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We commemorate our 125th anniversary today, Wednesday 14 June, in Bristol at the site where we were formed in 1898.
We are submitting an application to the Bristol Civic Society for a blue plaque to be placed on Queens Road in the Clifton area of the city – which is now on the site of 20 The Triangle, the location of a public meeting, led by our founder Frances Power Cobbe, at which the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection was formed.
The next day, 15 June, the first meeting of the BUAV’s Board of Managers was held, with the building becoming the first registered offices of the organisation.
Cobbe, a renowned social reformer and leading women’s suffrage campaigner, wanted the BUAV to be located in Bristol because, as she stated in her own biography in 1904, her “staunch old fellow-workers had had their office established there for many years and in first-rate order at that”.
Cobbe had originally founded the world’s first anti-vivisection group, Victoria Street Society (VSS), in London in 1875, but when she felt the VSS was becoming too moderate in its views, decided to form the BUAV in Bristol.
The photograph, taken in about 1900, shows the location of the ‘Anti-Vivisection Society’ on the left of The Triangle.
Our CEO, Michelle Thew, said: “We would prefer our work to have been completed, consigning animal testing to the history books. This anniversary, therefore, is not something we wish to celebrate, but to mark, as we continue the fight of our founders. We feel that it is fitting to mark the significance of this important historical movement with a blue plaque at the place where it all started.
“Frances Power Cobbe was a hugely-influential figure in Victorian society, for her work in supporting women’s suffrage, animal protection and social reform to protect the poorest families in every community. She described Bristol as being full of ‘kind souls’ and both her impact on the city, and her compassion for humans and animals, deserves to be remembered there.”
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