Vegetarianism in the Victorian era

Advertisement for the Alpha Food Reform Restaurant.

Vegetarianism in the Victorian era was the advocacy and practice of meat-free diets in Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). The organised movement coalesced with the founding of the Vegetarian Society in 1847, following earlier religious and medical advocacy; the word "vegetarian" was in print by 1842 and gained wider currency in the late 1840s. Victorian organisations generally defined vegetarianism as abstention from the flesh of animals (fish, flesh, fowl) rather than from all animal products, a usage that often encompassed what is now termed ovo-lacto vegetarianism.

Advocates advanced health, humanitarian, religious and economic arguments through lectures, tracts, periodicals and cookery guidance; vegetarian discussion also intersected with hydropathy and wider health-reform publishing, and found audiences in urban restaurants and self-improvement circles. Press coverage ranged from satirical sketches to descriptive reports of dinners and meetings, and the organised movement remained small relative to the population: by 1899, Britain's vegetarian societies reported almost 7,000 members and associates.

Background

See also: History of vegetarianism and Vegetarianism in the Romantic era

Victorian readers were familiar with historical and literary precedents for abstaining from meat. The word "vegetarian" and an organised movement were still new to many in the 1840s; the term was in print by 1842 in the Healthian Journal, though some accounts credit the 1847 inaugural meeting of the Vegetarian Society with popularising or coining the label.

Antecedents included the Bible Christian Church founded by William Cowherd in Salford, which from 1809 promoted a vegetable diet, and the early-19th-century advocacy of London physician William Lambe for a plant-food-only regimen; transatlantic links involved educational reformers James Pierrepont Greaves and Amos Bronson Alcott. These networks developed in dialogue with health-reform circles in Britain and the United States that discussed meatless diets on moral and physiological grounds.

Organisation and advocacy

Vegetarian Society

Formation

Interior of Northwood Villa, where the Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847.

Meetings at Alcott House in July 1847 led to a gathering at Northwood Villa, Ramsgate, on 30 September 1847, chaired by MP Joseph Brotherton, at which the Vegetarian Society was established; early officers were William Horsell (secretary), James Simpson (president) and William Oldham (treasurer).

Definition of vegetarianism

The society defined vegetarianism as abstention from the flesh of animals rather than from all animal products; period writings stated that "milk and eggs may be termed animal products, but they are not flesh", and the Society's aim was "to induce habits of abstinence from the Flesh of Animals (fish, flesh, fowl) as Food". This definition generally encompassed ovo-lacto vegetarianism.

Activities and outreach

The society brought together social reformers, philanthropists and Christians who promoted abstention from flesh on moral and health grounds. Activities included public meetings, lectures and tract distribution, and the production of journals, handbooks and cookery advice for households and for self-improvement institutions such as mechanics' institutes.

Local and regional associations

A nationwide network of local secretaries soon developed, organising meetings and committees that laid the groundwork for formally constituted branches affiliated with the national society. This led to the creation of formally constituted branches under joint membership with the national society, beginning with the Manchester and Salford Vegetarian Advocates Society in 1849. The Liverpool Vegetarian Association followed around 1852, and by 1853 new associations had appeared in Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow, with others forming in towns such as Accrington, Bolton, Boston, Chester, Colchester, Dunfermline, Dumfries, Malton, Newcastle upon Tyne, Ormskirk, Sheffield and Worcester. By 1855 there were at least a dozen local associations, later joined by new groups in Edinburgh, Rawtenstall and Crawshawbooth, Paisley (1857), Brighton (1858) and Sheffield (1861). Many depended on a few active members and struggled to continue when these individuals left, and by the late 1860s the branch system had begun to fade.

