Josiah Oldfield | |
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 Portrait fromFifty Years of Food Reform | |
| Born | (1863-02-28)28 February 1863 Shrewsbury, England |
| Died | 2 February 1953 (1953-02-03) (aged 89) Doddington, Kent, England |
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| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United Kingdom |
| Service | Royal Army Medical Corps |
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| Conflict | |
| Awards | Territorial Decoration |
Josiah OldfieldTD MRCS LRCP (28 February 1863 – 2 February 1953) was an English lawyer, physician, activist, and writer. He promoted his own variant offruitarianism, which was virtually indistinguishable fromlacto-ovo vegetarianism. Oldfield was a prolific writer of popular books on dietary and health topics.[1] He also served in theRoyal Army Medical Corps and received theTerritorial Decoration for his service inWorld War I.
The son of David Oldfield ofRyton, Shropshire, a provision dealer, and his wife Margaret Bates, he was born on 28 February 1863 inShrewsbury.[1][2][3] His father, who died in 1903, was a church organist in nearbyCondover from around the time of Josiah's birth.[4][5]
Oldfield was educated atNewport Grammar School.[6] He then taught as an assistant master atChipping Campden School.[7][8]
Matriculating in 1882 at theUniversity of Oxford as a non-collegiate student, Oldfield graduated B.A. in 1885, with second-class honours in civil law and theology.[2][3] While there, he became avegetarian and concluded meat-eating was unnecessary.[2] He wascalled to the bar byLincoln's Inn, and practised as a barrister on the Oxford court circuit.[2] He then studied medicine atSt. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School and qualified in 1897.[2]
Oldfield was President of the West London Food Reform Society, a vegetarian group based inBayswater, founded in 1891.[9]Edwin Arnold was vice-president andMohandas Gandhi was Secretary.[10] Oldfield met Gandhi throughPranjivan Mehta, in 1890, and the two became friends, sharing rooms in Bayswater for some months in 1891.[11]
Further, Oldfield was associated with theLondon Vegetarian Society (LVS) and editor for their publication,The Vegetarian.[12] He was also the secretary of theVegetarian Federal Union.[13] He was a member of theOrder of the Golden Age and theHumanitarian League.[13][14]
In 1895, Oldfield searched for alternatives toleather for boots, experimenting with boots made fromIndia rubber, gutta-percha, andasbestos. He found faults with all of those substances, but expressed optimism about a "vegetarian" boot.[15] That year he submitted a paper on vegetarian boots to the autumn congress of the Vegetarian Federal Union held in Birmingham.[16]
In the early 1900s, Oldfield became disillusioned with the term vegetarianism. In 1907, he commented that "some people imagine that I am a vegetarian and that my opinion, therefore, on the question of food is warped by a certain faddism. Now, this is untrue. I am not a vegetarian and have no connection with any vegetarian society."[17]
The entry "Vegetarianism" in theEncyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911) was written by Oldfield; but he did not identify as a vegetarian. He stated that "I object absolutely to vegetarianism, because the word smacks of onions and cabbage. It gives people the idea that you live on watercress and browse on odds and ends of garbage."[18] He identified himself as Aristophagist, which he described as "eaters of the best - men and women who refuse to eat the common garbage of the undeveloped."[19]
Oldfield advocated forfruitarianism, putting him at odds with theVegetarian Society.[18] He was a member of theFruitarian Society, whose members lived on "the produce of harvest field, garden, forest and orchard, with milk, butter, cheese, eggs and honey".[6] His own "fruitarianism" was close toovo-lacto vegetarianism. He was not avegan: he recommended a daily diet of dandelion leaves, eggs, grapes, honey, lettuce, milk, salad, and watercress.[20] He opposedslaughterhouses andvivisection.[21]
A reviewer in 1909 noted that "as fruitarian dietary includes milk, butter, eggs, cheese, and honey, along with fruits, nuts, and vegetables, healthy existence is quite possible for Dr Oldfield and his followers."[22] A recipe of his "Margaret Plum Pudding" was included inCecilia Maria de Candia's cookbook,The Kitchen Garden and the Cook (1913).[23] In 1931, Oldfield commented that "I am proud to say that the only point on which we of the Fruitarian Society disagree with Mr. Gandhi is that Mr. Gandhi will not eat eggs, because they contain Life."[24] In 1949, he said that "as a scientist I am a fruitarian, and live on the kindly fruits of the earth which include eggs, milk, butter, cheese and honey".[25]
While he was a medical student, Oldfield was involved with the Oriolet Hospital, founded in 1895 inLoughton, Essex. It required vegetarianism of its patients.[26] The hospital was endorsed by the Order of the Golden Age, and partly funded byArnold Hills. Oldfield admitted patients there, initially employed with title Warden, supported by a medical officer.[7][27] Gertrude Hick, the nurse whom Oldfied later married, was trained in London and appointed sister in charge at the hospital in early 1895.[28] By 1904 it had become the Oriolet Hygienic Home of Rest and Open Air Cottage Hospital, run byFlorence Booth for theSalvation Army.[29]
