WOMEN OF NORFOLK
www.icenimagazine.co.uk
Issue 89 2020
Women Of Norfolk Edith Cavell (1865 - 1915) Born Edith Louisa Cavell on December 4th 1865 to Reverend Frederick Cavell (1824-1910) and his wife Louisa Sophia Warming (1835-1918) in the small village of Swardeston (approximately four miles south of Norwich). She was the eldest of four children; Florence Mary (b.1867), Mary Lilian (b.1870) and John Frederick (1872-1923). Little is known of her life (early years and adolescence) prior to being a nurse, other than she was educated at Norwich High School for Girls and then at two boarding schools, one in Somerset and another in Peterborough. In 1890, Edith took the role of governess to a family in Brussels, a position she held for five years until her father’s illness forced her to return to England so that she could care for him. This experience drove her to become a nurse and in 1896, at the age of thirty years old, Edith applied to be a nurse probationer at the London Hospital, under the Matron Eva Luckes (1854-1919). During the Typhoid outbreak in Maidstone in 1897, Edith, alongside six other nurses who were under the tutelage of Matron Luckes, were sent to assist with the care of patients.
The medical staff (including Edith) who were sent to Maidstone were awarded the “Maidstone Medal” for their work. She also served at a number of hospitals throughout England, one of which was the Shoreditch Infirmary (now known as St. Leonard’s Hospital) and went on to work as a private travelling nurse treating patients in their homes - their illnesses included cancer, gout, pneumonia, pleurisy and appendicitis. In 1906 Edith, was appointed the temporary post of Matron at the Manchester and Salford Sick and Poor and Private Nursing Institution, while there she attended the Sacred Trinity Church on Chapel Street in Salford. A year later, she was recruited by the Belgian royal surgeon Antoine Depage (1862-1925) to be the Matron of the newly established Berkendael Medical Institute in Ixelles, Belgium. Within the year of her placement, Edith was training nurses for three hospitals, twenty four schools and thirteen kindergartens in Belgium, while also launching the nursing journal ‘L’Infirmiere’. She worked closely with Dr. Depage and after his investigation into the care provided by religious institutions, he concluded they were not keeping up with medical advances and she was sent to a new secular hospital at Saint-Gilles as Matron.
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