{"id":1624,"date":"2016-04-25T16:55:15","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T15:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilnet.manchester.ac.uk\/?p=1"},"modified":"2019-10-04T16:13:52","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T15:13:52","slug":"wilnet-presents-jane-addams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/wilnet\/2016\/04\/25\/wilnet-presents-jane-addams\/","title":{"rendered":"WILNET presents Jane Addams"},"content":{"rendered":"

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by Sara De Vido<\/h2>\n

As we celebrate women in international law, we take up the call to commemorate the lost or forgotten women who have helped shape the development of the field.\u00a0With this in mind, please see our first contribution to this cause: a short biography of Jane Addams.\u00a0<\/em>Jane\u00a0was president of the International Congress of Women, and later the Women\u2019s International League for Peace and Freedom.\u00a0WILNET’s Sara De Vido highlights the key parts of Jane’s life, and her contribution to international law.<\/em><\/p>\n

Early life<\/h3>\n

Jane Addams was born in Cerdarville, Illinois, the eighth of nine children. Her father was a local political leader who served for sixteen years as a state senator and fought as an officer in the Civil War. Her father had many important friends, including President Abraham Lincoln.<\/p>\n

Education<\/h3>\n

In 1881 Addams graduated from the Rockford Female Seminary, the valedictorian of a class of seventeen; however, she was granted the bachelor\u2019s degree only after the school became accredited the next year as Rockford College for Women. She then began the study of medicine but left it because of poor health. She managed to travel in Europe for twenty-one months, and then spent almost two years in reading and writing.<\/p>\n

Career<\/h3>\n

At the age of twenty-seven, during a second tour to Europe with her friend Ellen G. Starr, she visited a settlement house, Toynbee Hall, in London\u2019s East End. This visit convinced her to open a similar house in an underprivileged area of Chicago. In 1889 she and Miss Starr leased a large home built by Charles Hull at the corner of Halsted and Polk Streets. The two friends moved in, their purpose, as expressed later, being \u201cto provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 <\/sup><\/strong>In 1905 she was appointed to Chicago\u2019s Board of Education and subsequently became chairman of the School Management Committee; in 1908 she participated in the founding of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and in the next year became the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections. In her own area of Chicago she led investigations on midwifery, narcotics consumption, milk supplies, and sanitary conditions. Her own aspiration was to rid the world of war; hence in 1906 she gave a course of lectures at the University of Wisconsin summer session, which she published the next year as a book,\u00a0\u201cNewer Ideals of Peace\u201d<\/em>. She advocated for peace in 1913 at a ceremony commemorating the building of the Peace Palace at The Hague. In the next two years, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation, she spoke against America\u2019s entry into the First World War. In January 1915, she was offered the chair of the Women\u2019s Peace Party, an American organization, and four months later the presidency of the International Congress of Women convened at The Hague largely upon the initiative of Dr. Aletta Jacobs, a Dutch suffragist leader. When this congress later founded the organization called the Women\u2019s International League for Peace and Freedom, Jane Addams served as president until 1929, as presiding officer of its six international conferences in those years, and as honorary president for the remainder of her life.<\/p>\n

She publicly opposed America\u2019s entry into the war, causing her to be expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution. Nonetheless, she worked as an assistant to Herbert Hoover in providing relief supplies of food to the women and children of the enemy nations, the story of which\u00a0she told in her book\u00a0\u201cPeace and Bread in Time of War\u201d<\/em>\u00a0(1922).<\/p>\n

Publications<\/h3>\n