Charles W. Forward

Charles Walter Forward (19 August 1863 – 9 June 1934) was an English activist, writer, and editor, notable for his advocacy of animal rights and vegetarianism. Forward made significant contributions to the vegetarian movement and is best known for his 1898 work, Fifty Years of Food Reform, which was the first book to document its history.

Early life
Charles Walter Forward was born in Islington, Middlesex, on 19 August 1863, to Charles John Forward and his wife Catherine. He was his parents' only surviving child and had a frail youth, with his education often sacrificed for the sake of his health. Forward's health struggles led him to develop an interest in physiology. He became a vegetarian in 1878, inspired by a passage from William Cullen in Richard Phillips's A Million of Facts.

Career
Forward joined the Vegetarian Society in 1881 while working as a bookbinder at 6 Blackfriars Road, London. As a leading London vegetarian, he had a close but critical association with A. F. Hills.

Forward was heavily involved in vegetarian journalism, serving as the editor of the Herald of Health and founding the Hygienic/Vegetarian Review. He also published many works on vegetarianism and has been described as a historian of the vegetarian movement. Forward's first published work was The Manual of Vegetarianism: A Complete Guide to Food Reform, which he co-authored with R. E. O'Callaghan in 1890. He authored a cookery book commissioned by J. S. Virtue in 1891 and edited the Vegetarian Yearbook, Birthday Book (1898), and Jubilee Library.

In 1893, he published a satire through Nichols, titled Confessions of a Vegetarian, focusing on London vegetarian personalities. The same year, he collaborated with C. D. Steele on a musical sketch, "Only a Crossing Sweeper". By 1895, he was involved with the South London Food Reform Society and announced the production of a journal called Pure Food, the Journal of the Food Reform Movement, which was likely never produced.

In 1897, he advocated for the amalgamation of vegetarian journals. In the same year, he edited John Smith's vegetarian book Fruits and Farinacea. The book was heavily criticised by the English Medical Journal as non-scientific.

Speaking at the National Vegetarian Congress in 1899, Forward argued that although the vegetarian movement was increasing, vegetarian restaurants in London had decreased in number. He noted that affordable tinned meat had become widely available and how some of the purported vegetarian restaurants were not strictly vegetarian as they were serving meat dishes.

In the early 20th century, he edited the short-lived London Vegetarian Association Quarterly. In 1913, Forward contributed the chapter "Slaughter-House Cruelties" to the book The Under Dog, edited by Sidney Trist. The book documented the wrongs suffered by animals at the hand of man. He also edited The Animals' Guardian, subtitled "A Humane Journal for the Better Protection of Animals". This monthly periodical was published by the London and Provincial Anti-Vivisection Society.

During World War I, he was associated with the Blue Cross Mission and was a delegate at the International Vegetarian Union in Stockholm. He gave lectures for the London Vegetarian Society and the National Food Reform Demonstration Council and worked at the Ebury Street Nature Cure Clinic.

His other journalistic ventures included The Bohemian (1887) and, in 1929, the quarterly New Life, announced in the Danielite Star, which focused on health and nature cure and was described as a "capital little magazine".

Fifty Years of Food Reform
In 1897, Forward published a series of articles for the Jubilee year of the Vegetarian Society, detailing the history of the vegetarian movement in the Vegetarian Review. The following year, these formed his best known work, Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England.

The book was the first to document the history of the movement, from the classical period onward from writers including Pythagoras, Ovid, Seneca, Plutarch, along with eighteenth-century poets and writers. It covered notable vegetarians such as William Lambe, G. Nicholson, John Frank Newton, John Oswald, Richard Phillips, Joseph Ritson and Percy Bysshe Shelley. It also contains over 200 illustrations, including a map of London showing vegetarian restaurants of the time.

Diet theories
Forward argued that most diseases including cancer are the result of modern-day unhealthy eating habits because people have shifted from their natural primitive vegetarian diet and are eating less fruit and vegetables. In 1912, Forward was elected Chairman of the Society for the Prevention and Relief of Cancer. From 1914, he lectured on cancer and diet and gave a lecture at The Polytechnic in Regent Street on cancer causes and prevention. Similar to Robert Bell and Douglas Macmillan he held the view that meat eating was a major cause of cancer.

Personal life and death
Forward married Florance Kate Cramp in Wandsworth in 1888. They had three children.

Forward died in Wimbledon, on 9 June 1934.

Selected publications

 * The Manual of Vegetarianism: A Complete Guide to Food Reform (with R. E. O'Callaghan; 1890)
 * Practical Vegetarian Recipes (1891)
 * Cameos of Vegetarian Literature (1898)
 * Dulce Sodalitum: A Selection of Stories and Sketches by Vegetarian Writers (1898)
 * Popular Vegetarian Cookery (1898)
 * Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England (1898)
 * Vegetariana: A Collection of Facts and Opinions on the Subject of Food Reform (1900)
 * The Food of the Future: A Summary of Arguments in Favour of a Non-Flesh Diet (1904)
 * Slaughter-House Cruelties (1913)
 * Under the Blue Cross (1915)
 * Health-Giving Dishes (1924)
 * Vegetarian Races and Their Diet (1921)
 * The Fruit of the Tree: An Argument on Behalf of Man's Primitive and Natural Diet (1922)
 * Butcher's Meat, and its Effects Upon the Human Body (1923)
 * Nuts: Their Cultivation, Composition and Use as Food (1924)
 * The Golden Calf: An Exposure of Vaccine Therapy (1932)