense, a new vicarage
next to St Mary’s Church. According to local gossip,
the costly Victorian building very nearly ruined him.
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Curiously today, the village of Swardeston boasts no
less than five vicarages, the new vicarage built by
Edith Cavell’s father being given the title of ‘the Old
Vicarage’, when yet another ‘new’ vicarage replaced
it.
Edith Cavell spent her childhood in the cold and
rather gloomy Victorian vicarage built by her father,
and, seated obediently in the large panelled rooms
which faced the garden, she received her first lessons
under the guidance of her mother. Later she attended
The Girls’ High School, then housed at the Assembly
Rooms in Theatre Street, Norwich, and, later still,
boarding schools in Peterborough, Bristol (where she
was confirmed on March 15th 1884) and Kensington.
It was probably here that she discovered an
aptitude for languages - perhaps triggered by the fact
that, thanks to a small legacy, she had already spent a
summer travelling on the continent in Bavaria and
Austria. It was about this time also that her deeper
interest in nursing developed, for she entrusted part of
her legacy to a Dr Wolfenberg’s Hospital, before
returning home. Her father’s post as Chaplain to the
Poor Law Institution at Swainsthorpe had already
accustomed her to the needs of the old and the sick, as
she accompanied her mother on her parish visits.
At nineteen Edith Cavell left her school in Lon-
don and returned home. She took a post as governess
5
with Charles Mears Powel. the vicar of Steeple
Bumstead. This was followed by several years with
the Gurney family at Keswick New Hall in the
adjacent village - an easy walk through the lanes
from the vicarage. Later in 1890 she accepted a post
in Brussels with a Madame Francois, where she
stayed for nearly five years.
Teaching must have come naturally to her, as ie
and her mother had both taught in the local Sunday
School. and acted as godparents to several babies.
The new village school,. built in Edith Cavell’s time
on a portion of Common Land, given for “the building
of a Church School’, was attended by more than a
hundred children, and as several of these must also
have attended Sunday School in the Church Room
next to the Vicarage, she must have had ample
practice.
Edith seems to have loved to be with children,
and to have been remembered with affection. One
small charge remembered her as being “full of fun and
quite natural, and always able to think of new games
and things to amuse us.”
Her close ties with her family remained, with
frequent return visits to Swardeston, and family
holidays spent at Lowestoft. It was after returning to
Norfolk in 1895 to nurse her father through a serious
illness that her interest in nursing re-emerged.
6
Edith as a Governess
 In April 1896 aged 30 Edith began her training at
The London Hospital under a Miss Luckes, who
complained that ‘she was not at all punctual’. Edith
was working for £10 a year, and the hours were long,
7 a.m to 9 p.m. Perhaps she overslept.In 1899 she
became a Night Superintendent at St Pancras, a Poor
Law Institution for Destitutes, and in 1903 she
became Assistant Matron under Miss Joan Inglis at
Shoreditch Infirmary.
In 1907, after short periods in other establish-
ments in London and Manchester, Edith returned to
Brussels, where she was put in charge of a training
school for lay nurses, L’Ecole Belge D’Infirmiéres
Diplomées, where she became a stickler for punc-
tuality, arriving weil before breakfast to see that her
nurses were on time. The skill and status of Belgian
nurses were a long way behind that of English nurses
and Edith was determined to improve matters.
Frederick Cavell, who had been ill for some time,
died on June 5th 1910, aged 85, and Edith returned
home again to see her mother. She bought a small,
pantiled, whitewashed cottage at West Runton, taking
long walks along the windy Norfolk coastline, and
holidaying with her mother here and at Lowestoft. For
a time Mrs Cavell moved to Brussels close to Edith’s
Infirmary, where she was remembered as a cheerful
and energetic old lady, but she finally returned to
8
Norwich where she bought a house in College Road,
and lived with her son Jack, who was working locally
at The Norwich Union.
Miss Kay Green remembered Edith Cavell as
‘still very pretty and fond of smart hats’, which
echoes the memories of some of her early charges,
who often spoke of her gaiety and love of dancing,
and her well-worn dancing shoes!
It was while Edith Cavell was back in Norfolk
staying at her cottage at West Runton and weeding a
bed of heartsease, that the news of war came. There
was no question in her own mind about her need to
return to Brussels immediately. Despite the: urgent
pleas of her mother, younger sisters Florence, Lilian-
Mary and brother Jack, by early August she was back
in Brussels.
Almost immediately she was caught up in the
war. The French and British armies.retreating from
Mons were cut off by the German advance, and
eventually two British soldiers found their way to
Nurse Cavell’s Training School and were given
shelter. More followed, and were eventually
smuggled to neutral Holland.
An underground lifeline sprang up, organized by
the Prince and Princess de Croy, and Phillipe Baucq,
an architect. As a member of the Red Cross, Edith
struggled with her conscience. It was her duty to
9
Edith Cavell and her nurses in Brussels
remain aloof. All knew they could be shot. For their
own safety she hid the truth from her nurses, carefully
sewing her small diary into a cushion in case it was
discovered.
On July 31st 1915, the following year, two
members of an escape party were arrested. She
waited calmly. Five days later Edith Cavell was
interned in St Gilles’ Prison in Brussels.
Far from her. beloved Norfolk, she wrote a few
last letters composing herself for the trial. It was
perhaps then that she most nearly resembled her
nurses’ description of her: “Extremely witty, deeply
religious, kind and quite fearless’.
Distressed and anxious, her nurses sent her
roses, ‘to remind her of the’ roses in the vicarage
garden at Swardeston’.She kept them in her cell,
during the ten weeks she waited, until'they dropped.
During the hasty trial she remained calm and
dignified throughout, and despite the angry pleas of
the Princess de Croy in her defence, Edith Cavell and
four others were ordered to be executed at the
National Rifle Range, the Tir National, without delay.
On her last morning, October 12th 1915, she
rose at 5 o'clock. When the British Chaplain,
Stirling Gahan, visited her she met him in her
dressing-gown. The words she spoke to him in her
cell must surely for most people sum up her character.
1]
 Edith Cavell described herself as “just a nurse
who did her duty’, but to the 200 men whose lives she
saved, she was Norfolk’s heroine. Every year, close to
October 12th, a Flower Festival is still held in the
village of Swardeston in her memory, and a corner of
St Mary’s Church has been put aside for her portrait
seated with her dogs Don and Jack, and a portion of
the plain wooden cross returned from, Brussels.
With so many memorials in the village to the
Cavell family, including the village sign, which bears
her likeness, and Frederick Cavell’s: fine gravestone
lying beside the path from St Mary’s Church to the
vicarage he built, it would be hard to forget her. But
perhaps it is when the wild flowers spangle the
common again in the spring, that the village best
remembers - their Edith Cavell.

Other books about Edith Cavell

Edith Cavell: pioneer and patriot by A.E.Clarke-

Kennedy
Edith Cavell by A. A. Hoehling
Edith Cavell, her life story by
1. Leeds
: Fe
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‘ aq

‘ .
—
+
 Larks Pocket Biographies
1. Edith Cavell 2. Robert Walpole,
3. Margery Kempe 4. Herbert de Losinga
5. Pocahontas 6. William Paston
7. Boudicca 8. Thomas Bilney
9. Anna Sewell _—10. Walter Rye
11. Fanny Burney 12. Sir Alfred Jodrell
13. Amy Robsart 14. James Woodforde
15. Elizabeth Fry 16. John Crome
17. Queen Alexandra 18. Sir Thomas Erpingham
19. Anna Gurney 20. Horatio Nelson
Price £1.40

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