Emily Hobhouse (9 April 1860 – 8 June 1926) was a British welfare campaigner, anti-war activist, and pacifist. She is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the deprived conditions inside the British concentration camps in South Africa built to incarcerate Boer and African civilians during the Second Boer War.

Early life

Born in St Ive, near Liskeard in Cornwall, she was the daughter of Caroline (née Trelawny) and Reginald Hobhouse, an Anglican rector and the first Archdeacon of Bodmin. She was the sister of Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, a peace activist and proponent of social liberalism. She was a second cousin of the peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse and was a major influence on him.

Her mother died when she was 20, and she spent the next fourteen years looking after her father who was in poor health. When her father died in 1895, she went to Minnesota in the United States to perform welfare work amongst Cornish mineworkers living there, the trip having been organised by the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury. There she became engaged to John Carr Jackson and the couple bought a ranch in Mexico but this did not prosper, and the engagement was broken off. She returned to England in 1898 after losing most of her money in a speculative venture. Her wedding veil (which she never wore) hangs in the head office of the Oranje Vrouevereniging (Orange Women's Society) in Bloemfontein, the first women's welfare organisation in the Orange Free State, as a symbol of her commitment to the uplifting of women.

Second Anglo-Boer War

thumb|Emily Hobhouse by [[Henry Walter Barnett]]

When the Second Anglo-Boer War broke out in South Africa in October 1899, a Liberal MP, Leonard Courtney, invited Hobhouse to become secretary of the women's branch of the South African Conciliation Committee, of which he was president. She wrote: <blockquote>It was late in the summer of 1900 that I first learnt of the hundreds of Boer women that became impoverished and were left ragged by our military operations… the poor women who were being driven from pillar to post, needed protection and organized assistance.</blockquote>

She set up the South African Women and Children Distress Fund and sailed for the Cape Colony on 7 December 1900 to supervise its distribution, arriving on 27 December. She wrote later:<blockquote>I came quite naturally, in obedience to the feeling of unity or oneness of womanhood ... it is when the community is shaken to its foundations, that abysmal depths of privation call to each other and that a deeper unity of humanity evinces itself. Afterwards, a crowd followed him home and broke the windows of his house. The British government eventually agreed to set up the Fawcett Commission to investigate her claims, under Millicent Fawcett, which corroborated her account of the shocking conditions. However, Hobhouse was never acknowledged for her contribution in their report.

Hobhouse returned to Cape Town in October 1901, but was not permitted to land, and was deported five days after arriving. The government agreed she should not be allowed back into the country.

She felt she never received justice for her work. Early the next year Hobhouse went to Lake Annecy in the French Alps where she wrote the book The Brunt of the War and Where it Fell on what she had seen during the war in South Africa.

Rehabilitation and reconciliation

After the war Hobhouse returned to South Africa to see the effects of the scorched earth policy. With the help of Margaret Clark she decided to set up The Boer Home Industries with the first being in Philippolis and to teach young women spinning and weaving and lace making in 1908.

Ill health, forced her to return to England in 1908. She travelled to South Africa again in 1913 for the inauguration of the National Women's Monument in Bloemfontein but had to stop at Beaufort West due to her failing health.

Her speech, which focused on forgiveness, women's rights, the misuse of power and equal rights, was read on her behalf. Shortly afterwards she met Mahatma Gandhi in Cape Town.

Later life

Hobhouse was an opponent of the First World War and protested vigorously against it. She organised the writing, signing and publishing in January 1915 of the "Open Christmas Letter", addressed "To the Women of Germany and Austria". Through her offices, thousands children were fed daily for more than a year in central Europe after this war. South Africa contributed liberally towards this effort, and an amount of more than £17,000 (nearly £500,000 today) was collected by Mrs. President Steyn (who was to remain a lifelong friend) and sent to Hobhouse for this purpose.

South African honorary citizenship

She became an honorary citizen of South Africa for her humanitarian work there. Unbeknown to her, on the initiative of Mrs R. I. Steyn, a sum of £2,300 was collected by South Africans and with that Emily purchased a house in St Ives, Cornwall, which now forms part of Porthminster Hotel. In this hotel a commemorative plaque, situated within what was her lounge, was unveiled by the South African High Commissioner, Mr Kent Durr, as a tribute to her humanitarianism and heroism during the Anglo Boer War.

