by Jackie Money

Created on: December 07, 2008

Edith Louisa Cavell was born on 4 December 1865, the daughter of Frederick Cavell, parson for the parish of Swardeston, Norfolk, UK. A poor but kindly man, he was renowned in the area for sharing half of the meagre offerings he had on his table with his poor parishioners. Although the Reverend Cavell was a Puritan who insisted upon keeping the Sabbath a strict day of rest and prayer, the Cavell household was on the whole an extremely happy one.

Edith delighted in the surrounding countryside, taking an intense interest in nature and surrounded herself with plants and animals. In fact she became an extremely accomplished artist, many of her works being of the local fauna or flora.

As part of her education, Edith was taught French and showed a particular adeptness for the language which, following several posts as governess in England, enabled her to take a post in 1890 with the Francois family in Brussels. She stayed there for five years and became fluent in French during that time. However, in 1895 her father became ill and she returned to Swardeston to nurse him. During that time she decided that she would like to take up nursing as a career and, at the age of 30, following a few months at a fever hospital in London, Edith was accepted in 1896 to train at the London Hospital under the tutelage of Eva Luckes. In 1897 an epidemic of typhoid fever broke out in Maidstone, Kent and six of Eva Luckes' nurses were drafted in to help out, Edith being one of them. Of the 1,700 people who contracted the disease only 132 died and Edith received the Maidstone Medal, the only medal she was ever to receive from her country.

Edith subsequently took on various nursing placements around England and in 1907, following a short break, she took a nursing post in Brussels nursing a child who was a patient of one Dr Antoine Depage but, seeing Edith's potential, she was soon transferred to more important work. Depage was of a mind to train nurses in Belgium to the standards of Florence Nightingale as, up until that time nuns had been the main carers but they had no medical training. Edith was therefore charged with training lay nurses at a newly set up institution named L'Ecole d'Infirmiere Dimplonier' just outside Brussels. Edith immediately rose to the challenge and by 1912 she was providing trained nurses for three hospitals, 24 communal schools and 13 kindergartens. By 1914 she was giving lectures to qualified doctors and nurses.

Despite her busy schedule, Edith often returned to

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