Height: 19cm (7.4in)
Patinated bronze. Standing figure of Nurse Edith Cavell in Red Cross nurses uniform, looking down to the right, and holding in her hands a spray of lilies. Signed to reverse P.M. Dammann. Raised on an integral plinth.
Read more
At dawn on 12 October 1915 the British nurse Edith Louisa Cavell (1865-1915) was killed by a firing squad, after a German military court found her guilty of helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from occupied Belgium. It was strongly implied that she was also involved in espionage, passing information about German military movements and plans back to Britain. The British Government denied that she was a spy, but subsequently declassified information strongly suggests she did pass intelligence back to the UK. However much Cavell knew about the information being carried on the bodies of the men she saved – written on cloth and sewn into clothes, or hidden in shoes – her death made her a popular martyr, as her execution provoked a strong public reaction of horror. Author Arthur Conan Doyle said: 'Everybody must feel disgusted at the barbarous actions of the German soldiery in murdering this great and glorious specimen of womanhood.’
Paul-Marcel Dammann (1885-1939) was a French engraver and medalist, and a student of Jules-Clément Chaplain He won awards at the Grand Prix de Rome between 1905 and 1925. Some of his works are kept at the Musée de la Monnaie de Paris and the American Numismatic Society Museum in New York.