At the end of World War I, a British social reformer fought what seemed like a hopeless battle. She stood up for starving children from countries hostile to Britain, risking ostracism and legal trouble. Her determination resulted in the foundation of one of the world’s most recognizable humanitarian organizations and a document that forever changed the way children’s rights are perceived.
A Home Full of Ideas
Eglantyne Jebb was born in August 1876 in Ellesmere, Shropshire, to a lawyer father and a mother deeply involved in social causes. The family estate, The Lyth, became a hotbed of progressive thinking, where young women were encouraged to look beyond traditional roles assigned to their gender. Eglantyne’s mother founded a society for promoting handicrafts among rural youth, while her aunt Louisa, a Cambridge graduate, taught her nieces carpentry and fishing.
It was Aunt Louisa who inspired Eglantyne’s desire for higher education at a time when university studies were almost unattainable for women. Young Jebb pursued history at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, dreaming of a teaching career. But after a year teaching at a school in Marlborough, she quickly realized her calling lay elsewhere.
Eglantyne’s sisters also chose paths of social engagement. Dorothy married a Labour MP and fought against demonizing Germans after the war; Louisa co-founded the Women’s Land Army. The Jebb family was a rare environment where women could freely pursue ambitions beyond just running a household.
Later Career
Moving to Cambridge to care for her sick mother opened up new opportunities for Eglantyne. Influenced by Mary Marshall and Florence Keynes, she joined the Charity Organisation Society, which aimed to introduce a scientific approach to helping those in need. Her research into living conditions resulted in a 1906 publication analyzing Cambridge’s social issues.
Working with the Keynes family led to the creation of youth employment offices. Together with Margaret Keynes, Florence’s daughter, Eglantyne maintained employment registers—first for boys, then for girls. This work left such a lasting impact on the town that in 2014, a commemorative plaque was unveiled on a Regent Street building.
A trip to Macedonia in 1913 for a relief fund became a turning point, shaping Eglantyne’s future mission. There, she saw firsthand the consequences of armed conflict on civilians. When World War I broke out the next year, she joined her sister Dorothy’s project: importing newspapers from enemy nations and publishing their excerpts in English, revealing the real suffering of ordinary people.
The Arrest That Changed History
By the war’s end, Germany’s and Austria-Hungary’s economies were near collapse, and the Allied blockade continued despite the armistice. Children in these countries were dying of hunger, prompting the Jebb sisters to take desperate action. In 1919, as secretary of the Fight the Famine Council, Eglantyne sent doctors and photographers to document the suffering of Central European civilians.
In April 1919, police arrested her in Trafalgar Square for distributing leaflets with photos of starving children. She was found guilty under the Defence of the Realm Act, but the prosecutor—moved by her dedication—paid her fine himself. This incident brought huge publicity and public sympathy to the cause.
A month later, the Save the Children Fund was officially inaugurated at the Royal Albert Hall. The organization soon raised significant funds from British donors willing to help the children of former enemies. Innovative full-page newspaper ads, controversial at the time, proved incredibly effective for fundraising.
The Eglantyne Jebb Phenomenon
The fund’s success led to the creation of the International Save the Children Union in 1920, based in Geneva. Eglantyne spent the last decade of her life there, expanding relief to new crisis areas. Once the Central European situation stabilized, the organization focused on the refugee crisis in Greece, followed by the devastating famine in Soviet Russia in 1921.
Eglantyne’s final great achievement was the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which she personally drafted in 1923. This brief and clear document defined children’s rights and the international community’s duties toward them. The League of Nations adopted the Geneva Declaration a year later, making it the first international legal instrument of its kind in history.
Eglantyne Jebb died in December 1928 at a Geneva sanatorium after a long battle with thyroid disease. Nearly a hundred years later, in February 2024, Geneva authorities transferred her remains to the Cimetière des Rois, known as the Geneva Pantheon. This symbolic act honored a woman whose vision of children’s rights became the cornerstone of the modern global system of child protection.
Rory Thornfield
Rory's grandfather left behind a wartime diary filled with accounts of a minor Burma skirmish that history books never mentioned. Reading it, Rory realized: behind every famous battle are dozens of forgotten struggles, each with its own human drama.
His preferred topics: The overlooked corners of military history – secondary campaigns, shadow battalions, local conflicts that never made headlines. From medieval sieges to twentieth-century expeditions, he focuses on the soldiers, not the generals. The people who faced impossible choices and carried those experiences forever.
Rory strips away the romanticism without losing respect for those who served. He combines tactical analysis with personal stories, examining human endurance and moral complexity rather than celebrating warfare. His writing is balanced, thoughtful, and deeply researched.
Outside work, Rory visits forgotten battlefields (now quiet farmland), photographs war memorials nobody tends anymore, and interviews veterans' families.