On this day in vegan history · December 4, 1822
The Woman Who Made Vivisection a Scandal
Born in Dublin on this date, Frances Power Cobbe spent her later decades building the organizations that turned animal experimentation from a private scientific matter into a public fight.
The facts
- Born
- December 4, 1822, Newbridge House, County Dublin, Ireland
- Founded
- Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection, London, December 2, 1875 (renamed National Anti-Vivisection Society, 1897)
- Founded
- British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, 1898
- Died
- April 5, 1904
Frances Power Cobbe was born on December 4, 1822, at Newbridge House in County Dublin, Ireland. She built a career as a journalist and essayist in London, then turned that platform against the growing practice of vivisection, cutting into live animals for research. In 1875 she founded the Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals from Vivisection, which grew into the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Unsatisfied with how far that group would go, she broke away in 1898 to start the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, demanding the practice end outright rather than be merely regulated. She pursued women's suffrage and property rights with the same persistence until her death in 1904.
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.
-
the practice of Vivisection in which this tyranny of strength culminates is a retrograde step
Frances Power Cobbe, "The Modern Rack" (1889)
Source: Wikiquote
Why it still matters
The society she founded is still campaigning under the name she gave it, and the union she broke away to start became Cruelty Free International in 2015. Cobbe helped set the template still used today: name the harm, organize around it, and refuse to settle for regulation when the goal is abolition.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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