Ruth Homan

Ruth Homan (8 August 1850 – 6 November 1938) was an educationist and women's welfare campaigner, who worked for many years on the London School Board.

Life Ruth Homan was born in Hoxton, London to Sir Sydney Waterlow, a philanthropist and politician, and Anna Maria (née Hickson). Winifred lived with her mother at Fairseat, Tintagel, until she married Philip Stephens.

Work for the London School Board Her family had been politically active, and friends of her father included Thomas Henry Huxley. When she ran for the London School Board in 1891, she had prepared herself through stints as a school manager, a probationer at St Bartholomew's Hospital, and with the Country Holidays Fund (a charity). a vice-president of the Pupil-Teachers Association, and a member of a Club of Working Girls in the city. Ruth Homan was a founding member of the West London Ethical Society in 1892, one of the formative bodies of the Union of Ethical Societies (which became Humanists UK). The West London Ethical Society, part of the early Ethical movement in the UK, appealed:To those who have no longer a place in established religious organisations, but who yet consider that there is as good need as ever for the exposition and inculcation of the meaning and worth of the moral and inward life... to provide a centre where those who share that conviction may regularly meet, listen to, and exchange thoughts on the themes that concern human wellbeing in the widest and highest sense, unhampered by tradition and conventions that have spent their force.

Towards the end of her life, Ruth Homan lived in Cornwall, where she was president of the Tintagel Nursing Association and her local branch of the Women's Institute. She also established the village's social hall.