30 October 1915: The greater part of the church was reserved for the nurses,who came from every hospital in and around LondonLondon, Friday.
Often before has the glorious elegiac ritual of St. Paul’s expressed a national emotion, and but never has there been a memorial service so touched with strangeness in tragedy as the nation’s tribute of pity and indignation to Miss Cavell’s memory this morning.
We are used to commemorations in St. Paul’s of the distinguished dead of England,but here the country through its representatives was mourning a woman of whom few had ever heard until the Germans gave her immortal fame. Only an enemy who murders women under forms of law could have brought that approximately. The German bullet won for this English nurse the supreme honour of a funeral service in our central church. There has been nothing more remarkable in all the centuries whose distinguished moments of sorrow or thanksgiving have found a voice in the schooled and harmonious beauty of chant and prayer in this area.
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Source: theguardian.com