Section of the biographic note concerning Stella Duckworth and Julia Stephen written by Susan P. Waide, 2024.
Octavia Hill (1838-1912) was an English social reformer dedicated to the issue of housing reform in London, England. Hill was born in Cambridgeshire, England to a family of social reformers. Her father was James Hill, a corn merchant, former banker, and follower of Robert Owen, the founder of utopian socialism and the co-operative movement. Her mother was Caroline Southwood Hill, a progressive educationalist and writer who was also active in the co-operative movement and other radical circles. In her childhood Hill was exposed to many progressive thinkers and became especially dedicated to the cause of housing reform after reading Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, which portrayed the daily lives of slum dwellers. She began seriously working for this cause at the age of fourteen, when she took charge of a workroom dedicated to making toys for pupils at Ragged schools. At fifteen she began working as a copyist for the writer, philosopher, and humanitarian John Ruskin.
In 1865 Ruskin purchased three cottages in Paradise Place, Marylebone. Impressed with Hill's work as a copyist, Ruskin placed the cottages under her management. In 1866 he expanded this by five more cottages. Hill made improvements on the properties, which were then leased to low-income tenants. This started her career in housing management, which she undertook in ways not dissimilar to modern social work, emphasizing a bond between management and tenants that involved management getting to know the tenants personally. Hill continued working on this model, expanding to more properties throughout London.
In addition to property management, Hill was involved in promoting tenant's organizations, as well as after work and school clubs and societies. Hill was an advocate for the access to clean, open-aid spaces for urban residents. She coined the term "green belt" in 1875, as part of a fight against London expanding further into the countryside, and was an active part in protecting several natural areas in the city from development. She had a falling out with Ruskin in later years, caused mostly by the latter's mental decline, and moved from him to working closely with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Hill never married. She had an intense friendship with Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, the first practicing female medical doctor in Scotland. Later she lived with a companion, Harriot Yorke, for thirty years, that period ending only with Hill's death from cancer on August 13, 1912, at the age of 73. The exact nature of these relationships cannot be stated, but they had a noted effect on Hill's personal and emotional lives. Hill left the contents of her residence to Yorke, and after Yorke's death eighteen years later she was buried beside Hill in Holy Trinity Chuchyard, Crockham Hill, Kent.
Stella Duckworth (1869-1897) was the half-sister of Vanessa Stephen Bell, Virginia Stephen Woolf, and Thoby and Adrian Stephen by her mother Julia Jackson Duckworth's marriage in 1878 to Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), a prominent Victorian author and editor. Stella Duckworth married solicitor John Waller ("Jack") Hills (1867-1938) on April 10, 1897 in London. She became ill during their honeymoon in Italy and returned to London for medical care, where she died on July 19, 1897 of peritonitis.
Stella was the daughter of Herbert Duckworth of Orchardleigh Park, Somerset (1833-1870) and Julia Prinsep Jackson (1846-1895), born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, to a prominent Anglo-Indian family. They married in 1867. Julia and her sisters Adeline Maria (1837–1881) and Mary Louisa (1841–1916) were the three surviving children of physician John Jackson (1804–1887) and Maria Theodosia Pattle (1818–1892). John Jackson arrived in England in 1855, joining his wife and children who departed India several years earlier. Julia Jackson was a noted beauty who modeled for Pre-Raphaelite artists, and posed for her aunt, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879).
Widowed at an early age, Julia Jackson Duckworth brought three children to her second marriage: Stella, George Herbert (1868-1934), and Gerald de l'Etang Duckworth (1870-1937). Leslie Stephen, soon to become the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB), was also widowed, with a daughter, Laura Makepeace Stephen (1870-1945), born prematurely. Together they had four children, Vanessa (1879–1961), Julian Thoby (1880–1906), Adeline Virginia (1882–1941) and Adrian Leslie (1883–1948), the combined families living at 22 Hyde Park Gate in Kensington, London. (The house was re-numbered from 13 Hyde Park Gate South in 1884.) Stella, as the eldest daughter of a mother committed to philanthropic work while caring for elderly parents, helped Julia in raising the Stephen children and running the household. She was a stalwart support to the family after Julia Duckworth Stephen's death on May 5, 1895. Her own philanthropic efforts included working with social reformer Octavia Hill (1838-1912) to improve housing conditions for the poor. Stella also visited her step-sister Laura Stephen, who had lived with the Duckworth-Stephen family at 22 Hyde Park Gate, but was institutionalized in the early 1890s.