Nurse Edith Cavell's Prayer Book.

This prayer book belonging to Nurse Edith Cavell, was used during her solitary confinement in a cell at the St Giles Prison in Brussels, Belgium. She was executed by a German army firing squad at dawn on October 12th 1915 aged 50. The inscription is believed to have been written after her death. Born in England, 1865, daughter of a Norfolk vicar, Edith trained as a nurse and then became matron of the first training school for nurses in Brussels. When Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, Edith and her nurses attended to wounded Belgium, French and German troops. Hiding Allied soldiers in the hospital, she helped around 200 to escape across the Dutch border. She was arrested and accused of being a spy and of heading a large resistance network. Her execution was used as a warning to others, but it provoked outrage around the world and thousands more joined up including the Americans. She wrote...'I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone'..... The original Prayer Book is kept in the Royal London Hospital Museum who gave kind permission for the photograph to be displayed as part of the Remembrance Day Exhibition in Murray Edwards College where I took this photograph.