24 Facts About Emily Hobhouse

Emily Hobhouse was a British welfare campaigner, anti-war activist, and pacifist.

Emily Hobhouse 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.

Emily Hobhouse was the sister of Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, a peace activist and proponent of social liberalism.

Emily Hobhouse was a second cousin of the peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse and was a major influence on him.

Emily Hobhouse's mother died when she was 20, and she spent the next fourteen years looking after her father who was in poor health.

Emily Hobhouse returned to England in 1898 after losing most of her money in a speculative venture.

Emily Hobhouse 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.

Emily Hobhouse only knew about the scorched-earth policy and its devastation.

Emily Hobhouse had a letter of introduction to the British High Commissioner, Alfred Milner, from her aunt, the wife of Arthur Hobhouse, himself the son of Henry Hobhouse, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office under Sir Robert Peel, and who knew Milner.

Emily Hobhouse had persuaded the authorities to let her visit several British concentration camps and to deliver.

Emily Hobhouse arrived at the camp at Bloemfontein on 24 January 1901 and was shocked by the conditions she encountered:.

When Emily Hobhouse requested soap for the people, she was told soap was a luxury.

Emily Hobhouse nevertheless succeeded, after a struggle, to have it listed as a necessity, together with straw, more tents and more kettles in which to boil the drinking water.

Emily Hobhouse visited camps at Norvalspont, Aliwal-North, Springfontein, Kimberley, Mafekeng, and the Orange River Camp.

When Emily Hobhouse returned to England, she received criticism and hostility from the British government and the press.

However, Emily Hobhouse was never acknowledged for her contribution in their report.

Emily Hobhouse returned to Cape Town in October 1901, but was not permitted to land, and was deported five days after arriving.

Emily Hobhouse felt she never received justice for her work.

Early the next year Emily 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.

Emily Hobhouse 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.

Emily Hobhouse was an opponent of the First World War and protested vigorously against it.

Emily Hobhouse organised the writing, signing and publishing in January 1915 of the "Open Christmas Letter", addressed "To the Women of Germany and Austria".

Emily Hobhouse became an honorary citizen of South Africa for her humanitarian work there.

Emily Hobhouse's ashes were put in a niche in the National Women's Monument at Bloemfontein, where she was regarded as a heroine.