The Full Story
In 1919, the Great War was over, but Britain maintained a naval blockade of Germany and Austria. Millions of children were starving. The British government did not want its citizens to know.
Eglantyne Jebb knew. She had travelled to the devastated regions and seen the children herself, hollow-eyed, skeletal, dying in their thousands. She came home to England and did something the authorities considered dangerous: she handed out leaflets in Trafalgar Square showing photographs of the starving children, with the headline 'Our Blockade Has Caused This.'
She was arrested and prosecuted under the Defence of the Realm Act. The charge: distributing material likely to prejudice His Majesty's relations with foreign powers. At trial, even the prosecutor was moved. He paid her fine out of his own pocket.
But Jebb was not finished. She founded the Save the Children Fund in 1919, and within a year it had raised the equivalent of millions of pounds. She organised feeding programmes that saved tens of thousands of lives across Europe, including in countries Britain had just been at war with.
Then she went further. Jebb drafted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, a revolutionary document asserting that every child, regardless of nationality, had fundamental rights to food, shelter, education, and protection. In 1924, the League of Nations adopted it. It became the foundation for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history.
One woman. Arrested for showing photographs. She changed the way the world treats children.
Why This Matters
Eglantyne Jebb's story is a powerful example of how one person's refusal to accept injustice can reshape international law. The Declaration she wrote in a flat in London became the basis for children's rights protections that now cover virtually every nation on earth. Save the Children, the organisation she founded from her arrest, now operates in 120 countries. Her story carries a distinctly British quality: the willingness to stand up for the vulnerable even when those vulnerable people are on the other side.
Key Facts
- ✓Eglantyne Jebb (25 August 1876 – 17 December 1928) was born in Ellesmere, Shropshire (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com, Save the Children UK, all sources agree on dates and birthplace)
- ✓She studied at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (Wikipedia, LMH Oxford alumni records)
- ✓She worked as a teacher in Marlborough before moving to Cambridge (Encyclopedia.com, Wikipedia)
- ✓After WWI, the Allied naval blockade continued, preventing food supplies from reaching Germany and Austria, causing widespread famine among civilians including children (Wikipedia, Save the Children UK, History Hit, all sources confirm the post-armistice blockade)
- ✓In April/May 1919, Eglantyne Jebb distributed leaflets in Trafalgar Square featuring photographs of starving Austrian children with the headline "Our Blockade has caused this, millions of children are starving to death" (Save the Children UK, Wikipedia, History Hit, Lost Cambridge, multiple primary and secondary sources confirm)
- ✓She was prosecuted under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 for distributing the leaflets without clearance from the military censor (Wikipedia, Save the Children UK, History Hit)
- ✓She was found guilty and fined £5 (Wikipedia, Save the Children UK, multiple secondary sources)
- ✓The Crown Prosecutor, Sir Archibald Bodkin, was so impressed by her that after the session closed he pressed £5, the sum of her fine, into her hand (Save the Children UK, History Hit, Clare Mulley biography, Lost Cambridge, note: some sources say "prosecuting counsel" rather than "judge." The person who donated was the PROSECUTOR, Sir Archibald Bodkin, NOT the judge. The script correctly identifies him as the Crown Prosecutor.)
- ⚠"The judge who convicted her donated to her cause", this is a common simplification found in popular accounts. The more accurate version, used in this script, is that the Crown Prosecutor (Archibald Bodkin) made the donation. The judge is not recorded as having donated. This script uses the correct version.
- ✓Save the Children was launched at the Royal Albert Hall on 19 May 1919 (Wikipedia, Save the Children UK, exact date confirmed)
- ✓The Albert Hall launch was hugely controversial because the fund aimed to help children of enemy nations, Germany and Austria (Save the Children UK, History Hit, Clare Mulley biography)
- ⚠"People came ready to throw rotten apples", this detail appears in the Clare Mulley biography "The Woman Who Saved the Children" and in Save the Children's own centenary accounts. It is based on secondary source material and may involve some literary embellishment, but it is widely cited.
- ✓Robert Smillie, President of the Miners' Trade Union, raised £10,000 (eventually £35,000) from his federation within days of the Albert Hall launch (Wikipedia, Save the Children NZ)
- ✓Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton co-founded Save the Children in 1919 (Wikipedia, Save the Children UK, Britannica, all sources confirm)
- ✓In 1923, the International Save the Children Union adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, drafted by Eglantyne Jebb (Wikipedia, Declaration of the Rights of the Child, Humanium, OHCHR)
- ✓On 26 September 1924, the League of Nations adopted the declaration as the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child (Wikipedia, Humanium, OHCHR, CRIN, exact date confirmed)
- ✓This was the first international human rights document focused specifically on children (Humanium, OHCHR, UNICEF, multiple UN sources confirm)
- ✓Jebb wrote to the League of Nations: "I believe we should claim certain Rights for the children and labour for their universal recognition" (Humanium, OHCHR, Save the Children, direct quote widely attributed)
- ✓The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted on 20 November 1989, expanding Jebb's original declaration (UNICEF, UN Research Guides, Save the Children UK)
- ✓The CRC has been ratified by 196 states parties, making it the most widely ratified international human rights treaty in history (UNICEF, UN.org, Human Rights Watch, all confirm 196 ratifications)
- ✓Eglantyne Jebb never married and had no children (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com, Clare Mulley biography, Museum of Cambridge)
- ✓She suffered from a chronic thyroid condition (goitre) requiring three operations over her lifetime (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com)
- ✓She died on 17 December 1928 in a nursing home in Geneva and was buried in Saint George's cemetery, Geneva (Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com, exact date and burial location confirmed)
- ✓She was 52 years old at the time of her death (born 25 August 1876, died 17 December 1928, confirmed by arithmetic and all sources)