Emily Hobhouse a Cornish humanitarian remembered & honoured
Emily Hobhouse was a Cornish woman whose life was once very much overlooked and overshadowed by the English establishment. School children throughout Cornwall and Britain would have been taught something about famous English women, whilst those from the non-English nations of the United Kingdom were largely ignored.
Some years ago I was asked to give a talk about Cornish women and included Emily Hobhouse within the six chosen people. The opening of the Emily Hobhouse Museum at her birthplace in St Ive has now created a hub about which this remarkable woman’s life can be commemorated and celebrated here in Cornwall. The new museum in St Ive is the former rectory where Emily was born in 1860 and grew up as daughter of an Anglican rector Reginald Hobhouse and his wife Caroline. A descendent of the Trelawny family Caroline was distantly related to Cornish Bishop Trelawny, providing Emily with strong Cornish roots. As the unmarried daughter of a clergyman it was perhaps expected that Emily would partake in carrying out good deeds within the local community, such as by volunteering and fund raising with the Ladies Home Missionary Society.
Reginald would become the first Archdeacon of Bodmin in 1877, until ill health forced his resignation in 1892. He had, following Caroline's death in 1880, become increasingly unwell and infirm being nursed by Emily until his death at the rectory in St Ive in January 1895 and was then buried alongside his wife in the churchyard. He was highly respected by his colleagues, loved and venerated by his congregation and no doubt a great influence upon his daughter Emily. A memorial was also placed in Truro Cathedral.
As always click the images for larger view
Following her father’s death, a trip to Minnesota USA organised by Mary the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury Edward Benson, Emily carried out welfare work amongst Cornish mineworkers. Benson was previously the Bishop of Truro and initiator of Truro Cathedral and the reason Emily was known to them. This period saw her engaged to marry and when it was broken off in 1898 she returned to England much poorer having lost her money. However, Emily was now free to pursue her own interests and she certainly found a public facing voice including writing in the magazine ‘The Nineteenth century: a monthly review’. This magazine regarded by historians as being 'one of the most important and recognized monthly journals of serious thinking during the last quarter of the nineteenth century'. Her article in the March 1900 edition was entitled ‘Women workers: how they live, how they wish to live’ indicated she was no shrinking violet.
It was her actions during the Boer War which really thrust Emily Hobhouse into the limelight. Newspapers in May 1900 reported that Miss Emily Hobhouse and other women were organising a mass meeting against the war at the Queens Hall in London. Emily was quoted as saying ‘Mad we may be but for all that we are going to try and evoke a protest from the women who suffer by the war.’
In 1899 Emily Hobhouse had been appointed secretary of the South African Conciliation Committee, a group opposing the British governments policy regarding South Africa. June 1900 saw the mass meeting mentioned in May taking place in London where women protested against the British army’s actions in South Africa. In September Emily founded the South African Women and Children Distress Fund collecting funds to help Boer families. Events in South Africa would deteriorate further with introduction of concentration camps during November 1900. As a well-recognised humanitarian and pacifist Emily was determined to see the situation for herself, obtaining permission to travel to South Africa in December 1900 to investigate the camps. It’s an understatement to say this made her unpopular with those in government, but the actions of the British army in South Africa with their scorched earth policy could be seen as comparable with the horrors witnessed in Gaza today. Sections of the general public as well as Liberal Party opposition politicians were sympathetic to the ordinary folk caught up in the war and revulsion of the British concentration camps.
Beginning in January 1901 Emily started visiting various concentration camps including those at Springfontein, Norvalspont, Kimberley and Mafeking camps. She witnessed clearances of entire communities transported in open coal trucks to concentration camps. Arriving at Bloemfontein she was horrified at the camp conditions there. Sir Alfred Milner the High Commissioner for South Africa, one of the people instrumental in the misery caused during the Boar Wars, refused her permission to travel any further north of the town. On 7th May following her fact-finding tour she returned to England to share her findings. Many in the opposition Liberal party were against the war, the leader and future Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman saying, ‘When is a war not a war?’ with ‘When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.’ After the war Campbell-Bannerman’s liberals won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election. David Lloyd-George, later Prime Minister during World War One condemned the concentration camps and the horrors inflicted on women and children saying; ‘a barrier of dead children's bodies will rise between the British and Boer races in South Africa.’
