Alice Drakoules

Alice Marie Drakoules (née Lambe; other married name Lewis; c. 1850 – 15 January 1933) was a British social reformer, humanitarian, and writer. Active in campaigns for animal welfare, anti-vivisection, and vegetarianism, she founded a Band of Mercy around 1887, helped to establish the Humanitarian League in 1891, and served as its honorary treasurer for nearly three decades. She also worked with the Vegetarian Society, the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, and later supported the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports.

Alice Drakoules
Drakoules, from the May 1934 issue of Cruel Sports
Born	Alice Marie Lambe c. 1850 Brussels, Belgium
Died	15 January 1933 (aged 83) Regent's Park, London, England
Resting place	Kensal Green Cemetery
Other names	Alice Marie Lewis
Citizenship	British
Occupations	Social reformer humanitarian writer
Years active	1886–1933
Organizations	Vegetarian Society Band of Mercy Humanitarian League Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports
Known for	Animal welfare, anti-vivisection and vegetarianism advocacy
Spouses	William Burrowes Lewis (m. 1876; died 1906) Platon Drakoules (m. 1907)
Children	1 (adopted)
Signature

Drakoules published in The Women's Penny Paper and The Vegetarian, including the essays "The Rights of the Non-Human Races" (1889) and "The Ethics of Diet" (1892). She also published the pamphlet Humanity and Vegetarianism in 1892. Her writings urged compassion towards animals, criticised meat production and vivisection, and linked moral reform, including women's emancipation, to "pity and mercy". With her second husband, the Greek reformer Platon Drakoules, she promoted humanitarian and dietary reform in southern Europe and represented Greece at the third World Vegetarian Congress in 1910. Known for organisational work more than public speaking, she is described by historian Hilda Kean as a "spiritual mother" of the British humanitarian movement, and was later commemorated with a memorial birdbath in St John's Wood churchyard.

Biography

Early life

Alice Marie Lambe was born in Brussels, Belgium, around 1850. She was the only child of Henry Lambe of Truro, Cornwall, a Cornishman who held a B.A. from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; he died in Brussels in 1851, aged 29. Alice spent much of her early life in Cornwall.

Career

Vegetarian advocacy

According to Hilda Kean, Drakoules was a lifelong vegetarian, though James Gregory notes that she first began to explore vegetarian ideas around 1884 and joined the Vegetarian Society as an associate member in 1886.

In 1888, James Burns, a spiritualist and social reformer, launched his "Threefold Food" programme linking diet reform with spiritual and moral improvement. Soon afterwards he announced the Progressive Food and Cooking Society, which he credited as being inspired in part by Drakoules.

Her contribution to the Society took the form of sending placards on the concept of "Kindness to Animals", alongside contributions from spiritualists and fellow vegetarians such as Frances L. Boult and the Quaker Ellen Impey.^: 72 She also inspired Burns's East End Food Depot, and the following year influenced his "Pure Food" campaign.

In 1889, Drakoules supported the The Vegetarian's Special Mission Fund, and that year The Women's Penny Paper reported on her paper on vegetarianism delivered at the Paris Women's Congress. The same year, she contributed an article titled "Vegetarian Dinner in High Life", describing a meatless menu at a fashionable party.^: 256

She later hosted a meeting of the Vegetarian Rambling Society in 1891 and published "The Ethics of Diet" in The Vegetarian in 1892. That same year the London Vegetarian Society published Humanity and Vegetarianism, a paper she read before the Vegetarian Federal Union (VFU) on 26 May 1892.^: 55^: 277 In the paper she drew a parallel between women and animals as victims of male cruelty. She also notes that women's participation in the food reform movement was limited, describing "so few modern feminine advocates of the humaner diet".^{: 240, 244} In 1897 she again addressed the VFU, and her lecture was published as Humanity and Food Reform in 1902.

