Harold Baillie-Weaver

Harold Baillie-Weaver (1861 – 18 March 1926) was an English barrister, Theosophist and animal welfare campaigner. He co-founded the National Council for Animals' Welfare in 1922 with his wife Gertrude Baillie-Weaver.

Biography

Baillie-Weaver was born in Yorkshire. He was the only son of Henry Edward Weaver. He studied law at the University of London where he graduated LL.B and was accepted as a student of the Inner Temple in 1885. Baillie-Weaver was a member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage. Baillie-Weaver was a member of the Order of the Star in the East and Order of Universal Co-Freemasonry. He was a pacifist and chairman of the Peace Council.

Baillie-Weaver was a member of the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, National Canine Defence League, and Our Dumb Friends' League. He authored a pamphlet, Horses in Warfare (1912) with Ernest Bell which expressed concerns about the welfare of horses in the Second Boer War and called for an extension of the Geneva convention to include them. In 1914, he was a speaker at a Vegetarian Society meeting in Cheltenham.

Baillie-Weaver and his wife lived in Newport, Essex where she was local secretary of National Canine Defence League and Our Dumb Friends' League. In 1921, Baillie-Weaver was president of the Theosophical Fraternity in Education conference in Calais.

National Council for Animals' Welfare

Baillie-Weaver and his wife founded the National Council for Animals' Welfare in 1922. Baillie-Weaver and his wife also instigated the Animal Welfare Week. The editors in the 1940s were Yvonne A. M. Stott and J. Leonard Cather. The magazine was supportive of anti-vivisection and vegetarianism. In 1935, notable members of the organisation were Clare Annesley, Yvonne Arnaud, Robert H. Spurrier, Commander John Leonard Cather, J. Morewood Dowsett, Bertram Lloyd, H. V. Morton, Bindon Blood, D. Jeffrey Williams, Laurence Housman and Desmond Shaw. The organisation registered as a charity in 1964 and disbanded in 1983.

Copies of The Animal's Friend are archived in the Animal Rights and Animal Welfare Pamphlets Collection at the Special Collections Research Center in NC State University Libraries.

Death

Baillie-Weaver was in ill health for a year before his death at the age of 65 on 18 March 1926 at his residence in Wimbledon. An obituary described him as "kindly, generous, courteous and the soul of chivalry. His splendid personality influenced all who came within his ken, and all those who knew him felt inspired and uplifted in his presence".

A "Protecting the Defenceless" bronze statue sculptured by Charles Leonard Hartwell in 1931 in memory of Baillie-Weaver and his wife is located in the gardens of St John's Lodge, London.