Rationalist, Socialist, Pacifist, and Humanitarian

Henry S. Salt

Henry Stephens Salt was an English writer and campaigner for social reform and the rights of animals. He was an ethical vegetarian, socialist, and pacifist, and was well known as a literary critic, biographer, and naturalist. It was Salt who influenced Mahatma Gandhi’s study of vegetarianism.

Henry Stephens Salt, humanitarian and animal rights campaigner

Ernest Bell

Ernest Bell (1851–1933) was a publisher, author and a prominent animal rights campaigner. He was Chairman of the Humanitarian League, President of the Vegetarian Society and co-founder of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports. He spent much time on the administration and fund-raising for three main reform causes: vegetarianism, humanitarianism, and animal welfare.

Ernest Bell - The Animals' Friend
Mobilizing Traditions in the First Wave of the British Animal Defense Movement

Mobilizing Traditions in the First Wave of the British Animal Defense Movement

Chien-hui Li’s new book, published by Palgrave Macmillan, brilliantly shows how those who fought passionately for better treatment of animals could draw strength and ideas from various sources, interpreting them creatively to serve their own purposes.

Features Henry Salt, Ernest Bell, Howard Moore and many of their associates. Highly recommended!

Read More…

Against All Cruelty: The Humanitarian League 1891-1919

The Humanitarian League 1891-1919

Dan Weinbren’s thesis considers the way in which the Humanitarian League was structured, the ideas of those who were active within it, what the League did and who was involved in its work.

The League attempted to unify opposition to the cultural order. In its place it wished to create a new scheme for those whose mid-Victorian evangelical sense of the significance and harmony of human experience had been shattered. It hoped to build a political and economic world upon its moral vision.

Dan has kindly allowed us to share his valuable thesis. Read More…