Death

Hobhouse died in Kensington on 9 June 1926. Her ashes were put in a niche in the National Women's Monument at Bloemfontein, where she was regarded as a heroine. Her death went unreported in the Cornish press.

Historical attraction

In 2024, a historical attraction to honour Emily Hobhouse's life and work opened in St Ive, near Liskeard in Cornwall, The Story of Emily. In 2025, the venue celebrated the 165th anniversary of Hobhouse's birth.

Legacy

  • The southernmost town in Eastern Free State is named Hobhouse after her.
  • The SAS Emily Hobhouse, one of the South African Navy's three Daphné class submarines, was named after her in 1969. In 1994, after the end of minority rule, the submarine was renamed the SAS Umkhonto.
  • In Bloemfontein, South Africa, the oldest residence on the campus of the University of the Free State is named after Hobhouse.
  • There is a statue of Hobhouse at the parish church at St Ive, Cornwall, where she was born.
  • In 1990 Dirk de Villiers directed the South African film That Englishwoman: An Account of the Life of Emily Hobhouse with Veronica Lang as Emily.
  • The 2021 film The King's Man features a character named Emily Oxford, who bears a strong resemblance to Hobhouse. She is depicted as an activist criticizing the conditions of Britain's concentration camps in South Africa during the Second Boer War.
  • In 2022, the University of Exeter Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cornwall at Penryn Campus named a meeting room after her in Peter Lanyon Building.

See also

  • List of peace activists

Further reading

  • Hobhouse Balme, Jennifer (1994). To Love One's Enemies, The Work and Life of Emily Hobhouse. (1st ed.). Cobble Hill, B.C., Canada: The Hobhouse Trust.
  • Emily Hobhouse: Beloved Traitor by Elsabé Brits
  • Emily Hobhouse: Pacifist, Feminist, Traitor? by Elsabe Brits
  • Agent of Peace: Emily Hobhouse and Her Courageous Attempt to End the First World War by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme
  • Living the Love: Emily Hobhouse post-war (1918–1926) by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme

References

Sources

  • Hobhouse, Emily, The Brunt of War and Where it Fell, London: Methuen, 1902
  • Hobhouse, Emily. The Boer War Letters, ed. by Rykie van Reenlisteden. Cape Town and Pretoria 1984.
  • Brits, Elsabe, "Emily Hobhouse: Pacifist, Feminist, Traitor?" Robinson, 2018
  • Brits, Elsab, "Emily Hobhouse: Beloved Traitor" Tafelberg, 2016
  • Lee, Emanuel. To the Bitter End (New York: Viking, 1985)
  • Pakenham, Thomas. The Boer War (Harper Perennial, Reprint edition, 1 December 1992)
  • Hall, John. That Bloody Woman: The Turbulent Life of Emily Hobhouse (Truro, Cornwall; Truran Publishers, May 2008) . Note: This title has a Cornish perspective on Emily Hobhouse.
  • Jennifer Hobhouse Balme. "To Love One's Enemies: The Work and Life of Emily Hobhouse" (Cobble Hill, B.C., Canada: The Hobhouse Trust, 1994, 1st edition)
  • Jennifer Hobhouse Balme. "To Love One's Enemies: The Work and Life of Emily Hobhouse" (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2012, 2nd edition)
  • Jennifer Hobhouse Balme. "Agent of Peace: Emily Hobhouse and her Courageous Attempt to End the First World War" (Stroud: History Press, 2015)
  • Jennifer Hobhouse Balme. "Living the Love: Emily Hobhouse post-war (1918–1926)" (Victoria, B.C., Canada: Friesen Press, 2016)
  • Seibold, Birgit Susanne. Emily Hobhouse and the Reports on the Concentration Camps during the Boer War 1899–1902 (Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2011)
  • Birgit Susanne Seibold: Emily Hobhouse und die Berichte über die Konzentrationslager während des Burenkriegs : zwei unterschiedliche Perspektiven , Tübingen, Univ., Diss., 2011,
  • Article about Emily Hobhouse's role on an Anglo-Boer War Memorial site
  • Speech given by President Thabo Mbeki in 2004 quoting Emily Hobhouse
  • Biography of Hobhouse on "Special South Africans" site
  • https://thestoryofemily.com/stories-of-emily