Emily Hobhouse is born

On 9 April 1860, Emily Hobhouse was born in Liskeard, Cornwall. Hobhouse was a humanitarian and pacifist who vehemently opposed British government policy in South Africa, and visited the country after founding the South African Women and Children Distress Fund to collect money for Boer families. As the secretary of the South African Conciliation Committee, Hobhouse visited concentration camps set up by the British in the Orange Free State (now Free State) and the Transvaal. Horrified by the ghastly conditions in the concentration camps, Hobhouse was instrumental in a campaign to send Dame Millicent Fawcett to look at the situation. Concerned with the plight of suffering Boer and Black families in the concentration camps, Hobhouse was also concerned with the Indian situation, and reportedly assisted M.K Gandhi in his passive resistance campaigns. Today Hobhouse is celebrated as a humanitarian who fought for the rights of South African families, both Black and White, during the Anglo-Boer War. Therefore she was asked to be present at the unveiling of the Woman's Monument in Bloemfontein in 1913, and it is here that her ashes were scattered after she passed away in 1926.