Eva Marian Hubback

Eva Marian Hubback (13 April 1886 – 15 July 1949) was an English feminist and an early advocate of birth control and eugenics. While an autobiography, the book serves as a key work on the life of conservative anti-Nazi campaigner and conspirator Adam von Trott, with whom she may have engaged in a love affair. Hopkinson also authored a biography of her mother.

All three of Hubback’s children were interviewed as part of the historian Brian Harrison’s Suffrage Interviews project, titled Oral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews. Her son, David, and daughter, Rachel, were interviewed together in February 1976. They recalled the influence of her Cambridge education, her activities in the Second World War and her interest in education for citizenship and population, two of the topics she published on in the 1940s. Hopkinson was interviewed twice, in February 1976 and October 1984, talking about Hubback’s writing, politics and work as well as the influence of her Jewish identity.

Hubback’s sister, the occupational psychologist Winifred Raphael, was interviewed about her sister in March 1976. She talks about Hubback’s education, family life, work and politics, including Hubback’s marriage outside the family’s Jewish faith, and the impact of this on the wider family.

In March 1976 Harrison conducted an interview with Erna Nelki who became secretary to Hubback as a refugee seeking work during the Second World War. She talks about her work at Hubback’s home in Hampstead, as well as working with Marjorie Sprince Stephens, also secretary to Hubback, and interviewed by Harrison in May 1976. The interviews give further insight into Hubback’s personality, public life and interest in education. In January 1977 Harrison interviewed the politician, Peggy Jay, who Hubback had contact with when Jay became a member of the Royal Commission on population. Hubback published 2 books on population in the 1940s, Population facts and policies in 1945, and The population of Britain in 1947.