Emily Hobhouse
Emily Hobhouse (April 9, 1860—June 8, 1926, born in Liskeard, Cornwall). Hobhouse is remembered primarily for shedding light on the abhorent conditions inside the British concentration camps built during the Boer War.
In 1900, hearing of the atrocities occuring in South Africa and already opposed to the Boer War, Hobhouse founded the South African Women and Children?s Distress fund. She soon set off to South Africa, arriving in Cape Town on the 27th December 1900. Here she visited a concentration camp in Bloemfontein and was shocked by the conditions she encountered:
"They went to sleep without any provision having been made for them and without anything to eat or to drink. I saw crowds of them along railway lines in bitterly cold weather, in pouring rain - hungry, sick, dying and dead."
When she returned to England she received opposition from the government and the media but succeeded in obtaining more funding to help the victims of the war. The government also agreed to set up a committee to investigate her claims. She returned to South Africa but was refused permission to visit any more camps.
Hobhouse continued to be an avid opposer of the Great War.
She became an honourary citizen of South Africa for her humanitarian work there.