Animal welfare work

In about 1887, Drakoules founded a Band of Mercy branch in Weybridge, Surrey, a youth movement affiliated with the RSPCA which aimed to teach children how to respect animals. The branch organised lectures by prominent speakers. Meetings were held in a hall built in the "ancient baronial style" and capable of holding 200 people, which became a venue for reform meetings including vegetarian gatherings. Drakoules regularly discussed vegetarianism at its meetings.^: 95

In 1889, writing on the "Rights of the Non-Human Races" in The Women's Penny Paper, Lewis argued that women's emancipation should be accompanied by "hostility towards deeds of violence" and by "the spread of the instinct of pity and mercy". In the same essay, she denounced the cruelty inherent in meat production, animal transport, and vivisection, and urged readers to reject humanity's claim to moral superiority over other animals, arguing that "man at present has no just claim to regard himself as the worthy Head of the animal world."

Drakoules was a founding member of the executive council of the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, founded by Louise Lind af Hageby in 1906. She remained closely involved with the organisation, supporting its campaigns for municipal slaughterhouses, humane slaughter, and the abolition of performing animals.

Her circle of associates included leading animal welfare advocates and spiritualists such as Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford, with whom she shared Theosophical sympathies. She later became part of the circle of Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton and Lind af Hageby, with whom she campaigned for many years. She was also friends with the Scottish humanitarian campaigner Henry B. Amos, an active figure in the anti-blood sports and vegetarian movements.

In 1911 her home served as the venue for a meeting to discuss the slaughter of cattle in India for food supplied to British soldiers, with Ernest Bell presiding.

Humanitarian League

In 1891, Drakoules helped establish the Humanitarian League, founded by Henry S. Salt "to prevent the perpetration of cruelty and wrong—to redress the suffering, as far as is possible, of all sentient life". It campaigned for changes to the Poor Laws and criminal justice system, promoted arbitration to resolve international conflicts, opposed blood sports, and sought reforms to legislation on vaccination and vivisection.^: 95

The League's first meeting took place at Drakoules's home at 14 Park Square, Regent's Park, London, which also served as a venue for gatherings of reformers and others interested in social and spiritual causes. Her home continued to serve as a humanitarian centre for several decades.

Though she was not widely known for public speaking or writing, Drakoules contributed primarily through her administrative work, overseeing much of the League's day-to-day coordination and remaining on its executive committee for most of its duration. She also held the position of honorary treasurer from its foundation until its dissolution in 1919. She was also a member of the League's diet department.^: 166

When former members of the League later established the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, Drakoules was among its earliest supporters.

International humanitarian and food reform work

Her second husband, Platon Drakoules (also spelled Drakoulis), was a Greek sociologist, journalist, and former member of the Greek Parliament. A leading socialist, he founded the Socialist Labour Movement in Greece and was active in diet and health reform in Athens. He also established the Greek Anti-Carnivore Society and promoted social and humanitarian causes through his writings and lectures.

In 1906, Platon Drakoules helped inaugurate the Athena Hygeia Humane Diet Society in Athens, established to promote humane and vegetarian food reform in Greece. The society emerged from a banquet he organised to encourage ethical dietary practices, and although primarily attributed to him, Alice Drakoules supported its aims and activities.

Together, the couple promoted vegetarian and animal welfare ideas across southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, lecturing on humanitarian subjects in Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Romania. Their efforts were credited with helping to establish several animal defence societies.

In 1910 Alice Drakoules represented Greece at the 3rd World Vegetarian Congress in Brussels, where she was commended, alongside her husband, for advancing vegetarian and humanitarian ideals in Greece and abroad.

Personal life

Marriages

On 18 April 1876, she married William Burrowes Lewis, of Weybridge, at the parish church of St Grade, Cornwall; he was the managing director of the Union Assurance Company. Lewis died on 1 April 1906, leaving her with an adopted daughter.

On 9 October 1907, she married Platon Drakoules at her Regent's Park home. He was a Greek reformer with whom she shared a long-standing interest in humanitarianism and vegetarianism.

Spiritualism

In 1887 spiritualist journal Light reported Drakoules among the members and friends of the London Spiritualist Alliance attending a conversazione at St. James's Hall. In 1911 Light published her husband Platon's account of a home demonstration by the American clairvoyant Bert Reese. Platon stated that the manifestations were genuine, and Alice endorsed this.