Other organisations

Other vegetarian and food reform bodies were established across Britain during the Victorian era, extending the influence of the Vegetarian Society and promoting similar principles through regional, social and religious networks:

• British and Foreign Society for the Promotion of Humanity and Abstinence from Animal Food (1843)
• London Vegetarian Association (1852)
• London Food Reform Society (1875; merged with the Vegetarian Society in 1885; formerly known as the London Dietetic Reform Society or Dietetic Reform Society, and later known as the National Food Reform Society)
• London Vegetarian Society (1888; breakaway from the Vegetarian Society; also known as the London Vegetarian Association)
• Vegetarian Federal Union (1899)
• Vegetarian Amateur Athletic Club (1890)
• Scottish Vegetarian Society (1892)
• Women's Vegetarian Union (1895)
• Manchester and District Vegetarian Cycling Club (1899)
• Children's Vegetarian Society (1899)
• Junior Scottish Vegetarian Society (1900)
• Friends Vegetarian Society (1902; Quaker organisation)

Links with health reform

Vegetarian advocacy from the 1840s to 1850s intersected with hydropathy and the popular health-reform press, where diet was presented as both a moral question and a matter of physiology.

Publications and supporters

Movement periodicals and allied titles included the Healthian Journal and the Truth Tester, alongside tracts and handbooks aimed at general readers and self-improvement audiences. Contemporary accounts noted support from figures including John Passmore Edwards and Annie Besant, which increased public visibility.

Cuisine and venues

See also: Victorian cuisine

Vegetarian restaurants opened in larger cities and served clerks, students and reform-minded professionals. Reports of set menus—pies, fritters, ground-rice moulds and fruit—appeared in newspapers and illustrated weeklies. By the late 19th century, manufactured meat substitutes marketed as "nut meats" were on sale in restaurants and shops, and mainstream cookery titles incorporated meat-free recipes; the 1880 edition of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management included a chapter on vegetarian recipes.

Motivations

Health

Advocates claimed that a vegetable diet protected against cholera and tuberculosis, and some established hospitals and institutions on vegetarian lines. A strand of the movement overlapped with anti-vaccination activism framed in terms of bodily purity.

Humanitarian and animal protection arguments

See also: Victorian morality § Cruelty to animals, and Animal welfare in the United Kingdom

Urban slaughterhouses and butchers' displays prompted ethical critiques of cruelty; campaigners sought (unsuccessfully) to align the RSPCA with meat abstention and later opposed vivisection and the killing of birds and seals for fashionable clothing.

Religious conviction

See also: Christian vegetarianism

Religious motivations featured in early advocacy, with sermons and congregational rules urging abstention from flesh and presenting a vegetable diet as consistent with bodily health and Christian reform; these strands continued within the Victorian movement.

Social and political reform

Vegetarianism intersected with currents of socialism, Owenism and, later, with circles around the Humanitarian League. Suffragettes are recorded as meeting in vegetarian restaurants after release from prison. Public figures including George Bernard Shaw and Isaac Pitman offered endorsements that increased visibility.

Household economy and thrift

Proponents presented vegetarianism as a way to reduce household food expenditure and linked thrift to moral and intellectual self-improvement. Cheap or free meals were offered through bodies such as the National Food Reform Society.

Reception and debate

Newspapers and periodicals reported on vegetarian meetings, restaurants and debates; coverage ranged from humorous sketches in Punch to descriptive accounts such as the 1851 dinner at the Freemasons' Tavern in London, which detailed the menu and noted diners' healthy appearance.

Critics associated vegetarian diets with institutional austerity (workhouses, prisons) or argued that lowering household expenditure on meat could depress wages by reducing the accepted standard of living. Others, invoking imperial and military ideals, linked meat with virility and stamina and questioned the suitability of a vegetable diet for manual labourers. Later commentators note that Victorian vegetarian argument often combined moral claims with appeals to contemporary physiology, a mixture that invited satire and could be portrayed by critics as zealotry.

Scale and membership

From small beginnings in the early 1840s, vegetarian organisations reported almost 7,000 members and associates by 1899 across the Vegetarian Society and the London Vegetarian Society. Despite growth, the movement remained limited in size relative to a population in which many, especially among the poor, aspired to eat more meat rather than less.

Legacy

By the end of the 19th century, vegetarianism in Britain had identifiable organisations, venues and publications, and an expanded repertoire of recipes.

See also

• Society and culture of the Victorian era
• Temperance movement in the United Kingdom

Further reading

• Gregory, James Richard Thomas Elliott (2002). The Vegetarian Movement in Britain c.1840–1901: A Study of Its Development, Personnel and Wider Connections (PhD thesis). University of Southampton.
• Gregory, James (2007). Of Victorians and Vegetarians. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-0-85771-526-5.