George Bedborough

George Bedborough in 1898

George Bedborough (1868 – 1940) was an English bookseller, journalist and writer who advocated for a number of causes, including sex reform, freethought, secularism, animal rights, vegetarianism, and free love. He was the secretary of the Legitimation League and editor of the League's publication The Adult: A Journal for the Advancement of freedom in Sexual Relationships. Bedborough was convicted for obscenity in 1898, after being caught selling a book on homosexuality; the case of Regina v. Bedborough, has also been referred to as the Bedborough case or Bedborough trial.

Quotes

• Vegetariana is the name of an island where nobody ever kills animals for food or "sport." It is easy to guess how pleased the animals are in countries where the inhabitants decide to make the land a Vegetariana.
  • "The Isle of Vegetariana", The Children's Realm (1913)

• Food is bought,
  So is drink, by a sort of intuition,
  With no heed of waste or malnutrition.
  Lambs are slaughtered, calves are bled,
  That our young may be ill-fed.
  Fruit, nuts and cereals which might save man
  Scarce find a place in his dietic plan.
  In robbing birds of plumes and beasts of fur
  We, charges of inhumanity incur.
  Fed with flesh meats and clad in skins of beast,
  Life and art suffer, and our health not least.
  The price, not the art of our dress,
  Is the anxious concern of our Press
  Which will praise all that pays,
  But denies its great prize,
  To a beauty which won't advertise.
  • The Atheist (1919), p. 14

• Truth is not always fair, or soft of speech,
  Nor can all minds grasp all that it can teach;
  But if despised, by men rejected now,
  The future's dawn illuminates its brow.
  • The Atheist (1919), p. 32

External links

• Encyclopedic article on George Bedborough on Wikipedia