General/ vegan history/ vegetarian history

Life Without Salads & Giving Up Flesh!

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Much more from Dan Piraro – here.

Can you imagine living without salads?

In the 1500s Queen Catherine (Catherine Parr – 1512–1548 – sixth wife of Henry the Eighth of England), would send a servant by boat from London, down the River Thames & across the English Channel, to France – to get a ‘take-away salad’ & bring it back to her!

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~ The simple fact of the introduction of the growth of green vegetables into these islands was sufficient to do for the people what all the art of the doctors could not do – improve their health and remove pestilence from amongst them. It was not until the end of the reign of Henry the Eighth (died 1547) that any salads, carrots, turnips, and other edible roots were produced in England. The wealthy had imported vegetables before that time from Holland and Flanders, and Queen Catherine, when she wished for a salad, was obliged to send for it by special messenger to the Continent. ~ – Mr. Gibson Ward, F.R.Hist.S. – in – The Cause and Spread of Leprosy.

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UK Vegetarian Society stalwart W. Gibson Ward – an 1874 engraving

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The W. Gibson Ward quote appears in –

Salads; Their Uses As Food & Medicine, With 50 Useful Salad Recipes – Albert Broadbent – 1909

–  The Ernest Bell Library has an original copy of this booklet .

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Salads; Their Uses As Food & Medicine, With 50 Useful Salad Recipes – Albert Broadbent – 1909

The booklet to read online – here.

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About Albert Broadbent – Salad Promoter!

Educating people about salads, we like this strategy very much.

Gorgeous salads featured prominently on continental vegan restaurant menus from as early as the 1920s.

Example – La Basconnaise – a salad of the French vegan anarchists – here – at the bottom of the page.

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Albert’s recipes – they start here in the booklet – are comparatively simple, and they are heavy with eggs & dairy – ……but he is foraging, ……he is recommending herb gardens…… – ‘revolutionary stuff’ for Edwardian Britain!

I would have loved to have had such choice, in the 1960s, when I was a child being fed totally unmentionable items.

Albert never reached the stage of ‘vegan’, but he did admirable work, promoting ‘non-flesh eating’ from the early 1890s until his death in 1912.

We come across his name regularly in vegetarian magazines, journals & related news reports from those years.

~ Albert Broadbent became the Secretary of the Vegetarian Society (Manchester) in 1895. He had already been actively involved, for at least two years, with the Vegetarian Federal Union which was attempting to bring all vegetarian societies together. He is recorded as having attended all VFU meetings from 1893, in several parts of the UK, and was present in Liverpool to see off the delegates to the International Vegetarian Congress in Chicago, in July 1893, and there again to welcome them home. ~ – more – http://www.ivu.org/members/council/albert-broadbent.html

He was also instrumental in launching the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) in 1908 – report – here.

Albert was: –

# International co-ordinator of the 1st World Vegetarian Congress, 1908

# Member of the provisional IVU Committee, 1908-1909

# Organiser of the 1909 IVU Congress

# Member of the Congress Organising Committee, 1910

Extract from the 1908 IVU Congress Report –

~ A good deal of interest was aroused by a description by Mr. Broadbent of the very practical work undertaken in Great Britain ; such as the work done in London by the London Vegetarian Association in providing cheap meals for school children, the lectures and cookery demonstrations; the success in inducing steamship companies and railways to cater for vegetarians; the publication of simple and easy recipes; the operations of the Vegetarian Society’s Summer holidays; the establishment of restaurants at exhibitions, the Cookery lectures given under the Education Committees of Glasgow, Manchester and Salford. ~ – more – http://www.ivu.org/congress/wvc08/report.html

Below – Albert and his vegetarian family, photographed in 1895 when he became the Secretary of the Vegetarian Society, based in Manchester.

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Much more about Albert – here.

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Giving Up Flesh Eating – Wonderful Statistics

We read last year, that perhaps 20 per cent of those aged between 16 and 24 in the UK were now vegetarian or vegan.

Albert would be very happy indeed!

From a Press Article – 

~ Some 12 per cent now follow vegetarian or vegan diets – rising to 20 per cent of those aged between 16 and 24, said analysts Mintel. ~

The October 2014 Mintel Report – here – if you are wealthy!

~ ……new research from Mintel has found that 12% of global food and drink products launched in 2013 carried a vegetarian claim, up from 6% in 2009. Further to this, 2% of global food and drink launches carried a vegan claim in 2013, up from 1% in 2009.

Today in Britain, the vegetarian diet is firmly on the map with 12% of UK adults following a vegetarian or vegan diet, rising to 20% of 16 to 24s. In the UK alone, Mintel estimates the meat-free food market to have hit £625 million in 2013 and further forecasts it to rise to £657 in 2014, up from £543 million in 2009. Indeed, Mintel’s research reveals that almost half (48%) of Brits see meat-free products as environmentally friendly and 52% see them as healthy. ~

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Our 3 Main Projects

The Henry Salt Archive is one of our, almost completed, projects.

The Humanitarian League is our Hong Kong registered charity.

The Ernest Bell Library was conceived in 1934.

There are currently more than 3,000 items in the collection.

We will complete the cataloging of the collection as & when adequate funds are available.

It is long past time for the library to go online!

 “I have little doubt that the proposal for the establishment of an Ernest Bell Library, which would specialize in humanitarian and progressive literature, and so form a sort of center for students, will meet with a wide response.” 

Henry S. Salt – writing in September 1934.

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