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Dame Elizabeth Mary Cadbury, DBE (24 June 1858 – 4 December 1951), was an English philanthropist and wife of George Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer.
Early life
Born Elizabeth Mary Taylor in Peckham Rye, London, she was one of ten children of the Quaker company director and stockbroker John Taylor (d. 1894) and his wife, Mary Jane Cash (d. 1887). She grew up in an affluent family background. Her parents were active temperance crusaders, and enthusiasts for the adult education provided by mechanics' institutes.
Elizabeth (or Elsie, as she was known) and her sister Margaret were educated privately in Germany, and Elizabeth then attended North London Collegiate School from 1874 to 1876. In 1876 she passed the senior Cambridge examination in ten subjects, but did not enter higher education. On leaving school she did social work in the London docks and Paris, as well as teaching at the Sunday school of her Quaker meeting.
Family life & career
In 1888 she married George Cadbury, then a widower with five children. Together they had a further six children: Laurence John Cadbury (b. 1889), George Norman (b. 1890), Elsie Dorothea (b. 1892), Egbert (b. 1893), Marion Janet (b. 1894) and Ursula (b. 1906).
Together with her husband she played a great role in the development of Bournville and opened the 200th house there herself. In 1909 opened the Woodland Hospital, which became the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. Later she built The Beeches, to give holidays for children from the Birmingham slums. She chaired the Birmingham school medical service committee and worked energetically to provide medical inspection in schools. From 1941 to 1948 she was president of the United Hospital in Birmingham. Throughout her life she campaigned for the education and welfare of women. She was a convinced non-militant suffragist. The founder in 1898 of the Birmingham Union of Girls' Clubs, she was active in the YWCA and in the National Council for Women from 1896 to her death. In 1936, at the age of seventy-eight, she led the UK delegation to the World Congress of the International Council of Women which was held in Calcutta.
An active pacifist she was the first chair of the Peace and International Relations Committee of the National Council of Women, established in 1914. In 1916 she was elected to the National Peace Council, becoming its treasurer and then its vice-president. Along with Lady Aberdeen, Millicent Fawcett, and Mrs Corbett Ashby, she pressed for the inclusion of women's issues in the agenda of the Congress of Versailles. She was an energetic supporter of the League of Nations Union. In the Second World War, she worked with Belgian refugees, and after that war continued her efforts with the International Council of Women.
In national politics Elizabeth Cadbury's sympathies were similar to those usually associated with Christian socialism, and she was a pillar of the Liberal Party. She was a Birmingham city councillor, for King's Norton ward, from 1919 to 1924, as a Liberal, losing her seat to a Conservative. Her political platform was a reformist one: municipal action in housing improvement, a school health service, and equality of opportunity. Among her political successes were her co-option to the Birmingham education committee in 1919, and her services as a magistrate from 1926.
Their family home until 1894 was Woodbrooke in Selly Oak, Birmingham, but in 1894 they moved to the Manor House, Northfield, Birmingham. They lived there together until George's death in 1922, and Elizabeth continued to live there until her own death in 1951.
In 1948, at the family gathering to celebrate her ninetieth birthday, there were 150 relatives, and at her death she left thirty-seven grandchildren and forty-nine great-grandchildren.
Honours
For her public service Elizabeth Cadbury was made an OBE in 1918 and a DBE in 1934. The Belgian government honoured her in 1918 for her work with refugees, making her an officer of the Order of the Crown, and she was decorated by Queen Elizabeth of the Belgians. The Red Cross organizations of Serbia, Greece, and Yugoslavia also made awards to her for her war work. The University of Birmingham made her an honorary MA in 1919 for her services to education and to the city. A technical college in Birmingham is named in her honour.