47 TUESDAY OCTOBER 12: DAY
327 What I saw was terrible … Cassell’s Magazine, 1928
—She went to her death … Gottfried Benn “How Miss Cavell was executed: the report of an eye-witness”
PART SIX
48 THE REMAINS OF THE DAY AND THE FOLLOWING DAYS
331 By judgement of … Belgium Under the German Occupation
332 We argued why … Condemned to Death
—Your letter of September 23 … Belgium Under the German Occupation
333 I know that you will understand … ibid.
334 as well as all other persons … ibid.
335 Forgive my worrying … FO 383/15 (NA)
—Deeply regret to inform … EC5(2) (IWM)
336 I shall put the parcel … November 17, 1915 (SA) and CI/3(iii) (LH)
—an inventory of Edith Cavell’s possessions … EC8(4) (IWM)
337 letter of reference … November 25, 1915 CI/1/3(iv) (LH)
49 PROPAGANDA
339 Their foulest and latest crime … October 1915, quoted in E. Protheroe, A Noble Woman: the life story of Edith Cavell, 1916
340 Dear Mrs. Cavell, I have learned … EC4(5) (IWM)
341 The British Military Authorities … Baron to Bruce, Jan 25, 1919, PRO KV2/822/844 (NA)
—It was with deepest regret … quoted in Rowland Ryder, Edith Cavell
342 She has taught the bravest … A Noble Woman
—Let Cavell be the battle cry … quoted in Katie Pickles, Transnational Outrage: the death and commemoration of Edith Cavell, 2007
—In his war diaries … The Private Diaries of H. Rider Haggard, 1914–25
343 Colonel Vernon Kell … (SA) and FO/383 (NA)
344 Every neutral nation … Transnational Outrage
—utmost abhorrence … Rowland Grant to Mrs. Cavell, October 18, 1915, EC4(6) (IWM)
—your daughter’s heroic death … EC4(8) (IWM)
345 Telegrams from the exiled … EC4(7) (IWM) all light and love … and following. Fourteen letters from the Bishop of Durham to Mrs. Cavell, October 25, 1915 to October 7, 1917, EC4(10) (IWM)
346 What a miserable business the Cavell …, December 23, 1915. F. H. Keeling, Letters and Recollections, 1918
50 GERMAN REACTION
348 The Baron von der Lancken, just back … Brussels Under the German Occupation
349 The United States Ambassador … EC(10) (IWM)
350 His first consideration … Ambroise Got, The Case of Miss Cavell
—It is a pity … Charles F. Horne, ed., “Source records of the Great War,” vol. III, National Alumni, 1923
351 When thousands of innocent … The Times History of the War, vol VI, 1916
—She ignored military law … quoted in A.A. Hoehling, Edith Cavell
352 The General at once entered … Belgium Under the German Occupation
51 NO MONUMENTS
355 Was it navy blue?. … November 2, 1915 (SA). And, CI/1/3(v) (LH)
357 Do let her mother know … EC7(15) (IWM)
358 The sacrifice and heroic … quoted in Transnational Outrage
—The Armistice at the war’s end … see John Keegan, The First World War
359 The whole boulevard was a seething … War Memories
360 The features which bear … March 19, 1919, EC7(5) (IWM)
362 I am so glad you and I … Bishop of Norwich to Lilian Wainwright, May 19, 1919, EC(9) (IWM)
364 It stopped dead under a statue … Virginia Woolf, The Years, 1937
52 ENDGAME
366 Kirschen gave way to an act of violence … EC(10) (IWM)
369 but the Daily Mirror … September 5, 1919 (SA)
370 He always was most good and gentle … War Memories
—The work of reconstruction … New York Times, August 28, 1919
BOOKS AND ELECTRONIC SOURCES
GENERAL
Jack Batten, Silent in an Evil Time, 2007
Noel Boston, The Dutiful Edith Cavell, 14pp., 1976
Gordon Brown, Courage: Eight Portraits, 2007
Edith Cavell website www.edithcavell.org.uk
Jonathan Evans, Edith Cavell, 50, 2008
Elizabeth Gray, Friend Within the Gates, 1961
A. E. Clark-Kennedy, Edith Cavell, 1965
A. A. Hoehling, Edith Cavell, 1958
Helen Judson, Edith Cavell, 1941
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Edith Cavell’s annotated edition, http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp41475
Katie Pickles, Transnational Outrage: the death and commemoration of Edith Cavell, 2007
E. Protheroe, A Noble Woman: the life story of Edith Cavell, 1916
Rowland Ryder, Edith Cavell, 1975
Iain Sinclair, ed., London: City of Disappearances, 2006
Virginia Woolf, The Years, 1937
www.worldwar1.com/heritage/e_cavell.htm
