Stewart Hooson

Stewart Hooson (27 December 1832 – 6 August 1903) was an English Primitive Methodist minister and circuit preacher who campaigned for temperance and vegetarianism.

Career

Hooson was born in Halifax, Yorkshire. He became a Methodist at the age of seventeen and was placed on the reserve list of the ministry in 1855. He was first called to Witney Circuit of Primitive Methodists (1856) and worked as a circuit preacher at Leamington (1858), Rugby (1859), Winchester (1862), Cirencester (1865), Faringdon (1867), Hungerford (1872), Brinkworth (1879) and Southampton (1887). His salary on the Witney Circuit was small and he managed for two years and nine months on about 8s. 6d. per week.

In 1891 he was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference at Washington in the United States.

Vegetarianism

Hooson became a vegetarian in the 1876 for health and religious reasons. He commented that "I have enjoyed splendid health, not having been laid aside a week during the whole of my ministerial life". In 1887, he lectured on vegetarianism in Southampton arguing that many diseases were traceable to an unreasonable amount of meat-eating.

Personal life

He married Matilda Gillett (1826–1877) in 1859; they had five children. He married his second wife Mary Ann Humphries in 1880.