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Anna Kingsford (; 16 September 1846 – 22 February 1888) was an English , Theosophy, a proponent of vegetarianism and a women's rights campaigner.
She was one of the first English women to obtain a degree in medicine, after Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and the only medical student at the time to graduate without having experimented on a single animal. She pursued her degree in Paris, graduating in 1880 after six years of study, so that she could continue her Animal rights from a position of authority. Her final thesis, L'Alimentation Végétale de l'Homme, was on the benefits of vegetarianism, published in English as The Perfect Way in Diet (1881).Rudacille, pp. 31, 46 She founded the Food Reform Society that year, travelling within the UK to talk about vegetarianism, and to Paris, Geneva, and Lausanne to speak out against animal experimentation.
Kingsford was interested in Buddhism and Gnosticism, and became active in the Theosophical movement in England, becoming president of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society in 1883. In 1884 she founded the Hermetic Society, which lasted until 1887 when her health declined.Christof, Catharine. "Feminist Action in and through Tarot and Modern Occult Society: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, UK and The Builders of the Adytum, USA". La Rosa Di Paracelso, 2017. She said she received insights in trance-like states and in her sleep; these were collected from her manuscripts and pamphlets by her lifelong collaborator Edward Maitland, and published posthumously in the book, Clothed with the Sun (1889).Kingsford, Anna Bonus. Clothed with the Sun . John M. Watkins, 1889 Subject to ill-health all her life, she died of lung disease at the age of 41, brought on by a bout of pneumonia. Her writing was virtually unknown for over 100 years after Maitland published her biography, The Life of Anna Kingsford (1896), though Helen Rappaport wrote in 2001 that her life and work are once again being studied.Rappaport, Helen. "Kingsford, Anna," Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, 2001.
By all accounts a precocious child, she wrote her first poem when she was nine, and Beatrice: a Tale of the Early Christians when she was thirteen years old. Deborah Rudacille writes that Kingsford enjoyed foxhunting, until one day she reportedly had a vision of herself as the fox.Rudacille, pp. 33–34Burgess, Jennifer. "Biography", Victorian Web, accessed 30 March 2008. According to Maitland she was a "born seer," with a gift "for seeing apparitions and divining the characters and fortunes of people", something she reportedly learned to keep silent about.Maitland, Edward. The Story of Anna Kingsford, 1905, pp. 2–5.
She married her cousin, Algernon Godfrey Kingsford in 1867 when she was 21, giving birth to a daughter, Eadith, a year later. Though her husband was an Anglicanism priest, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1872.
In her 1868 Essay calling for female equality she uses the pen name ‘Ninon’ and in that article references Ninon de l'Enclos (1620–1705) a French woman known for her wit, beauty, intelligence and independence. The name however may be a nod to her new status as ‘Mrs Algernon’. In a letter to Maitland in August 1873, also, signed as ‘Ninon’ she says, "much, you know is permitted to men which to women is forbidden. For this reason I usually write under some assumed name."
Kingsford contributed articles to the magazine Penny Post from 1868 to 1873.
Having been left £700 a year by her father, she bought in 1872 The Lady's Own Paper, and took up work as its editor, which brought her into contact with some prominent women of the day, including the writer, feminist, and anti-vivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe. It was an article by Cobbe on vivisection in The Lady's Own Paper that sparked Kingsford's interest in the subject.
Walter Gratzer, professor emeritus of biochemistry at King's College London, writes that significant opposition to vivisection emerged in Victorian England, in part in revulsion at the research being conducted in France.Gratzer, Walter. Eurekas and Euphorias: The Oxford Book of Scientific Anecdotes. Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 224. Bernard and other well-known physiologists, such as Charles Richet in France and Michael Foster in England, were strongly criticized for their work. British anti-vivisectionists infiltrated the lectures in Paris of François Magendie, Bernard's teacher, who dissected dogs without anaesthesia, allegedly shouting at them—"Tais-toi, pauvre bête!" ( Shut up, you poor beast!) — while he worked. Bernard's wife, Marie-Francoise Bernard, was violently opposed to his research, though she was financing it through her dowry.Rudacille, p. 19. In the end, she divorced him and set up an anti-vivisection society. This was the atmosphere in the faculty of medicine and the teaching hospitals in Paris when Kingsford arrived, shouldering the additional burden of being a woman. Although women were allowed to study medicine in France, Rudacille writes that they were not welcomed. Kingsford wrote to her husband in 1874:
Kingsford was distraught over the sights and sounds of the animal experiments she saw. She wrote on 20 August 1879:
Kingsford adopted a vegetarian diet on the advice of her brother John Bonus.Forward, Charles W. (1898). Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England. London: Ideal Publishing Union. p. 122 She was a vice-president of the Vegetarian Society.Preece, Rod. (2011). Animal Sensibility and Inclusive Justice in the Age of Bernard Shaw. UBC Press. p. 170.
She died on 22 February 1888, aged 41, and was buried in the churchyard of Saint Eata's, an 11th-century church in Atcham by the River Severn, her husband's church. Her name at death is recorded as Annie Kingsford. On her marriage in Sussex in 1867, her name was given as Annie Bonus.Public record office marriage and death registers, Kew, London.
"A cast for a fortune - The holiday adventures of a Lady Doctor’" December 1877 Temple Bar magazine
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