http://www.geuzen.org/female_icons/?p=504
EARLY YEARS
Louisa Alcott, Little Women, 1868
Jane Austen, Emma, 1815
A. D. Bayne, Comprehensive History of Norwich, 1869
Ruth Brandon, Other People’s Daughters: the Life and Times of the Governess, 2008
Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, two vols, 1970; Victorian Miniature, 1960
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859
Charles Dickens, Hard Times, 1853; Martin Chuzzlewit, 1842
Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, 1845
Claire Daunton, Edith Cavell Her Life and Her Art, 1990
Kathryn Hughes, The Victorian Governess, 1993
Rowland Jones, ed., “Nurse Cavell Dog Lover” facsimile,1934
David H. Kennet, Norfolk Villages, 1980
Simon Knott, www.norfolkchurches.co.uk
Norfolk, A General History, vol. 2, 1829
Liza Picard, Victorian London: the Life of a City 1840–1870, 2005
Mrs. Humphry Ward, Robert Elsmere, 1880
Jerry White, London in the Nineteenth Century, 2007
William White, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Norfolk, 1845.
NURSING
Brian Abel-Smith, A History of the Nursing Profession, 1960
Gwendoline Ayers, England’s First State Hospitals and the Metropolitan Asylums Board 1867–1930, 1971
Charles Booth, Life and Labor of the People in London, 1902
Borough of Maidstone, Epidemic of Typhoid Fever, 1897 , HMSO, 1898
Margaret E. Broadley, Patients Come First: Nursing at “The London” Between the Two World Wars, 1980
Fleetwood Churchill, Manual for Midwives, 1856
A. E. Clark-Kennedy, The London: A Study in the Voluntary Hospital System, two vols., 1963; London Pride: the Story of a Voluntary Hospital, 1979
G. C. Cook, “Joseph William Bazalgette,” Journal of Medical Biography, 1999
Viscount Knutsford, In Black and White, 1926
The London Hospital Illustrated, 1990
Eva Lückes, General Nursing, 1914; Hospital Sisters and their Duties, 1893
Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not, 1859
Henry Sessions Soutar, A Surgeon in Belgium, 2006
Frederick Treves, The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences, 1923
Louisa Twining, Recollections of Workhouse Visiting, 1880
WAR
George Adam, Treason and Tragedy: an account of French war trials, 1929
Harry Beaumont, Old Contemptible, 1967
James Cameron, 1914, London, 1959
Princess Marie de Croÿ, War Memories, 1932
Martin Marix Evans, Over the Top: Great Battles of the First World War, 2002
Niall Ferguson, 1914: Why the World Went to War, 1998
Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the First World War, 1994
Ambroise Got, The Case of Miss Cavell. German documents of the trial, 1918
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That, 1929
The Private Diaries of H. Rider Haggard, 191
4–1925
C. Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World War, 1977
Thomas Helling and Emmanuel Daon, “In Flanders Fields: the Great War, Antoine Depage and the Resurgence of Debridement,” Annals of Surgery, vol. 228, no. 2, 1998
Charles F. Horne, ed., “Source records of the Great War,” vol. III, National Alumni, 1923
Laurence Housman, ed., War Letters of Fallen Englishmen, 1930
F. H. Keeling, Letters and Recollections, 1918
John Keegan, The First World War, 1999; The Face of Battle, 1976
Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936: Hubris, 1998
Albert Libiez, L’Affaire Cavell, 1922
Lyn Macdonald, The Roses of No Man’s Land, 1980
Andrew Macphail, ed., A Memoir of John McCrae,
Cardinal Mercier; pastorals, letters, allocutions, 1914–1917, www.archive.org/cardinalmercier
Oscar E. Millard, Uncensored: the true story of the clandestine newspaper “La Libre Belgique,” 1938
William J. Philpott, “The strategic ideas of Sir John French,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 12, Issue 4, December 1989
T. Proctor, Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War, 2003
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929
Bernard Shaw, St. Joan, 1926
David Stevenson, 1914–1918; The History of the First World War, 2004
Hew Strachan, The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War, 1998
