Edith Cavell & Marie Depage martyrs medal "1915 REMEMBER!" 60mm bronze.Date 1919

Description

LONDON
Wikipa)
Superb quality bronze medal issued to honour the memory of British Nurse Edith Cavell and Belgian Nurse Marie Depage, both of whom died at the hands of the Germans in 1915.
Particularly well struck medal, typical of high quality medals of this period.    One of the nicest examples of this medal to be found.  Medal measures 60 mm (2 5/16 inches) across. Maker marked "FONSON & CIE" on the bottom edge.  Discretely signed under the shoulder of Edith Cavell, "A.BONNETAIN, 1919." (Note: Armand Bonnetain (1883-1972), famous Belgian sculptor.  An exact example of this medal is held in the American Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the gift of Dr. Antoine Depage (through Dr. C.L. Ginson), 1921. Accession number 21.31.)  Weight 83.1 grams.
Edith Cavell
w
as a British nurse. She is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from both sides without discrimination and for helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during the First World War, for which she was arrested. She was accused of treason, found guilty by a court-martial and sentenced to death. Despite international pressure for mercy, she was shot by a German firing squad. Her execution received worldwide condemnation and extensive press coverage. Cavell, who was 49 at the time of her execution, was already notable as a pioneer of modern nursing in Belgium.
Marie Depage
(23 September 1872 - 7 May 1915) was a Belgian Nurse. She was killed in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania and is commemorated alongside the British nurse Edith Cavell.
After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Depage volunteered at the Red Cross hospital established at the Royal Palace in Brussels, and then helped her husband to convert the
Grand Hôtel de l'Océan
at De Panne (also known in French as La Panne) into a Red Cross hospital for military casualties (see fr: Grand Hôtel de l'Océan), and organised surgical units to treat wounded soldiers of the Belgian Army near the Yser Front.
Depage travelled to the US in January 1915 to raise funds for the
L'Océan
hospital. After raising 0,000 in a few weeks, she received news that her middle son Lucien would be joining her eldest son Pierre at the front, and decided to return to Belgium. She booked passage on the RMS
Lusitania
, leaving New York on 1 May 1915 for Liverpool via Queenstown in the south of Ireland. The ship was torpedoed by German submarine
U-20
at about 2:10 pm on 7 May 1915, and rapidly sank. Depage assisted other passengers to board lifeboats, and treated some injured on the deck of the sinking vessel. As the ship sank, she became entangled in ropes and drowned, one of nearly 1,200 killed from almost 2,000 aboard.
Depage's body was one of 289 recovered, and was buried by her husband in the sand dunes near La Panne. The funeral was attended by the King and Queen of the Belgians, Albert I and Elizabeth. Her husband, Dr. Depage established the Institute Marie Depage near the Hospital de l'Ocean in her honour.
A memorial by Belgian sculptor Paul Du Bois was erected at Uccle in 1920, to commemorate the deaths of Depage and Cavell in 1915. Cavell had been convicted of treason and executed by occupying German forces in October 1915. An inscription on the monument reads
"Passant, dis-le à tes enfants, ils les ont tuées"
(French: "Passer-by, tell your children, they killed them"). The monument stands next to the Edith Cavell Hospital, at the intersection of Rue Edith Cavell and Rue Marie Depage.
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