Early Life and Career
Edith Cavell was born on 4 December 1865 in Swardeston, a village near Norwich, where her father, the Reverend Frederick Cavell, was vicar for 45 years. She was the eldest of four children and was taught to always share with the less fortunate, despite her family’s meagre earnings. After a period as a governess, including for a family in Brussels 1900 -1905, she trained as a nurse at the London Hospital under Matron Eva Luckes. In 1907, Cavell was recruited by Dr. Antoine Depage to be matron of a newly established nursing school by the name of L'École Belge d’Infirmières Diplômées on the Rue de la Culture in Brussels. By 1910, "Miss Cavell 'felt that the profession of nursing had gained sufficient foothold in Belgium to warrant the publishing of a professional journal,' and therefore launched the nursing journal, L'infirmière. A year later, she was a training nurse for three hospitals, 24 schools, and 13 kindergartens in Belgium.
When World War I broke out, she was visiting her widowed mother in Norfolk in the East of England. She returned to Brussels where her clinic and nursing school were taken over by the Red Cross.
Read more about this topic: Edith Cavell
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I heard a good one at Toulouse of a woman who had passed through the hands of some soldiers: “God be praised,” she said, “that at least once in my life I have had my fill without sin!””
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)