Jacqueline van Til, With Edith Cavell in Belgium, New York, 1922
The Times History of the War
Peter Vansittart, Voices from the Great War, 1981
Brand Whitlock, Belgium Under the German Occupation, 2 vols, 1919
www.firstworldwar.com/bio/cavell.htm
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All quotes are credited in “Notes.” Source material for Edith Cavell is scattered. The main archives I have used are:
Royal London Hospital:
Register of probationers no.5 LH/N/1/5
Private nursing staff register no.4 LH/N/5/4 fcf
Register of sisters and nurses no.1 LH/N/4/1
Matron’s annual letters to nurses 1896–1915 LH/N/7/1/3–23
Matron’s correspondence with Edith Cavell LH/N/7/7–8
Private papers of Edith Cavell PP/CAV
Memorabilia re Edith Cavell from records of the Cavell Institute (CI)
Imperial War Museum, London (IWM[EC]1–16):
Edith Cavell’s diary EC1
Letters by her 1911–15 EC2
Letters to or about her 1914–17 EC4
Official correspondence about her arrest and execution EC5
Miscellaneous documents EC8
Official German documents about her EC10
Photographs EC15
The Swardeston Archive—an informal archive of letters, books, newspapers, memorabilia and photographs. See www.edithcavell.org.uk for first point of access.
Norfolk Record Office, Archive Center and the Norfolk Regimental Museum—access http://www.noah.norfolk.gov.uk/
Swardeston parish baptism register (PD 199/4)
Letters re Cavell memorial fund 1915–17(PD 199/33)
Papers of the Cavell family(MC 304)
“A statement of my escape” by Sgt David Jesse Tunmore of the 1st Bn Norfolk Regiment
National Archives, Kew, London:
Georges Gaston Quien KV2/844
Correspondence concerning Edith Cavell’s arrest and execution FO 372/675 and FO383/15
Cavell family census documents for 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911
Funeral arrangements and statues H045/10794/302577
In addition I have used material from the British Library, Colindale Newspaper Library, the Wellcome Library, the London Library, London Metropolitan Archives and Hackney Archives.
Picture Acknowledgments
The Art Archive: 43, 81. Corbis: 186, 188, 203. Getty Images: 154, 159. Heritage Library/Picture Norfolk: 240. Collection Peter Higginbotham: 46. Imperial War Museum: 111 (Q 32930), 140 (Q 53271), 143 (Q 88431), 250 (Q 15064A), 273 (Q 15064). Mary Evans Picture Library: 42, 48, 274. National Portrait Gallery, London: 61. Norfolk Record Office: 9. © The Royal London Hospital Archives: frontispiece, 11, 13, 14, 31, 33, 34, 35, 44, 51, 53, 54, 57, 62, 63, 70, 73, 79, 83, 95, 97, 102, 113, 119, 123, 175, 182, 219, 243, 319. Courtesy Miriam Taylor: 151. Topfoto: 343, 359 (Roger-Viollet), 361. Wellcome Library, London: 371.
My thanks and indebtedness to: Jon Riley, the best of editors. Georgina Capel, my agent for fifteen years. The Reverend Paul Burr of Swardeston, for so much help. Nick Miller and Ian Francis, archivists at Swardeston. Anny Brackx and Morwenna Jones—who read an early draft of the manuscript and made useful comments. (Anny’s Belgian parents and grandparents endured German occupation during two world wars. Morwenna for years lived in Brussels in the street where Edith Cavell set up her nursing school.) Jonathan Evans, archivist at the London Hospital. The late Cecelia Doidge-Ripper who guided me to censuses, directories, county archives and parish records. Josine Meijer who did the picture research. Bill Donohoe who drew the maps. Douglas Matthews who compiled the index. Josh Ireland who steered the book through production. Terri Arthur, an American nurse, who for years has gathered information on Edith Cavell. Richard Hillier, Local Studies Librarian at Peterborough Central Library. Esther Bellamy, the Archives Assistant there. Chris Basey in Norwich. Jenny Bowman and Peter Woodward. Dr. Andrew Bamji, curator of the Gillies Archives. Frédérique Hakim for her hospitality in Brussels. Patrick Pollak of patrick@rarevols.co.uk who tracked down hard-to-find books. Miriam Taylor, Ruth Moore’s granddaughter, for archival material and hospitality. Naomi Narod, for more kindnesses than I can enumerate.
