On this day in vegan history · January 4, 1813
Isaac Pitman Is Born
The man who taught the world to write faster spent sixty years insisting his stamina came from giving up meat.
The facts
- Born
- 4 January 1813, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England
- Turned vegetarian
- 1837, at age 34, alongside giving up alcohol
- Movement role
- Vice-President of the Vegetarian Society
- Died
- 22 January 1897, Bath, Somerset, still vegetarian
Isaac Pitman was born on 4 January 1813 in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, and grew up to invent the shorthand system that still carries his name. In 1837, the same year he published his first shorthand pamphlet, he gave up alcohol and meat for good. He kept both changes for the rest of his life, becoming Vice-President of the Vegetarian Society and a public advocate for the diet. In 1879, decades into a career built on relentless writing, teaching, and correspondence, he wrote to The Times to say plainly what he thought was keeping him going.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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I attribute my health and power of endurance to abstinence from flesh meat and alcoholic drinks. I can come to no other conclusion when I see the effect of such extended hours of labour on other men who eat meat and drink wine or beer
Isaac Pitman, in an 1879 letter to The Times of London
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Pitman was one of the most famous working professionals of Victorian Britain, and he used that platform to argue vegetarianism made him more productive, not less, at a time when the diet was widely dismissed as a fad for the frail.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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