About: Rosa Waugh Hobhouse

Rosa Waugh Hobhouse (1882–1971) was a British social worker and pacifist, who vigorously campaigned for a negotiated end to World War 1. She was also a poet, a prolific author and teacher. Described by Sylvia Pankhurst as a ‘Quaker with a mystic temperament’. she spent much of her early adult life living and working among the poor of London’s East End. She wanted a society based on egalitarian principles which had no divisions on the basis of gender, race, class or nation. Towards this goal, Rosa Hobhouse, along with the social activist Mary Hughes and the social reformer Muriel Lester, entered into voluntary poverty as an example of how society could be modelled freed from the constraints and inequalities of class.