In 1897 Oldfield announced the foundation of the Hospital of St Francis in South London, onanti-vivisection principles. It had up to a dozen beds, in a converted town house onNew Kent Road, and gave out-patient care. It closed around 1904, its funding being transferred toBattersea General Hospital.[30][31] Oldfield was senior physician to the Lady Margaret Fruitarian Hospital inBromley, which he founded in 1903.[2][32] No alcohol, fish or meat was permitted at the hospital; the food was cooked incoconut oil.[33] In 1914, Oldfield stated that "nothing is brought within the walls of the hospital that is dead; and as a result very little that is dead goes out".[34]
In 1908, Oldfield founded the fruitarian Margaret Manor hospital inDoddington, Kent.[32][35][36] The hospital at Lady Margaret Manor was located on an extensive farm estate surrounded by acres of woodland. The estate also included an orphanage and workshop.[37] Lady Margaret Manor was known as the "Fruitarian Village".[36]
In 1933, Oldfield's cottage at Doddington was burnt down. His entire library was destroyed.[38] Oldfield who was present in the cottage downstairs at the time of the fire stated that a log must have fallen out of the fireplace onto the carpet upstairs.[38]
In 1935, Oldfield founded a fruitarian colony for retired men at Lady Margaret Manor.[39] The men worked within the grounds of the manor growing vegetables, milking cows and working in the woodland.[40] The estate consisted of 13 men who were provided with food, lodging and pocket money. Several of the men were over 77 years of age and one of them was a war-wounded expert at wood carving.[39] The men had built a small chapel in the grounds. It was described as a "wood Kentish paradise" for old men.[39]
Oldfield shared thepacifist views of the Order of the Golden Age.[41] In 1898, he joined theEssex Regiment, 1st Volunteer Battalion as an Army Surgeon with the rank ofLieutenant, serving to 1901.[7] He later in 1913, with rank ofMajor, criticised the absence of standard training for Regimental Medical Officers of theTerritorial Army.[42][43] DuringWorld War I, he held a commission asLieutenant-Colonel of the3rd East Anglian Field Ambulance Corps, a Territorial in theRoyal Army Medical Corps,[2] raising and commanding acasualty clearing station that served at theWestern Front, for which he was mentioned in despatches.[1] His service came to an end in 1918, when he was thrown from a horse. He was awarded theTerritorial Decoration.[2][41][44]
In 1901, the University of Oxford awarded Oldfield a doctorate in civil law for his thesis oncapital punishment.[2]The Penalty of Death, it combined criminological, legal and sociological arguments to call for abolition of the death penalty.[45] He founded the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment in the same year.[2] He became chairman of the Romilly Society, a pressure group forpenal reform founded in 1897, in 1910.[46][1]
Oldfield subscribed toCatherine Impey's periodicalAnti-Caste.[47] He made an investigative visit to India in 1901.[1] His personal connections to India included contacts inKathiawar. This was the home area of his friend Gandhi, born atPorbandar;[48] and best man at his wedding in 1899 was Trimbakrai Jadavrai Desai, then a law student atGray's Inn in London, fromLimbdi State of theKathiawar Agency.[49] His experiences formed the material of a series of articles inThe Leisure Hour. One of them related toBhavnagar State in eastern Kathiawar, and a visit where he was accompanied byPrabhashankar Pattani.[50][51] In April 1903 Oldfield published in theHibbert Journal an article "The Failure of Christian Missions in India".[52]
Oldfield became a fellow of theRoyal Society of Medicine in 1920.[1] He died in 1953 at the age of 89, inDoddington, Kent.[6]
In 1891, Oldfield attempted to convert Gandhi toAnglicanism, urging him to read the Bible.[9] By the 20th century he had changed his own views. In 1904, he commented that "as a medical man, seeing much of pain and suffering and dying, my experience does not lead me to think that it is the profession of the Christian creed which is by any means the sole method of securing happiness of soul in this world, or which removes the fear of passing on to the next."[53]
Oldfield concluded that a "wider conception of God" was needed.[53] He is listed inA Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists as atheist with mystic ideas about the soul.[54] He was a proponent of evolution conceived as based on cooperation rather than competition.[21]
Oldfield argued that meat was a main cause of disease.[55] He was not ateetotaller as he promoted home-brewed ale.[56] He argued that the vitamins in the barley of home-brewed ale are responsible for the stamina of the English people.[57] In 1945, Oldfield commented that there "is no reason at all from the medical point of view" why a man should not get drunk once a month.[58]
Flesh is an unnatural food and, therefore, tends to create functional disturbance. As it is taken in modern civilization, it is affected with such terrible diseases (readily communicable to man), as cancer, consumption, fever, intestinal worms etc., to an enormous extent. There is little need to wonder that flesh-eating is one of the most serious causes of the diseases that carry off ninety-nine out of every hundred people that are born.
— Josiah Oldfield, in 1902[59]
Oldfield married Gertrude Hick on 29 September 1899 atWakefield Cathedral; she was the daughter of Matthew Bussey Hick ofWakefield, and sister of the doctor Henry Hick. They had twin daughters in 1902; but their marriage was not successful and they separated.[6][60] He had two daughters named Josie: Josie Margaret Oldfield, with Irene Doreen Oldfield one of the twins; and Josie Magdalen Oldfield, born 1906 and identified in the 1911 census.[7] The latter, a cradle fruitarian, was qualified medically from 1933.[61]
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