Dorothy Buxton


Dorothy Frances Buxton was an English humanitarian, social activist and commentator on Germany.

Life

Dorothy Frances Jebb was born 3 August 1881 in Ellesmere, Shropshire, the youngest of three sisters born to Arthur Trevor Jebb and Eglantyne Louisa Jebb. Her mother's brother was the Cambridge classicist Richard Claverhouse Jebb, and Dorothy was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge.
In 1904 she married Charles Roden Buxton, at that time a Liberal politician, and the pair were active in the Liberal Party. In 1915 she joined the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1917 she and her husband left the Liberal Party for the Labour Party, and joined the Society of Friends. During the First World War she compiled 'Notes from the Foreign Press' for the Cambridge Magazine. Her writing inspired the Fight the Famine Council, founded in 1918 as an effort to alleviate starvation of civilians in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the Allied blockade of Germany in World War I, which led to the Save the Children Fund, which she and her sister Eglantyne Jebb founded in 1919.
In 1935, increasingly concerned at Nazi treatment of Christians in Germany, she visited Germany to see for herself. She secured an interview with Hermann Göring to raise the issue of treatment of civilians. On her return she informed George Bell, Bishop of Chicester, that German Christians whom she had met "seemed oppressed and bound with the apparent necessity of extreme caution". Though her husband campaigned for appeasement of Germany, Dorothy Buxton became convinced that war was necessary against the Nazis.
During World War II she campaigned for refugees from Nazi Germany, as well as for the welfare of German prisoners of war.
She died 8 April 1963 in Peaslake, near Guildford, aged 81. Papers relating to her and her husband are held at the London School of Economics.

Works

Archives of Save the Children, including papers of Dorothy Buxton, are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.