Walter Hadwen

Walter Robert Hadwen was born in Woolwich on 3 August 1854.^[1] He began his career as a pharmacist in Highbridge, Somerset, then subsequently trained as a doctor at Bristol University. After qualifying, he moved to Gloucester in 1896. Hadwen was recruited as a member of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection by its founder and then president Frances Power Cobbe who hired a private investigator to assess his credentials (he was a vegetarian and total abstainer, had a reputation as a "firebrand" orator and was held in "high local esteem"). She subsequently selected him as her successor.^[2]

He later became a member of the Plymouth Brethren and married Alice Harral in 1878; they had three children.^[3] Hadwen was a frequent speaker for the National Anti-Vaccination League. In 1896, he co-founded the London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial alongside William Tebb. Hadwen stated that the "modern germ theory is all bosh".^[4] In 1906 a presentation was given in honour of Hadwen at Charing Cross, the headquarters of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection.^[5] Hadwen was presented with a silver rose-bowl with the inscription "Presented to Walter R. Hadwen, Esq., M.D. by anti-vivisectionist friends as a token of their esteem and gratitude for his valuable services as a leader of the movement to abolish vivisection, August 16th, 1906".^[5] He was a speaker at the Fourth Triennial International Congress of the World League Against Vivisection held at Caxton Hall in 1909.^[6]

Hadwen was active in general practice until he died from a severe heart attack in 1932, age 78.^[7] In his honour the Dr Hadwen Trust was founded in 1970 to fund exclusive non-animal techniques to replace animal experiments.^[7]

Hadwen's pamphlets on anti-vivisection are archived at the Special Collections Research Center in NC State University Libraries.^[8]

Hadwen became a vegetarian in his early twenties when taking a bet from a fellow student that he could live six months without eating meat. His bet was successful and he stated that "For my part I am quite satisfied with my trial of vegetarianism, and it would take more than mortal power to persuade me once again to make my stomach a graveyard for the purpose of burying dead bodies in."^[7]

In 1924, having applied his rejection of the germ theory of disease, and his refusal to use diphtheria anti-serum produced by inoculation of animals to the treatment of Nellie Burnham, a young girl, she died and he was tried for manslaughter by criminal medical negligence.^[9] He was acquitted of all charges.^[10][11]

• Is Flesh-Eating Harmful?, 1895
• The Case Against Vaccination, 1896
• Smallpox at Gloucester: A Reply to Dr. Coupland’s Report, 1902. Reprinted from "The Reformer," National Anti-Vaccination League: Gloucester.
• Vivisection: Its Follies and Cruelties, 1905
• A Debate on Should Vivisection be Abolished?, 1907
• A Correspondence in "The Daily Mail" Between Sir Victor Horsley and Walter R. Hadwen, on Vivisection (1908)
• A Debate on Is Vivisection Immoral, Cruel, Useless and Unscientific? (1908)
• Dr. Walter Robert Hadwen's Works, 1908
• A Vivisection Controversy, 1911
• Jennerism and Pasteurism, 1914
• Experiments on Living Animals, Useless and Cruel, 1914
• The Difficulties of Dr. Deguerre, 1926 (illustrated by Arthur Moreland)

• Vaccine hesitancy

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Walter Hadwen