ABSTRACT
Emily Hobhouse was a political campaigner for a range of pacifist and social causes. Her early adult life was spent working for and looking after her ailing father, who was Archdeacon of Bodmin. In 1899 Hobhouse was invited by Liberal MP Leonard Courtney to serve as a secretary to the women’s branch of the South African Conciliation Committee, a pressure group opposed to the British role in the Boer War. In the following year Hobhouse set up the Distress Fund for South African Women and Children and then travelled to the Transvaal and Orange Free State to manage the distribution of these funds. Hobhouse’s campaign led to the establishment by parliament of the Fawcett Commission which toured the concentration camps and scenes of scorched earth destruction. The commission fully corroborated Hobhouse’s findings and prompted Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain to take the running of these camps out of military’s hands and take steps to better feed and care for the prisoners.
