Pete's Favourite Things

Reposting the story of Edith Cavell to accompany Wednesday’s post.

Edith Cavell was born near Norwich in 1865. As a 19-year-old she attended Laurel Court school, adjacent to Peterborough Cathedral, as a pupil / teacher. Her skill at languages led to her being recommended for a post as a governess in Brussels, Belgium. She stayed for five years, before returning to the UK to nurse her sick father. This led her to consider a change in career and she trained as a nurse at the London Hospital in 1896. In 1907, she returned to Brussels as the matron of a nursing school and when World War I broke out she continued to nurse the sick at the hospitals attached to the school, even when Belgium was occupied by the Germans. She became involved in the resistance movement, helping Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium to neutral Holland. In August 1915, she was arrested along with a number of others and after being interrogated and imprisoned for 10 weeks, she was executed on 12 October and buried in an unmarked grave. This harsh treatment of a woman and a nurse received multinational condemnation. In 1919, following the end of the war, her body was exhumed and reburied in Norwich Cathedral.

The memorial to Edith Cavell in Peterborough Cathedral was set up by students and teachers of Laurel Court school.

In 2009, Princess Elizabeth de Croy, whose grandparents had run the escape network in Belgium, presented the cathedral with a lamp used by the resistance for signalling night-time meetings during World War I. It hangs above the Cavell memorial.

See also https://petesfavouritethings.blog/2017/08/28/the-cavell-van/