On this day in vegan history · April 19, 1939
Henry Salt Dies With His Argument Already Made
The Eton classics master turned reformer died a quiet death in a Brighton hospital, decades after writing the sentence that would eventually reach Gandhi and Peter Singer.
The facts
- Died
- 19 April 1939, Brighton Municipal Hospital, aged 87
- Key book
- Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892)
- Career turn
- Left his post teaching classics at Eton in 1884 to write and campaign, co-founding the Humanitarian League
- Later endorsement
- Peter Singer wrote the preface to the book's 1980 reissue
Henry Stephens Salt taught classics at Eton College before giving it up in 1884 to write and campaign full time, later co-founding the Humanitarian League. In 1892 he published Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress, opening with the question of whether animals have rights and answering it head on. Mohandas Gandhi read Salt's A Plea for Vegetarianism in a London vegetarian restaurant and later said it strengthened his commitment to the diet. Nearly a century after Animals' Rights first appeared, philosopher Peter Singer wrote the preface to its 1980 reissue, calling it the best 18th- or 19th-century book on animal rights. Salt died at Brighton Municipal Hospital on 19 April 1939, aged 87, and was cremated at Brighton Crematorium.
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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animals, as well as men, though, of course, to a far less extent than men, are possessed of a distinctive individuality, and, therefore, are in justice entitled to live their lives with a due measure of that 'restricted freedom'
Henry Salt, Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892)
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Salt made the case for animal rights, not just animal welfare, decades before the modern movement had that language, and both Gandhi and Singer said his work moved them.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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