In the aftermath of the 1899-1902 South African War, the British humanitarian reformer Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926) founded the Boer Home Industries, a series of spinning, weaving and lace schools intended to replenish domestic textiles destroyed in the war.  This was also to provide industry for unemployed Boer women, to symbolise co-operation and reconciliation between Boer and Briton in South Africa, and the self-sufficiency of the new South African nation.  In this paper we will be delving into the origins and development of Hobhouse’s lace school, and considering the moral values Hobhouse hoped that lace-making would engender.

Helen Dampier is Reader in History at Leeds Beckett University. Her research is concerned with life writings – especially letters – as well as women’s politicking, cultural nationalism, and twentieth-century South Africa. She was part of the Olive Schreiner Letters Online, the Emily Hobhouse Letters Project, and was more recently involved in the Letters of Richard Cobden Online. 

Rebecca Gill is Reader in Modern History at the University of Huddersfield with a special interest in the cultural history of humanitarianism, peace activism, refugee history and craft practice.  She is currently Co-I on the AHRC-funded Asylums: Refugees and Mental Health project.  Prior to this, she was involved in the Emily Hobhouse Letters Project, where she researched history, racial politics and current curatorial practices associated with Hobhouse’s Boer Home Industries scheme in South Africa.