Elizabeth Fox Howard was a highly courageous woman, who became friends with Mahatma Gandhi and stood up to the Third Reich. She was not afraid to take risks to break down social barriers with kindness and to give compassionate support to the most vulnerable, when the state and the majority of society reviled and rejected them. She summed up her ethos as: 'Alongside the purely relief work, we were always trying to carry a quiet and unostentatious message of friendship and reconciliation’.
Elizabeth ‘Elsie’ Fox Howard, was born on March 6, 1873 at Cleveland House on Hoe Street in Walthamstow, a house that her father Eliot Howard owned from 1871 to 1897. It still stands at No. 285 Hoe Street. Photo: Portico
Elizabeth was born into a noted and wealthy family of pioneering scientists and successful chemical manufacturers, the Howards of Bruce Grove, Tottenham. Her upbringing was privileged and very religious and although it was sheltered, Elizabeth learned a strong sense of public duty, the importance of community service and an interest in social justice from her father Eliot Howard, who was one of Essex’s senior magistrates and a generous philanthropist.
In 1898, Howard Road in Walthamstow was named in honour of the Howard family, as Elizabeth’s uncle David Howard, was the last owner of the Rectory Manor estate on which the road was built. Photo: Google Street View
Just before her 30th birthday, in 1903, Elizabeth left the Church of England and joined the Religious Society of Friends, also known as The Quakers. With the zeal of the convert, Elizabeth soon became one of the leading Quakers of her generation.
Elizabeth Fox Howard aged 40 in 1913
Quakers are pacifist, so during World War One, she became a prison chaplain, visiting absolutist conscientious objectors in Dartmoor Prison, who had refused to support the military in any way. She also gave aid to enemy internees during the Great War and post-war she visited Germany for the first time in 1920, to lead reconciliation with the German people. From then, right up until the outbreak of World War Two, Elizabeth spent months of every year on relief, or reconciliation work in Germany.
In 1897, Elizabeth’s father purchased Ardmore in Buckhurst Hill (in what is now Ardmore Lane), from his longstanding friend Dr. Thomas Barnardo, the founder of Barnardo’s. The house was demolished in 1994. Photo: Margaret Sinfield
When Mahatma Gandhi visited London in 1931 to attend the All-India Conference, he visited Elizabeth Fox Howard at Ardmore. This visit was arranged (probably through Muriel and Doris Lester, who were hosting Gandhi at Kingsley Hall in Bow) to give Gandhi a private and quiet day away from the glare of publicity. It was a bright and warm Sunday, and Elizabeth went for an hour long walk with Gandhi and his entourage, in Epping Forest, over Warren Hill and along Fairmead Bottom.
After lunch, they were joined by leading members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, (a group of Christian Pacifists), for an informal conference with Gandhi, to discuss his teaching of non-violence and ‘the law of love’. After this meeting, Elizabeth and Gandhi continued their friendship in the years that followed, corresponding via letters in which Gandhi addressed her as ‘Sister’ and took interest in Elizabeth’s work in Germany.
The Quaker convalescent home in Bad Pyrmont. Photo: The Library of the Religious Society of Friends
From July 1933 until war broke out in 1939, Elizabeth and the British Quakers in Germany, established a convalescent home in Falkenstein and later in Bad Pyrmont, for political prisoners who had been imprisoned in concentration camps by the Nazis. Refuge was given, usually for a fortnight, to released victims of the Nazi regime and their families, to recover from their ordeal. Approximately 800 people recuperated there, including Jews, Catholics, Lutherans and people of all the Left Wing political parties. One of the guests later described it as ‘that island of kindness amid a storm of wickedness’.
Elizabeth Fox Howard in the early 1950s, with Ernst Reuter the Social Democratic Mayor of Magdeburg until 1933, who she helped to recover from imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp. He later became the Mayor of Berlin during the post-war years
Elizabeth herself was arrested by the Gestapo in 1935 and interrogated about the British Quakers’ activities in Germany and her connections with people that were considered to be acting against the interests of the Third Reich. Fortunately, she was released without harm but she was very concerned about what information the Gestapo may have gleaned by reading her papers that they had confiscated.
When World War II ended, she again returned to Germany, now in her 70s, to continue her reconciliation work and to provide relief to displaced persons. She died in 1957 at the age of 84.
Stephen Ayers is a member of Waltham Forest History and Heritage Network. He is also a tour guide and historian researching the history of Walthamstow Wetlands and water supply in East London, the River Lea and the Lea Valley. He is known on social media as ‘Wetlands Steve’ and can be followed on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram or via his website.
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