Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Hopkins, Jane Ellice
HOPKINS, JANE ELLICE (1836–1904), social reformer, born at Cambridge on 30 Oct. 1836, was younger daughter of William Hopkins [q. v.], mathematician and geologist, by his second wife, Caroline Boys.
Educated by her father, she developed a faculty for scientific thinking, combined with poetic insight, humour, and religious fervour. Devoting herself to social reform, she held, when about twenty, large meetings of navvies who were employed in a suburb of Cambridge. A club and institute were built through her efforts. Elihu Burritt, the American writer, attested the power of her addresses in his 'Seed Lives' (1863). In 1865 she published 'English Idylls and other Poems,' dedicated to her father, 'to whom I owe all I am.' After his death in 1866, an incurable illness caused her at intervals acute suffering but failed to affect her spirit. Removing with her mother to Brighton, she wrote 'Active Service' (1872–4) and other pamphlets in aid of Sarah Robinson's Soldiers' Institute, Portsmouth. After a year abroad, she made, at Freshwater, the acquaintance of Julia Margaret Cameron [q.v.], George Frederick Watts [q.v. Suppl. II], and Charles Tennyson Turner [q.v.]. During 1872 she met James Hinton [q. v.], under whose medical training and at whose request she embarked on her lifework—the endeavour to raise the moral standard of the community, and to secure the legal protection of the young from ill-usage.
At Hinton's death in 1875 she edited his 'Life and Letters,' and for ten years she arduously wrote and lectured through the three kingdoms on the theme of pure living. Engaged on what George Macdonald [q. v. Suppl. II] called her 'great sad work,' she addressed huge meetings of men in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, Carlisle, Swansea, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, and Dublin, and of mill-girls in Halifax. Although personally frail and insignificant, she exerted over her audiences an instantaneous influence by virtue of her beautiful voice, spiritual intensity, and absence of self-consciousness or sentimentality. Among those who aided her work were Bishop Lightfoot, who said she did the work of ten men in the time, and Bishops Wilkinson, Maclagan, and Fraser. Of 'True Manliness,' one of her many pamphlets which appeared anonymously, 300,000 copies were sold in a year. Her efforts led to an amendment in 1880 of the Industrial Schools Act, which rendered the protection of children under sixteen legally possible, and they helped to pass the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1886.
The aim of her work was preventive while that of Mrs. Josephine Butler [q. v. Suppl. II] was remedial. With Bishop Lightfoot's help she founded the White Cross League in 1886, and saw England and the Colonies dotted over with branches.
In 1888 failure of health compelled her active work to cease. During illness she wrote 'The Power of Womanhood; or Mothers and Sons' (1899), and in 1902 'The Story of Life' (2nd edit. 1903), a book of instruction for the young based on natural history and physiology, of which 7000 copies were sold in a year. She died on 21 August 1904 at Brighton, and was buried there.
Among her other writings are:
- 'An Englishwoman's Work among Workingmen,' 1876; 4th edit. 1882.
- 'Rose Turquand,' a novel, 1876.
- 'Notes on Penitentiary Work,' 1879.
- 'Christ the Consoler, Comfort for the Sick,' with introduction by the Bishop of Carlisle, 1879; 7th edit. 1904.
- 'Preventive Work, or the Care of our Girls,' 1881.
- 'Village Morality,' 1882.
- 'Legal Protection for the Young,' 1882.
- 'Grave Moral Questions addressed to the Men and Women of England,' 1882.
- 'Autumn Swallows, a book of lyrics,' 1883.
- 'The Present Moral Crisis, 1886.
- 'Girls' Clubs and Recreative Evening Homes,' 1887.
[Life by Rosa M. Barrett, 1907; The Times, 24 Aug. 1904; Guardian, 31 Aug. 1904.]