Birth of Emily Hobhouse

Emily Hobhouse was born on 9 April 1860 at the rectory of St Ive, a small parish near Liskeard in Cornwall, England. She was the sixth of seven children born to Reginald Hobhouse, the Anglican rector of the parish, and his wife Caroline (née Trelawny), who came from an old Cornish family.

Growing up in a strict, conservative clerical household, Emily received little formal education beyond that typical for a Victorian daughter of the gentry, though she was intellectually curious and deeply affected by the constraints placed on women of her class and era. Her mother died when Emily was twenty, after which she took on responsibility for managing her father's household and caring for him through his long final illness.

This early life of duty and restriction in a remote Cornish parish shaped the woman who would later become one of the most courageous humanitarian campaigners of her generation. Her Cornish roots and nonconformist moral sensibility would inform her later willingness to challenge the British establishment on matters of conscience, particularly regarding the treatment of civilians in wartime. St Ive and Cornwall remain proud of her legacy, with commemorations in the region marking her birthplace as the starting point of a life devoted to relieving suffering across the world.