United Kingdom
Edith Cavell
1865–1915 Nurse and matron in occupied Brussels
A vicar's daughter from Norfolk, Cavell became the first matron of a nursing school in Brussels. After the German occupation, she and a network of Belgian helpers hid British and French soldiers and Belgian men of military age and smuggled them over the frontier to the Netherlands, helping about 200 people escape. She was arrested on 3 August 1915 and tried by a German military court with some 34 others. She admitted what she had done. Despite diplomatic appeals from neutral Spain and the United States, she and the Belgian Philippe Baucq were shot on the morning of 12 October 1915. Her death sparked international outrage and became one of the best-known episodes of Allied propaganda.