RECORD: Wallace A. R. 1911. Letter about the National Insurance Bill. Gloucester Journal 2 December: 4.

REVISION HISTORY: http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S689A.htm


[page] 4

A meeting of protest against that part of the National Insurance Bill which provides that a portion of the money raised may be used for medical research, was held under the auspices of the Gloucester Branch of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in the Corn Exchange, Gloucester, on Tuesday night. Mr. W. Langley-Smith presided, and was supported on the platform by Lady Walburga Paget …The Chairman read letters of apology for non-attendance, and expressing sympathy with the object of the meeting, from the Countess of Plymouth, who was to have been one of the speakers, the Countess of Warwick, the Baroness de Knoop, Mr. J. R. Pope (President of the local branch of the Union), who was indisposed, Sir William Wedderburn, Sir Ashton Lister, Captain Colchester-Wemyss, the Rev. T. Randall, Mr. Max Bellows, Mr. Franklin Higgs, and Professor Alfred Russell Wallace, O.M., D.C.L., F.R.S.—who said: "I quite agree with all you say about the utter needlessness of endowing 'research' into causes and modes of cure of tuberculosis, etc., and the certainty that the £62,500 per annum will be wasted and worse than wasted, on experiments on living animals. For some years past the proceedings of the Royal Society have been overloaded with descriptions of an endless variety of such 'researches,' most of which do not even profess to have led to any definite or useful result; while they have certainly involved unknown cruelty to thousands of the higher animals." (Applause.)


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Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2012-. Wallace Online. (http://wallace-online.org/)

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