Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society

The Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society (ADAVS) was an animal rights advocacy organisation, co-founded in England, in 1903, by the animal rights advocates Lizzy Lind af Hageby, a Swedish-British feminist, and the English peeress Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton.^[1]

History

It was based for many years at Animal Defence House, 15 St James's Place, London, and ran a 237-acre animal sanctuary at Ferne House near Shaftesbury, Dorset, an estate owned by the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton.^[2]

The Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society's executive council included Alice Drakoules who was a lifelong campaigner for animal welfare and a keen supporter of the society. She helped the society campaign for licensed slaughterhouses, humane slaughter and for an end to performing animals.^[3]

The society came to widespread attention during the Brown Dog affair (1903–1910), which began when Lind af Hageby infiltrated the vivisection in University College London of a brown terrier dog. The subsequent description of the experiment in her book, The Shambles of Science (1903) – in which she wrote that the dog had been conscious throughout and in pain – led to a protracted scandal and a libel case, which the accused researcher won. The affair continued for several years, making a name both for Lind af Hageby and for the society.^[1]

The society was associated with Hageby's International Humanitarian Bureau.^[4] It published The Anti-Vivisection and Humanitarian Review in 1929 and Progress Today: The Humanitarian and Anti-Vivisection Review in the 1930s.^[4]

Following Lind af Hageby's death in December 1963, the society's assets were transferred to a trust, The Animal Defence Trust, which continues to offer grants for animal-protection projects.^[5]

NC State University Libraries holds a large collection of pamphlets from the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society.^[6]

Selected publications

• Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society: Reports for 1933 and 1934 (1935)
• Progress Today: The Humanitarian and Anti-Vivisection Review (1937)

See also

• List of animal rights groups

References

Further reading

• Gålmark, Elisabeth Lisa. Shambles of Science, Lizzy Lind af Hageby & Leisa Schartau, anti-vivisektionister 1903-1913/14. Stockholm University, 1996.
• Gålmark, Elisabeth Lisa. "Women Antivivisectionists, The Story of Lizzy Lind af Hageby and Leisa Schartau," in Animal Issues. 2000, Vol 4, No 2, pp. 1–32.
• Kean, Hilda. Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800. Reaktion Books, 1998.
• Lansbury, Coral. The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and Vivisection in Edwardian England. University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
• Mason, Peter. The Brown Dog Affair. Two Sevens Publishing, 1997.