On 18th June Emily Hobhouse’s report ‘To the S.A. Distress Fund, Report of a visit to the camps of women and children in the Cape and Orange River Colonies’ was published. Further badgering of the War Office by Emily to make improvements to the camps saw them agree to creation of a Ladies Commission (Fawcett Commission) to investigate the camps. This was as could be expected made up of women closely associated with the government and army and excluded Emily Hobhouse. This commission reported in December and was highly critical of the camps and their administration but would not recommend their immediate closure. It did substantiate the most serious of Emily Hobhouse’s charges, but she was personally reviled for her compassion for enemy subjects. Emily Hobhouse noted the Fawcett Commission had completely ignored the concentration camps containing native peoples, and her letters of advice was referred to as being the actions of a busy body.
During October, the period the Fawcett Commission was in South Africa, Emily Hobhouse returned to South Africa arriving in Cape Town where she was refused permission to land by the Military Commandant of Cape Town. After being forced to undertake a medical examination Emily was deported back to England and wasn’t permitted to return until after the war. The rest of the war was spent in writing a book ‘The Brunt of the War and Where it Fell’ dedicated to the Women of South Africa, published by Methuen & Co, London in 1902. When she did return to South Africa she set up schools for women and children teaching various life skills.
Emily’s recorded observations have added another abominable historical stain on the name of the British Empire resulting in the deaths of an estimated 48,000 in the concentration camps alone. Emily Hobhouse’s actions were instrumental in raising issues of the treatment of the South African Boer and native populations, and if not for her work many more would have perished. Her fund raising throughout the war also helped provide for many people held in the concentration camps. A post war report stated that deaths included 24,074 children under the age of 16, some fifty percent of the Boer child population. Malnutrition, disease and lack of medical facilities were the main causes of death in the camps.
During World War One Emily tried to encourage peace visiting Europe, including Berlin, during June 1916. She wrote ‘Holding as I do, that War is not only wrong in itself, but a crude mistake I stand wholly outside its passions … My small means are devoted entirely to help non-combatants who suffer in consequence of war and in supporting every movement making for peace.’ Although her visit was not successful, she had managed to meet with the German Foreign Minister at the height of the war to discuss a peace plan. Returning to Britain she was rebuffed by the government and many turned against her branding her a traitor despite her noble efforts to save lives and end the war.
Following the end of the war Emily worked for the Save the Children Fund in Leipzig and Vienna. Food shortages in Germany and Austria-Hungary had been acute due to the Royal Navy and French naval blockades causing mass malnutrition and starvation. Working to help feed thousands of women and children who would have likely died, Emily also began her own food scheme to ease ongoing famine. Her work in Europe was supported through fund raising of over £17,000 by supporters in South Africa. Personal to Emily Hobhouse, grateful South Africans collected sufficient money in 1921 allowing Emily to purchase a house in St Ives. This building is now part of the Porthminster Hotel where there is a plaque, unveiled in 1994 by South African High Commissioner Kent Durr, commemorating her humanitarian work.
Emily Hobhouse died on June 8, 1926 in London. Her ashes were later interred at the National Women’s Memorial at Bloemfontein, South Africa. Her death was not reported in Cornwall and her life was largely overlooked at the time although many regional newspapers recognised her huge contributions and her Cornish heritage. The internment of her ashes in Bloemfontein was preceded by a procession of women and 400 mounted burghers. A splendid send off for a great Cornish woman. There is now a huge interest in Emily Hobhouse with books and archived material readily available. Hopefully this brief and very inadequate introduction to her life’s work will inspire greater interest amongst people in Cornwall, her birth nation, encouraging visits to the museum celebrating her life in St Ive.
