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]
Hadwen was active in general practice until he died from a severe heart attack in 1932, age 78.[5] In his honour the Dr Hadwen Trust was founded in 1970 to fund exclusive non-animal techniques to replace animal experiments.[5]
Hadwen's pamphlets on anti-vivisection are archived at the Special Collections Research Center in NC State University Libraries.[6]
Vegetarianism
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."[5]
Manslaughter trial
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.[7] He was acquitted of all charges.[8][9]
