Erection date: 16/3/1920
{Beneath the statue of Cavell:}
Edith Cavell, Brussels, dawn, October 12th 1915.
Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.
{Near the top, at the front:}
For King and Country.
{Level with that, on the back:}
Faithful until death.
{Above the statue of Cavell:}
Humanity
{Level with 'Humanity', on the left hand side, back and right hand side:}
Devotion
Fortitude
Sacrifice
This was the obvious memorial to choose as the first featured memorial for 91³Ô¹ÏÍø, in February 2004. Cavell was executed by the Germans in Brussels and she figures on our other site, . She was a British nurse, executed for helping allied soldiers escape.
Click on the button at the left: "subjects commemorated" to gather more details of her heroic live and death.
Unveiled by Queen Alexandra in 1920. 4 years later Cavell's words "Patriotism. . . . " were added.
Site: Edith Cavell statue (1 memorial)
WC2, St Martin's Place
We thank Jamie Davis for finding to the British Pathe news film of the unveiling and for sending a which says that prior to the arrival of this statue this island was occupied by a statue of General Gordon, which was removed to Khartoum.
Osbert Sitwell did not like this memorial. In his 1928 People's Album of London Statues, he writes that it: "with its absurd babies and all its apocryphal tackle of quite meaningless and sentimental allegory, further vitiated by a mistaken effort at German modernity, is an eyesore and atrocity of the most infamous kind."
A wreath is laid here every year on 12 October, the day she was executed.
This site was previously occupied, for a few months in 1902, by a statue of General Gordon on a camel. See there for more information.
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