Stephen Coleridge

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| honorific_prefix = The Honourable

| name = Stephen Coleridge

| image = Stephen Coleridge 1910.png

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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1854|05|31|df=y}}

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| death_date = {{Death date and age|1936|04|10|1854|05|31|df=y}}

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| occupation = Activist, author, barrister

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| parents = John Duke Coleridge
Jane Fortescue Seymour

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Stephen William Buchanan Coleridge (31 May 1854 – 10 April 1936) was an English author, barrister, opponent of vivisection, and co-founder of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Biography

Coleridge was the second son of John Duke Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Jane Fortescue Seymour, an accomplished artist. His grandfather was nephew to the famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.{{cite EB1911 |first=M.E.G. |last=Duff |authorlink=Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff |wstitle=Coleridge, John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron|volume=6 |page=677}} At fourteen he was sent to the public school Bradfield College. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1878.{{acad|id=CLRG873SW|name=Coleridge, Stephen William Buchanan}}

He was admitted to Middle Temple in July, 1875 and May, 1882.Venn, John Archibald. (2011). Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from the Earliest Times to 1900. Cambridge University Press. p. 92. {{ISBN|978-1108036122}} He was called to the Bar in 1886. He worked as private secretary under his father 1884–1890. He was Clerk of assize for South Wales Circuit in 1890.

Coleridge came to widespread public attention in England in 1903, when he publicly accused William Bayliss of the Department of Physiology at University College London of having broken the law during an experiment on a dog, thereby sparking the Brown Dog affair. Bayliss sued for libel and was awarded damages of £2,000.

Coleridge was also an accomplished landscape artist, who exhibited at the Alpine Club Gallery, the Suffolk Street galleries and the Royal Academy.{{cite web|title=Hon. Stephen William Buchanan Coleridge|website=Richard Gardner Antiques|url=https://www.richardgardnerantiques.co.uk/shop/sold/hon-stephen-william-buchanan-coleridge/|access-date=18 October 2020}}

Animal welfare

Coleridge was president of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports and director of the National Anti-Vivisection Society.[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.151571/page/n727/mode/2up Who's Who 1935]. The Macmillan Company. p. 575 He resigned in 1931 from the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports over a difference of opinion with the committee.{{cite news|url=https://www.findmypast.co.uk/image-viewer?issue=BL%2F0000681%2F19310210&page=9|title=Resignation Riddle|newspaper=Daily Herald |date=February 10, 1931 |page=9}} {{subscription required}} Coleridge commented that "I shall have nothing further to do with the League: I am not changing my views nor deserting the animals".

Under leadership of the National Anti-Vivisection Society, Coleridge supported restrictionist legislative proposals for vivisection.French, Richard D. (2019). Antivivisection and Medical Science in Victorian Society. Princeton University Press. pp. 163-164. {{ISBN|978-0691656625}} He envisioned progressively more stringent measures leading to total abolition. This angered members who favoured only abolition. In response, Frances Power Cobbe formed the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection.

Selected publications

[https://archive.org/details/b24854451 Broken Gods] (1903)
[https://archive.org/details/b2980923x Vivisection: A Heartless Science] (1916)
[https://archive.org/details/b2982445x Great Testimony Against Scientific Cruelty] (1918)