Elizabeth Cadbury

Dame Elizabeth Mary Cadbury ( Taylor; 24 June 1858 – 4 December 1951) was a British activist, politician and philanthropist. Her husband was George Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer. visited workhouses with her mother and volunteered at children’s hospitals in her youth.

She 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 University examination in ten subjects, but did not enter higher education. She did attend public lectures held at the London Institution. taking a class of 40 boys in a poor district of south London. Following this in 1884, she started a boys’ club, as well as working with women in the slums of London. These activities were highly unusual for a lady of her age, marital status and social class. In Peckham Rye, on 19 June 1888,

The founder in 1898 of the Birmingham Union of Girls' Clubs, Cadbury was active in the National Council for Women from 1896 to her death. She was the founder of the Midlands Division of the Young Women's Christian Association. In 1911 she was appointed Chairman of Birmingham City Education Committee’s Hygiene Sub-Committee.

An active pacifist, Cadbury opposed the Second Boer War, 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 Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, 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.

During and immediately following the First World War, Cadbury led local efforts to provide housing and schooling for young refugees from Serbia and Austria who came to Birmingham to escape conflict and poverty in their home countries.

In 1936, aged 78, she led the UK delegation to the World Congress of the International Council of Women, held in Calcutta.

Garden City Movement Cadbury was influential in the development of Bournville Village and was vice-president of the Ruskin Society of Birmingham (RSB). now the Manor House, Bristol Road, Northfield, Birmingham. Woodbrooke then became the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre.

Elizabeth and George lived at the Manor together until George's death in 1922, and Elizabeth resided there until her own death in 1951, aged 93.

During World War II, she invited the Friends' Ambulance Unit to establish its training centre in the grounds. The grounds were also sometimes used for garden parties and other events in aid of worthy causes.

In 1948, at the family gathering to celebrate her 90th birthday, there were 150 relatives. At her death in 1951,

The ten medals that Dame Cadbury was awarded throughout her life are now held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.