LADY HOPE:
The life and work of Lady Hope of Carriden
By L.R. Croft
Elmwood Books. 259 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 0 956 808 950
This is the story of an extraordinary Victorian Christian lady. At times it reads like a Victorian novel – melodrama even.
Elizabeth Cotton was the daughter of a distinguished general and water engineer. She was born in Tasmania, then brought up in India until the age of 13.
Cottage evangelism
Eventually the family settled in the Surrey town of Dorking. From the time of her conversion Elizabeth had known that she must be involved in evangelism, so she began visiting people in their cottages and in the local hospital and workhouse. Before long she was running three Sunday School classes and a women’s Bible class. Her men’s Bible class showed her that the principal problem of working men was with alcohol, and this led her into temperance work. Her father paid for a coffee room to be built, comfortable and attractive to working men, as an alternative to the local pub.
Scotland
At 34, Elizabeth married the elderly Admiral Sir James Hope, the greatest naval hero since Nelson, and moved with him to Scotland. Sir James too was a devout Christian and temperance advocate, and supported Elizabeth as she started Bible classes and a coffee house there. Then, as a wealthy widow, she took a ‘temperance tent’ first to Ayr racecourse, and then to the hop-pickers in Kent. In the 1880s, she set up the ‘Golden Bells Coffee Palace’ in the notorious slums of Notting Hill, frequently displaying enormous personal courage.
The Connaught Club
Elizabeth married for a second time at the age of 50, though she retained the name Lady Hope. Her husband, another wealthy man, had opened a large hostel for homeless men, and Elizabeth also opened one for men servants in the West End. Finally, her most ambitious project was the enormous Connaught Club near Marble Arch, providing accommodation for men on temperance principles and at reasonable costs, with a concert hall and gymnasium. Sadly, though, she placed too much trust in one of her assistants, who turned out to be a con man. Elizabeth was forced to declare bankruptcy. She moved to the United States, still involved in the temperance cause, though her focus on conversion seems to have become less clear.
Among the giants
In the course of her life, Elizabeth knew or encountered many eminent Victorians. David Livingstone was at one time a next-door neighbour. Lord Shaftesbury chaired a dinner for her father on his retirement. Florence Nightingale admired Elizabeth’s coffee-room movement and invited her to speak in her home. She accompanied Princess Mary of Teck, later Queen Mary, on a visit to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. She helped Dwight L. Moody in his evangelistic campaigns in Scotland, Ireland and London. Her second husband saved William Booth’s Salvation Army from bankruptcy on more than one occasion. Elizabeth visited Charles Darwin, himself a strong advocate of temperance, several times when he was bedridden at the end of his life. She maintained that he was reading his Bible and asked her to hold an evangelistic meeting for his servants and friends in his summerhouse, though this never took place. One of Darwin’s sons publicly accused her of lying, and Elizabeth was on her way back to England to sue him for defamation in the High Court when she died in Sydney, Australia.
Not without fault
What a life! Lady Hope was a gifted and compassionate woman of enterprise, energy and courage, who used her wealth and influence for the Lord. Her faults seem to have been a certain naivete, a lack of business sense, a tendency to ‘go it alone’ and a gradual decline in her Christian focus.
The author, Laurence Croft, has had a distinguished career in medicine, and there are many enlightening medical comments in this thought-provoking biography.
