Bloemfontein to recreate pacifist Emily Hobhouse’s funeral — Daily Maverick
In Bloemfontein, South Africa, on October 31, 2026, the state funeral of British pacifist, feminist and humanitarian Emily Hobhouse, which took place there in 1926, will be recreated. The reconstruction, being prepared by the Emily100 movement, will involve 650 people in period costumes, Daily Maverick reports.
Reconstruction of the procession
During the original funeral in October 1926, more than 20,000 people came to bid farewell to Hobhouse. Women dressed in white carried her ashes through the city streets, after which they were buried at the foot of the National Women’s Monument. According to the organizers, it was the first state funeral for a woman and the only such funeral for a foreign woman.
As 100 years ago, the procession will be led by 200 schoolgirls from the local Eunice and Oranje schools. The Free State Youth Wind Ensemble will also perform during the march. Participants will walk 600 metres along Monument Road to the National Women’s Monument, where the organizers plan to recreate the ceremony’s program, including psalms, passages from Scripture and a speech by General Jan Smuts.
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Emily Hobhouse’s legacy
Emily Hobhouse was born in 1860 in St Ives, Cornwall. At the beginning of the Anglo-Boer War, she joined the South African Conciliation Committee, which opposed the war, and later founded the Fund for South African Women and Children.
In 1901, Hobhouse visited British concentration camps in South Africa, distributed aid and gathered material on the conditions in which people were held. In June of that year, she published a 40-page report. A commission appointed to investigate the situation in the camps confirmed her findings. After the war ended, Hobhouse raised funds to help those affected and founded 26 spinning and weaving schools, as well as one lace-making school.
To prepare the reconstruction, the organizers used 30 photographs, one film reel from the 1926 funeral and the diary of Meenie Fleck containing records about the ceremony’s preparations. Bloemfontein will also host an exhibition about Hobhouse, weaving and lace-making demonstrations, a recreated section of a concentration camp, and the musical production The Story of Emily, which will be staged from October 28 to 31.