INDEX
Adams, A., 66
Adams, Percy, 66
Aerschodt, Nurse, 279, 302
Albert I, King of the Belgians: and outbreak of Great War, 129–31, 141
orders flooding of Ypres area, 207
pictured, 356
returns to Brussels at war’s end, 359
awards Cross of Order of Leopold posthumously to EC, 360;
Bissing recommends disposal of, 372
Albert, Prince Consort: death, 48
Alexandra, Queen (earlier Princess of Wales), 56, 344, 357, 363
Alfonso XIII, King of Spain, 332, 335
Alteren, M. van (lawyer), 272
Anderson, Elizabeth Garrett:
qualifies as doctor, 6, 43
travels in Germany, 26 antiseptics, 4–5
Archer, Julia, 364
Asquith, Herbert Henry (later 1st Earl), 126, 131, 200, 342
Association for the Improvement of Female Prisoners in Newgate, 44
Aubrie de Bournville, M. d,’ 184
Austen, Jane: Emma, 24
Austria: ultimatum to Serbia, 125–7
mobilizes for Great War, 128
Baker, Anne, 18
Baker, Frederick, 18
Baker, Harriet Joyce, 18
Bancroft, John, 63
Barclay, Hugh Gurney, 28
Barclay, Terence, 28
Barnardo, Thomas, 18
Barnett, Lieutenant Denis, 187
Baucq, Marie, 176, 326
Baucq, Philippe (“M. Fromage”): distributes La Libre Belgique, 175–6, 202
helps fugitive soldiers, 204
raises money, 207
warns EC of watch on house, 208
Nurse van Til takes letter to, 225–6
under German surveillance, 233–4
arrested and house searched, 234–5, 245
EC confesses to collaborating with, 249
silence under interrogation, 254
talks to informer Neels, 254–5, 270, 369
in prison, 255
trial with EC, 282, 283–6, 288–9, 292–5, 297, 299
death sentence, 3
00, 305–6, 308, 331
execution, 326–7, 332, 334
Bauer, General von, 166
Bayne, A.D.: Comprehensive History of Norwich, 11
Bazalgette, Sir Joseph, 47
Beale, Dorothea, 6
Beaumont, Harry, 156–8, 160, 171–2
Beecher, Ethel Hope, 73–4
Behrens, Lieutenant, 303, 305–6, 326
Behring, Emil von, 50
Belgium: neutral status in Great War, 129
Germany invades and occupies (1914), 130, 135, 138–45, 198–9
wartime preparations and conditions, 136–7
German rule in, 145–6, 181, 200
wartime resistance activities, 155, 162, 169, 202–3
BEF campaign in, 156–60;
Allied soldiers hidden from Germans, 164–72
English women required to register with German authorities, 181, 183–5
wartime destruction, 197–8
Independence Day, 231
fugitive soldiers surrender to German detention, 335
wartime conditions deteriorate, 337
women executed by Germans, 353
post-war conditions, 371;
see also Brussels Bell, Caroline, 68
Belleville, Eric de, 170
Belleville, Countess Jeanne de: sends de Roy to enlist, 21
helps escapees across Dutch border, 169–71
harbors men in home, 202
in prison, 240
arrested, 257, 262–3, 275
trial, 281–2, 289–90, 292, 294, 297–8, 300
death sentence, 300, 305, 331–2
shares cell with Louise Thuliez, 305, 318
hears EC leave prison for execution, 326
Villalobar intervenes for, 332, 335
reprieved and imprisoned at Siegburg, 336, 359
Bellignies, château, 164–8, 203, 224, 300
Benn, Dr. Gottfried, 282, 326–7, 352
Bergan, Lieutenant: as head of espionage in Belgium, 222
gathers evidence, 233–4
and arrest of Baucq and Thuliez, 235
incriminates Whitlock, 237
searches EC’s office, 237–8
interrogates EC, 243–9, 261–3
interrogates other prisoners, 254–5
and Neels, 255