VegHist Ep 12: Radicals & Romantics. Bible Christians, Grahamites, and Transcendentalists; with Adam Shprintzen and Derek Antrobus; at Deerfields, Fruitlands, and Salford
In the 1800s, overlapping circles of utopians, mystics, and romantics in both Europe and America develop arguments against meat until “vegetarianism” finally becomes a real movement.
Episode 12: Radicals & Romantics
In the aftermath of the American and French revolutions, the sects and philosophies that embrace a “vegetable diet” multiply – from ecstatic cult to puritan crusades, to utopian community to public-spirited congregation. No longer are they isolated groups – they connect with each other in books, magazines, and letters. Until a single word catches on – “vegetarianism”.
In the United States of America, Ian discovers the the vegetarian sword and shoes of a 1790s “free love” vegetarian sect in a local Massachusetts museum, and visits the failed vegan commune where Louisa May “Little Women” Alcott lived as a child.
And in Salford, NW England, he walks in the footsteps of a nineteenth century vegetarian church, with local historian Derek Antrobus and the vegetarian history specialist Dr Samantha Calvert.
It’s a story that also takes in the French bohemian “cult of the bearded men”, the man who invented the modern idea of Robin Hood, the woman who invented Frankenstein and his creature, Sylvester Graham, and, finally, the creation of modern vegetarianism.
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The twine handle of William Dorrel’s sword, on display in Deerfields
Deerfields Museum director Timothy Neumann (and Dorrell’s shoes)
Ian talks to a man with glasses and moustache, over a very old pair of shoes
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These steps are the only remains of the Bible Christian Church that once dominated British vegetarianism
Derek Antrobus and Samantha Calvert in Salford Art Gallery and Museum
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Derek Antrobus and Samantha Calvert in Salford Art Gallery and Museum
with Mike Volmar, in the home of the Fruitlands experiment
Ian interviews a red-haired man in a nineteenth century kitchen
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The monument to Joseph Brotherton MP (CC-BY-SA PLucas58) in the local cemetery he founded
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Farm building at Fruitlands, painted red as Louisa May Alcott described
Contributors:
Timothy Neumann (Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association & its Memorial Hall with 1790s veggie shoes), Massachusetts USA
Louisa May Alcott, diary, 1843 published as part of “Louisa May Alcott, her Life, Letters, and Journals” 1898
Geek Reference of the Month
The debates amongst a medical profession stumbling towards usefulness are a big part of this episode, and although the Victorian Dr William Lambe (and other “water cure” fans) were wrong to think distilled water can heal, the converse is true. Polluted water can be very harmful indeed.
Dr John Snow is widely known as the man who identified sewage-contaminated water as the cause of the 1854 London cholera epidemic, and removed the handle of the water pump to halt it; and as the father of epidemiology who mapped cholera cases to show this. But he was also a follower of Dr William Lambe and spent many years of his life on a vegan diet.
It would have taken too long to describe all that in the show. But I wonder (and it should be possible to check) what part his belief in the importance of pure distilled water played in forming the idea that polluted water could transmit epidemic disease.
Production Diary
Back when this series was just an idea, the Messy Vegetarian Cook, Kip Dorrell, mentioned to me at London Vegan Meetup that she had a distant relative who ran some kind of American vegetarian sect long ago. Little did I know I’d end up photographing his shoes next to mine.
It was a stroke of luck that my life took me to New England in 2015 – I hadn’t originally planned to visit anywhere in America for the series. We did try to find the hill where the Dorrelites once lived, and though we ran out of road, we ran into a woman who lived there and knew that it had once held some kind of vegetarian cult. The locals really do still tell stories about William Dorrell.
We also spent half an hour looking for the grave in what’s meant to be his cemetery, but didn’t find it. It’s said to be marked “Soldier of the Revolution” – artfully eliding which side he fought on!
As you can tell from the recording, it was very rainy in Salford; my next fundraising goal might include a mic with a proper windshield.
Credits
The curators of the two American sites we visited this episode, Timothy Neumann and Mike Volmar, gave me enormous help with the primary sources on these characters. Photographs of them are by Heidi White, who also drove me up and down Vermont and Massachusetts on the trail of vegetarian history.
The theme music is by Robb Masters. The actors were Jeremy Hancock, Guillaume Blanchard, Amy Saul, Matthew Arenson, Orna Klement, and Ian Russell.
Antrobus, Derek. 1997. A Guiltless Feast: The Salford Bible Christian Church and the Rise of the Modern Vegetarian Movement. Salford: City of Salford, Education and Leisure.
Calvert, Samantha Jane. 2013. “Eden’s Diet: Christianity and Vegetarianism 1809-2009.” Birmingham: University of Birmingham. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/4575/.
Philadelphia Bible-Christian Church (Philadelphia, Pa.), and Maintenance Committee. 1922. History of the Philadelphia Bible-Christian Church for the First Century of Its Existence from 1817 to 1917. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
Harland, William Harry, Charles Lane, and Joel Myerson. 1978. William Harry Harland’s “Bronson Alcott’s English Friends.” Richmond, Va.: Dept. of English, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Twigg, Julia. 2001. “The Vegetarian Movement in England, 1847-1981: With Particular Reference to Its Ideology.” http://www.ivu.org/history/thesis/.
Shprintzen, Adam D. 2015. The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform Movement, 1817-1921. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Preece, Rod. 2014. Sins of the Flesh: A History of Vegetarian Thought. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Marini, Stephen A. 1982. Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Levitine, George. 1978. The Dawn of Bohemianism: The Barbu Rebellion and Primitivism in Neoclassical France. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Serna, Pierre. 2010. “Droits d’humanité, droits d’animalité à la fin du 18e siècle, ou la matrice du « racisme social » en controverse.” Dix-huitième siècle 42 (1): 247. https://doi.org/10.3917/dhs.042.0247.
