The life and tragic death of nurse Edith Cavell 100 years ago will be celebrated at Salford’s Sacred Trinity church next month.
Cavell was a nurse during the First World War, remembered for saving the lives of both British and German soldiers, and helping up to 200 Allied servicemen escape from occupied Belgium.
Sadly she was arrested and shot to death by a German firing squad.
In 1906 the Norfolk-born vicar’s daughter worked for a spell at the Manchester and Salford Sick, Poor and Private Nursing Institute.
And she attended Sacred Trinity Church where a memorial was erected in memory of her heroic deeds.
David Winston, a retired Salford primary school headteacher, has been promoting the Sacred Trinity and Royal College of Nursing celebration being held between 10am and noon on Monday 12 October – exactly 100 years to the day since she was executed – as part of the Ideas4Ordsall project, funded by the University of Salford.
World reknowned historian Professor Sir Ian Kershaw and Professor Christine Hallett, of the UK Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery, will speak at the event which is open to the public.
An exhibition of work by children from St Philip’s primary school will also be on display.
Winston, of Irlams o’ th’ Height, described Cavell’s work in Belgium and how she became a victim of the brutality of war.
“Edith Cavell trained then worked as a nurse in and around London.
“In 1906 she took a temporary post as the matron of the Manchester and Salford Sick and Poor and Private Nursing Institution which was in the Bradford/Beswick area of Manchester.
“She was there for about nine months and it was while she was there that she worshipped at Sacred Trinity.
“In 1907 she moved to Belgium to set up an institute for training nurses in Brussels and she was still there when World War One broke out.
“It was then that Edith did two astonishing things.
“The first was that this quiet Victorian nurse became a resistance worker.
“Two wounded English soldiers arrived at the institute. Edith saw that they received medical treatment; but when they were better she was faced with a dilemma.
“She should have handed them over to the German government of occupation.
“Instead she handed them to a network of resistance workers, who helped them to get to neutral Holland.
“Soon she was regularly sheltering Allied soldiers and using the network to get them to Holland.
“She believed that if the soldiers fell into German hands they would be killed.
“She knew that what she was doing was forbidden by the Germans but she still put herself at risk.
“Before long the Germans discovered what she was doing, she was arrested and sentenced to death.”
The day of celebration takes place at Salford Sacred Trinity Church on Chapel Street from 10am, with an Act of Remembrance at the War Memorial at 10.55am.
All are welcome to attend.
