I had assumed that pretty well everyone knew about Edith Cavell - who, along with Florence Nightingale, Grace Darling and Elisabeth Fry is one of my all-time star heroines - but looking on the Facebook Group WW1 Buffs, I see this is not the case.
Edith was a British nurse who was working in a Brussels hospital when WW1 broke out. She helped hundreds of British soldiers to escape after the Battle of Mons. Edith was arrested by the Germans, tried and shot.
It seems a little odd to me that Marthe McKenna, who was a secret agent working for the British during WW1, had her death sentence commuted to imprisonment, whereas Edith Cavell who was not a spy did not.
