Arthur Harvie

Arthur Edgar Harvie (1869 – 28 March 1905) was an English Unitarian minister and activist for anti-vivisection and vegetarianism.

Biography

Career Arthur Edgar Harvie was a watchmaker by trade and decided to devote his life to the ministry of the Unitarian Church. He became minister of Christ Unitarian Church, Devonport in 1892 and was instrumental in getting the church renovated. He was minister in Gateshead where he succeeded in getting an iron church built. Harvie and his wife Katherine founded the Friendly Help Society in Northampton. Harvie was fond of Northampton and commented that "if this town is not the City of God, then there is no town which answers to the description. If we cannot say of this place, God is in the midst of her, then the earth has become a tomb and we are mouldering to decay".

Activism

Anti-vivisectionism Harvie was an anti-vivisectionist and member of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. In 1899, he was a speaker at a meeting of the Union for Abolition of Vivisection at Sheffield Temperance Hall. His address was on the "immoral and unscientific method" of vivisection. He argued that no human had the right to torture any living animal, or to give it such intense pain that its life was not worth living. He was a member of the Humanitarian League and joined its executive committee in 1900.

Vegetarianism He campaigned for Christian vegetarianism. In 1899, Harvie argued for an ethical spiritual basis of vegetarianism commenting that Christian vegetarians hold a "deep religious conviction that life is sacred, that murder is horrible, that torture, such as millions of animals have daily to suffer in order that flesh-eaters may be satisfied is devilish". Harvie was a council member of the Order of the Golden Age.

Personal life and death Harvie married Katherine Maud in 1894.

Harvie suffered from a weak heart.

The last letter that Harvie penned before his death was a letter on Boy's Brigades and military drill which was published in the Manchester Guardian.

Selected publications