Nurse And Martyr

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a dramatized version of the arrest and execution of Miss Edith Cavell by the Germans for her admitted offence of aiding English and French soldiers. After their treatment in her Red Cross hospital in Brussels, they re-join their regiments in their respective lines. The name of the German officer immediately responsible for the brutality is given, as Von Muller, as is also that of the General - Von Bissing - though he does not appear. Painful though it be, I see no objection to the actuality of this tragic sketch, which indeed could only have a beneficial effect; and it is accordingly Recommended for License. Ernest A. Bendall [The following is written in black ink below] Title Nurse and Martyr and the actual names changed. This has been done.

Researcher's Summary:

A film about the execution of Edith Cavell in October 1915 was submitted for censorship the following month ‘under the title The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell, from a story written by Mr. Edgar Wallace’, which was licensed ‘conditionally upon the name of Nurse Cavell neither appearing on the screen, the posters, nor in any publicity matter used in connection with the film’ and in consequence its title was changed to ‘Nurse and Martyr’ (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 22 February 1928, from a statement by the secretary of the British Board of Film Censors). That explains why Hal Collier’s sketch about Edith Cavell, licensed in July 1916, which was originally billed as ‘Nurse Cavell, Martyr’ when it was performed at the Picture House, Whitwick on 8 May 1916 (before it was licensed), had to be renamed ‘Nurse and Martyr’ and Edith Cavell’s name was not used. In fact, Cissie Langley’s company performed the play under both titles: ‘Nurse Cavell, Martyr’, and ‘Nurse and Martyr’. Even with the second of those titles audiences would have had no difficulty in identifying the protagonist as Edith Cavell, given the story line and its setting in a nursing home in Brussels, although the Falkirk Herald, 27 February 1918, felt it necessary to begin its review with, ‘Presumably it is written round the heroic death of Nurse Cavell…’. The sketch was performed as part of programmes that included variety acts and pictures at venues that could cater for both films and stage shows. Newspaper advertisements for Langley’s appearances often referred to them as an ‘expensive engagement’. Publicity material, that she herself no doubt provided, claimed that the sketch had been pronounced to be one of the finest ever written and showed how the nurse had sacrificed her life to the call of duty; that it came with a hospital set and correct uniforms; and that it had been performed ‘in all the principal theatres’ in the country, which was manifestly not the case. When the list of characters was published the German General von Muller was always described as ‘murderer’ and Henri de Belfort as ‘a victim of German culture / Kultur’. Advertisements for, and reviews of, the sketch that Cissie Langley performed did not identify the author but it can be assumed to be Hal Collier since his was the only sketch licensed as ‘Nurse and Martyr’ in 1916. Moreover, he advertised in The Stage, 5 June 1919, that he had written a sketch entitled ‘Nurse Cavell’ which was ‘entirely different to one I wrote Miss Langley three years ago’. When in 1928 ‘Dawn’, another film about Edith Cavell, was banned because of its anti-German sentiments, Cissie Langley reassured theatre managers in an advertisement in The Stage, 8 March 1928, that ‘Nurse and Martyr’ was ‘Licensed by [the] Lord Chamberlain in 1916’, which implies that it was still Hal Collier’s original play that she was performing. However, to complicate matters, the North Wales Weekly News, 3 December 1925, advertised at the Arcadia, Colwyn Bay, Cissie Langley and her company in ‘Nurse Cavell, Martyr’ by Jean Leseaus, who is not mentioned anywhere else in the newspapers in the British Newspaper Archive; and Langley herself advertised in The Stage, 22 and 29 November and 6 December 1928, ‘a revised version’ of ‘Nurse Cavell, Martyr’ about which no more information has been found. In 1925 a licence was refused to Eva Elwes’ play ‘Edith Cavell, Nurse and Martyr’ after objections by Cavell’s sisters, but it was licensed in 1927 after the title was changed to ‘The Price She Paid’ and the names of Cavell and her mother were also altered (https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Elwes; accessed 2 June 2021), the former becoming Nurse Deane. On at least one occasion Elwes’ play was staged as ‘Nurse and Martyr’ (Hippodrome, Mexborough, 23-25 February 1928). In addition, Queenie Barrett played the principal part in ‘At Dawn’, based on the life-story of Edith Cavell, at the Capitol, St. Austell, in March 1928. Cissie Langley had other sketches in her repertoire at various times, notably ‘For King and Country’, ‘Only a Dream’, ‘The Tainted Women’ (about syphilis, for adult audiences only), ‘The Vengeance of Li Fang Foo’, 'A Sporting Girl' and 'The Chinese Mask'. She might play other sketches during a week’s engagement but not ‘Nurse and Martyr’ (e.g. at the Grand Cinema, Evesham, 26-31 August 1918, or at the Smethwick Empire, 10-15 November 1919). She continued to advertise ‘Nurse and Martyr’ in The Stage but even when she also specified a venue at which she was appearing it was not necessarily in that sketch, e.g. at the Hippodrome, Great Yarmouth, 17-22 February 1919, when she apparently performed only The Tainted Woman. Although the Flintshire County Herald, 8 June 1923, reported that Cissie Langley had played the part of Edith Cavell over 2,000 times, performances tailed off in the 1920s. For those reasons the only performances listed here are those for which there is evidence from local newspapers that she was staging ‘Nurse and Martyr’ or ‘Nurse Cavell, Martyr’. The last performance identified by Cissie Langley in a piece about Edith Cavell was at the Metropole, Glasgow, in May 1940. Langley advertised for sale in The Stage, 1 June 1944, ‘Great War sketch, “Nurse Cavell,” including uniforms and props’.