by Rebecca Hannant
A blue plaque is to be unveiled in Withernsea in memory of nurse Florence Cavell.
Florence Mary Scott Cavell (1867-1950) was the sister of Edith Cavell, who was tried and executed by firing squad in 1915 for aiding the escape of British prisoners of war from a hospital in German- occupied Belgium.
Norfolk-born Florence and Edith were both trained at the London Hospital in Whitechapel.
Florence served Withernsea for 40 years and helped to set up six convalescent homes. She retired from nursing in 1946.
In 1949, she was hit by a car in Leeds and suffered serious head injuries. She returned to her home in Queen Street, Withernsea, to live out the rest of her days. The following summer she died where she had given 30 years of service – the Hull and East Riding Convalescent Home.
The house is now owned by Darrin Stevens, photographer and member of the Friends of St Nicholas Church.
Fellow resident and church member Godfrey Holmes said: “Many residents will have fond memories of an extremely conscientious nurse, Florence Cavell, coming to this seaside resort first as hospital matron for an astonishing 32 years from 1913-45, then as a flamboyant retiree until her untimely death not long after the Second World War ended.
“Indeed, Withernsea Hospital, later its TB sanatorium, later still its convalescent home and minor injury unit, was called the Queen’s Hotel, four- star, built by Anthony Bannister and his Hull & Holderness Railway Company when the resort was being laid out from 1854 onwards.
“Other residents will know Florence Cavell as Sister – alongside Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole – of one of the founders of modern nursing as a profession: Edith Cavell, 1865-1915, martyred for assisting British and Allied Soldiers escape over the border between Brussels, where she was stationed as the First World War broke out, and the non- combatant Netherlands.
“How this immense loss of friend, exemplar and confidante must have affected Florence – also her surviving mother, Louisa Sophie Warming, in Norfolk – we can only imagine. Suffice it to say, Edith Cavell remains one of the most famous and revered names in 20th-century history. And both Edith and Florence Cavell left their quiet country vicarage lives to train at the Royal London Hospital where the plaque unveiler herself, Withernsea midwife Doris Cook, also qualified.”
The plaque will be unveiled at 227 Queen Street by Doris and former Withernsea mayor Lyn Healing at 2.45pm on Saturday, September 14.
