Georgina King Lewis

Who was Georgina King Lewis?

Georgina King Lewis was described as a "Friend of the Oppressed". She followed in the grand tradition of philanthropic Victorian Quakers, leaving an important legacy in Croydon, South London, England. She was a member of the Stoughton family; her father was a Congregationalist preacher, her brother the Stoughton of Hodder & Stoughton, the publishing house.

To quote her obituary in the Croydon Advertiser, December 13, 1924, Mrs. King Lewis left behind "the practical results and inspiring memory of a wonderful life of discriminating service for others."

As well as her involvement with the first Ruskin House, to which she donated £1,200 of her own money, and the Temperance movement, "she had been on missions of war-time succour to Boers and Bulgars, and in furtherance of anti-slavery had helped to move Governments, as well as privately interviewing Pope Pius X."

Her work with the needy began with the cabmen of Ealing, where she helped to build a Mission Hall. It was when she was 54 that she felt a calling to leave Britain for the concentration camps of South Africa, where she endured spartan conditions with the Boer women and children.

Her belief in God and temperance never faltered.