Execution of Edith Cavell (1915): The Nurse Shot by the Germans

The execution of Edith Cavell took place at dawn on 12 October 1915, when a German firing squad shot the British nurse at a rifle range in Brussels for helping Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium. Her death caused outrage across the Allied and neutral world and made her one of the best-known British women of the First World War.

Background: a nurse in Brussels

Edith Louisa Cavell was born on 4 December 1865 in Swardeston, Norfolk, the daughter of a clergyman. After working as a governess, including in Brussels, she trained as a nurse at the London Hospital. In 1907 she was invited to become matron of a new nursing school in Brussels, the Berkendael Medical Institute, which helped to establish modern professional nursing in Belgium.

When war broke out in August 1914 Cavell was visiting her mother in England, but she returned to Brussels. Belgium was soon almost entirely occupied after the German invasion of Belgium, and her school became a Red Cross hospital treating wounded soldiers of all nations.

The escape network

After the Battle of Mons, the retreat that followed and the fighting of late 1914, many British and French soldiers were left stranded behind German lines. A network of Belgians and French people, including Prince Reginald de Croÿ, his sister Princess Marie de Croÿ, the teacher Louise Thuliez and the architect Philippe Baucq, began hiding these men and guiding them to the border of the neutral Netherlands.

Cavell sheltered soldiers in her clinic and arranged for guides and money. Around 200 men are commonly said to have escaped with the network’s help, though exact numbers are uncertain. Helping enemy soldiers reach a country from which they could return to fight was a capital offence under German military law.

Arrest and trial

German police uncovered the network in the summer of 1915. Cavell was arrested on 5 August 1915 and held in Saint-Gilles prison. During questioning she made statements admitting her part.

She was tried by a German military court with more than twenty other members of the network on 7–8 October 1915. On 11 October she and four others were sentenced to death. The American minister in Brussels, Brand Whitlock, his secretary Hugh Gibson and the Spanish minister, the Marquis de Villalobar, made urgent appeals for mercy, but the German military governor refused.

The execution

On the evening of 11 October the Anglican chaplain Stirling Gahan was allowed to visit her. According to his account, she told him that patriotism was not enough and that she must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. Early on 12 October 1915 Cavell and Philippe Baucq were shot at the Tir National in Schaerbeek. She was 49.

The sentences of several other condemned members of the network, including Louise Thuliez, were later commuted to imprisonment, partly in response to the international reaction.

Reaction and propaganda

News of the execution spread quickly. In Britain and across the Empire it was used in posters, newspapers and recruitment campaigns, and in the United States, still neutral, it contributed to hostility towards Germany alongside the sinking of the Lusitania. German authorities argued that she had been treated according to the laws of war and that she had admitted her guilt.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Cavell was a spy. Fact: She was charged with helping soldiers escape, not espionage. Some historians have argued that the network also passed military information to the Allies, but her own role in this is unclear.
• Myth: She fainted before the firing squad and was shot by an officer with a pistol. Fact: This story circulated in wartime propaganda but is not supported by reliable evidence.
• Myth: She was executed alone. Fact: Philippe Baucq was shot alongside her.

Timeline

• 1865, 4 December: Edith Cavell is born in Swardeston, Norfolk.
• 1907: She becomes matron of the Berkendael Medical Institute in Brussels.
• 1914, August: Germany invades Belgium; Cavell returns to Brussels.
• 1915, 5 August: Cavell is arrested.
• 1915, 7–8 October: Trial before a German military court.
• 1915, 12 October: Cavell and Philippe Baucq are executed.
• 1919, 15 May: Memorial service at Westminster Abbey; burial at Norwich Cathedral.
• 1920: A memorial statue by George Frampton is unveiled near Trafalgar Square.

Legacy

Cavell is remembered by her statue in St Martin’s Place, London, bearing the words “Patriotism is not enough”, and by hospitals, schools, streets and Mount Edith Cavell in the Canadian Rockies. Nursing institutions in Belgium and Britain still honour her as a pioneer of the profession.

In 1919 her remains were brought back from Belgium and carried through London before the service at Westminster Abbey, and she was buried outside Norwich Cathedral, close to where she grew up. The centenary of her death in 2015 was marked by commemorations in Norwich, Brussels and London, and the Church of England remembers her on 12 October.

Why it matters

The Cavell case showed how the treatment of civilians in occupied territory could shape world opinion in the First World War. Her calm acceptance of death and her refusal to express hatred made her an enduring symbol of courage and humanity.