Chandos Leigh Hunt Wallace

{{Short description|English healer, writer, entrepreneur, and activist (1854–1927)}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Chandos Leigh Hunt Wallace

| image = Mrs. C. L. Hunt Wallace.png

| alt =

| caption = Portrait from Fifty Years of Food Reform (1898)

| birth_name = Emily Honoria Leigh Hunt

| birth_date = {{Birth year|1854}}

| birth_place = Strand, London, England

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1927|03|16|1854|df=y}}

| death_place = Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England

| occupation = {{Flatlist|

Healer
writer
entrepreneur
activist

}}

| years_active =

| known_for =

| spouse = {{Marriage|Joseph Wallace|1878|1910|end=d.}}

| children = 7

| relatives = Leigh Hunt (grand-uncle)

}}

Emily Honoria Leigh Wallace (née Hunt;{{Cite web|last=Davis|first=Sally|date=2019-10-16|title=Isabel De Steiger's Art Works Alphabetical by Title|url=http://www.wrightanddavis.co.uk/GD/ISABELWORKSALPH.htm|url-status=live|access-date=2021-02-27|website=Roger Wright & Sally Davis|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200717231606/http://www.wrightanddavis.co.uk/GD/ISABELWORKSALPH.htm |archive-date=2020-07-17 }} 1854 – 16 March 1927), known as Chandos Leigh Hunt Wallace, was an English healer and writer on health, spiritualism, and food reform. She was an entrepreneur and activist for vegetarianism, as well as an advocate for temperance and anti-vaccination.

Biography

Wallace was born in the Strand, London, in the third quarter of 1854.{{Cite web |title=Births Sep 1838 |url=https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/information.pl?cite=H5FebsPPSmzaSN8LW01Jeg&scan=1 |accessdate=2025-01-27 |work=FreeBMD |publisher=ONS}} She was the grandniece of Leigh Hunt.{{Cite book|last=Maxwell|first=Catherine|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155jcqk|title=Second Sight: The Visionary Imagination in Late Victorian Literature|publisher=Manchester University Press|year=2009|isbn=978-1-84779-180-1|location=Manchester|pages=54–55|jstor=j.ctt155jcqk|oclc=823740840}}

Wallace worked as a lay healer, claiming that spiritual faith and purity were the best means of healing disease.{{Cite journal|last=Scott|first=Anne L.|date=1999-12-01|title=Physical purity feminism and state medicine in late nineteenth-century england|journal=Women's History Review|volume=8|issue=4|pages=625–653|doi=10.1080/09612029900200220|pmid=22619785|issn=0961-2025|doi-access=free}} She was trained by her future husband Joseph Wallace, who she met at a phrenological meeting held by James Burns.{{Cite book|last=Gregory|first=James|url=https://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/handle/10454/3858|title=Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-century Britain|date=2007|publisher=Tauris Academic Studies|isbn=978-1-4356-1584-7|location=London|pages=107|oclc=184749981}} They married in 1878; the couple had seven children.{{Cite book|last=Forward|first=Charles Walter|url=http://archive.org/details/b2486609x|title=Fifty Years of Food Reform: A History of the Vegetarian Movement in England|publisher=The Ideal Publishing Union, The Vegetarian Society|year=1898|location=London, Manchester|pages=134|author-link=Charles W. Forward}}

Wallace set up her own practice in London which employed a number of assistants; patients were treated with a combination of "dietary control, hydropathy, physical manipulation and mesmerism".{{Cite book|last=Owen|first=Alex|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BVdcXjncudAC|title=The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2004|isbn=0-226-64205-4|location=Chicago|pages=127–138|oclc=53434582}}

In 1877, Wallace carried out a national lecture tour, where she spoke at multiple spiritualist societies. She completed a novel in 1879, Visibility Invisible and Invisibility Visible, which was serialised by James Burns. In 1890 Wallace took over the ownership of T. L. Nichols' journal Herald of Health; she later become its editor.

Wallace died on 16 March 1927 in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire.England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966, 1973-1995.