Donald Watson
| Donald Watson | |
|---|---|
Donald Watson reading the first issue of The Vegan
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| Born |
2 September 1910 Mexborough, Yorkshire, UK |
| Died | 16 November 2005 (aged 95) Keswick, Cumbria, UK |
| Occupation | Woodwork teacher |
| Known for | Founder of the Vegan Society and coining the word vegan |
Donald Watson (2 September 1910 – 16 November 2005) was an English animal rights advocate who coined the word vegan and founded the Vegan Society.
Watson was born in Mexborough, Yorkshire, the son of a headmaster in a mining community, an environment in which vegetarianism, let alone veganism, was unknown. As a child, Watson spent time on his Uncle George's farm. The slaughtering of a pig on the farm horrified Watson; he said his view of farm life changed from idyllic to a Death Row for animals. Watson began to reassess his practice of eating meat. He became a vegetarian in 1924 at the age of fourteen, making a New Year's resolution to never again eat meat. He gave up dairy about 18 years later, having decided the production of milk-related products was unethical.
He said:
On leaving school at fifteen, Watson was apprenticed to a family joinery firm, and from the age of twenty became a joinery teacher. He taught in Leicester, where he also played a large part in the Leicester Vegetarian Society. He moved on to Keswick, where he taught for twenty-three years. He stayed in Cumbria for the rest of his life. For several years he devoted much time to working as a guided fell-walking leader, as well as to organic vegetable gardening, until very shortly before his death, aged 95.
As Watson grew up, he did not smoke, consume alcohol, or make contact with foods or substances which he regarded as toxins. In the 1940s, after learning about milk production, he became a vegan. He explained his motivation as ethical concern for sentient animals:
Critics claimed that he could not survive on his proposed diet. In November 1944 in Leicester, he and his wife, Dorothy, and four friends founded the Vegan Society. Someone in the group would have come up with a word to describe their way of life, he believed, but he suggested 'vegan'—"the beginning and end of 'vegetarian'"—"because veganism starts with vegetarianism and carries it through to its logical conclusion." Watson and the group launched the first edition of the Society's quarterly newsletter, The Vegan News, in the same year. He ran the publication single-handed for two years, writing and duplicating the newsletter, and responding to the increasing volume of correspondence.
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