Early Life
Born in St Ive, near Liskeard in Cornwall, she was the daughter of Caroline Trelawny and Reginald Hobhouse, an Anglican rector and the first Archdeacon of Bodmin. She was the sister of Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, the noted social liberal. She was a second cousin of the important British peace activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse and was a major influence on him.
Her mother died when she was 20, and she spent the next fourteen years looking after her father who was in poor health. When her father died in 1895 she went to Minnesota to perform welfare work amongst Cornish mineworkers living there, the trip having been organised by the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury. There she became engaged to John Carr Jackson and the couple bought a ranch in Mexico but this did not prosper and the engagement was broken off. She returned to England in 1898 after losing most of her money in a speculative venture.
Her wedding veil (that she never wore) hangs in the head office of the "Oranje Vrouevereniging" (Orange Women's Society) in Bloemfontein, the first women's welfare organisation in the Orange Free State, as a symbol of her commitment to the uplifting of women.
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