Edith Cavell: Google Doodle today celebrates 153rd birthday of heroic WW1 nurse

Google is celebrating the birthday of a nurse who helped save the lives of hundreds of soldiers in World War One.

Edith Cavell risked her life to help British and French soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium at the beginning of the war.

Cavell, who would have been 153 today, was arrested by the authorities and charged with treason, and later executed by firing squad on October 12, 1915.

And to celebrate the British nurse's enduring legacy of heroism, Google has created a Doodle in her honour.

Edith Cavell was born in Norfolk on December 4, 1865. She was inspired to become a nurse in her twenties when she cared for her father after he was struck down by a serious illness.

She trained under Matron Eva Luckes at what is now the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel before working at hospitals in Kings Cross, Shoreditch, Manchester and Kent.

In 1907, Cavell was invited to Brussels, where she had previously worked as a governess, to become the matron of a newly-established nursing school called L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées.

She later founded the medical journal l’infirmière in 1910 and soon became a training nurse for three hospitals, 24 schools, and 13 kindergartens in Belgium.

Cavell was visiting family in Norfolk at the outbreak of the Great War. She immediately returned to Brussels and began to treat war casualties of all nationalities at her hospital.

But it was during her time as a nurse in WW1 that she became involved in an underground group that would shelter French and British soldiers in occupied Belgium, before helping them flee to the neutral Netherlands and later Britain.

Along with saving the lives of Allied soldiers, she also helped Belgian and French civilians escape.