Death and estate

Drakoules died at her home in Regent's Park, on 15 January 1933, aged 83. She was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery on 19 January.

Under the terms of her will, Drakoules left an estate valued at £16,061 (equivalent to £1,440,243 in 2023), with the residue to be distributed after the death of her second husband.

Bequests were made to the London Vegetarian Society, the Manchester Vegetarian Society, the Animal Defence and Anti-Vivisection Society, the National Anti-Vaccination League, the National Canine Defence League, the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, the National Anti-Vivisection Hospital, and the Not Forgotten Association, as well as to the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association in memory of her first husband.

Legacy

Memorials and tributes

In 1934, Cruel Sports, the journal of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, published a tribute by Henry B. Amos, recognising Drakoules's nearly fifty years of humanitarian and animal welfare work, which she pursued almost until the end of her life. He also announced a memorial fund, supported by figures including Henry S. Salt, Louise Lind af Hageby, Charlotte Despard, and Nina Douglas-Hamilton, Duchess of Hamilton, which financed the construction of a bird-bath fountain with a trough for dogs near her home in Regent's Park.

A memorial birdbath was subsequently installed in 1937 in St John's Wood churchyard, featuring reliefs of various animals representing the causes to which she contributed. It was unveiled by the Duchess of Hamilton; its inscription reads: "In memory of Alice Marie Drakoules, 1850–1934, for forty years a devoted and generous worker in London for animal welfare, this memorial is erected by her friends, 1937."

Historical assessment

James Gregory notes that Drakoules's participation in the Humanitarian League, alongside Henry S. Salt and Josiah Oldfield, led the League to include the promotion of a "humane diet" among its aims.^: 55 He also situates her 1892 pamphlet Humanity and Vegetarianism within a broader late-Victorian overlap between feminist and vegetarian thought, observing that although some contemporaries drew such connections, the movement produced no tracts specifically directed at women and reported no lectures to female organisations in this period, with exposure coming mainly via the mainstream and temperance press, and occasional coverage in women's papers such as Shafts.^{: 240, 244} Hilda Kean similarly describes Drakoules as a "spiritual mother" of the British humanitarian movement, emphasising her steady influence and organisational work; although less well known than many colleagues, the League's activities benefited from her sustained involvement and support.

Diana Donald identifies a "strain of utopian thinking" within fin-de-siècle animal protection and argues that it was epitomised in the philosophy of the Humanitarian League, founded in 1891 by Salt and Drakoules. She also notes that Drakoules had adopted vegetarianism on conscientious grounds as the movement was gaining a stronger ideological impetus.

Sky Duthie situates Drakoules among a generation of reform-minded women who used the League as a space to connect suffragist, feminist, socialist, and vegetarian causes. He identifies her as part of a broader cohort of women who embodied the New Woman ideal through their activism, and as a typical example of the League's higher-level organiser who helped to establish the League, served as treasurer, and campaigned throughout her life for vegetarianism, animal welfare, and related humanitarian reforms. In a study of the Aëthnic Union, a London-based feminist group in the early 1910s, Tallulah Maait Pepperell notes that Drakoules attended a meeting in September 1913, tracing Drakoules's attendance to her shared work with Jessey Wade and Ernest Bell, and argues that this illustrates overlapping networks connecting feminism and vegetarian humanitarianism in which Drakoules was active; she also records that Drakoules's husband, Platon, was present.

Publications

"The French Congress: Paris". The Women's Penny Paper. 1 (42). London: Women's Printing Society: 7. 10 August 1889.^: 256
"Vegetarian Dinner in High Life". The Women's Penny Paper. 2 (58). London: Women's Printing Society: 4. 30 November 1889.^: 256
"The Rights of the Non-Human Races". The Women's Penny Paper. 2 (60). London: Women's Printing Society: 4. 14 December 1889.
"The Ethics of Diet". The Vegetarian. London: London Vegetarian Society. 1892.
Humanity and Vegetarianism, Being a Paper Read Before the Vegetarian Federal Union. London: London Vegetarian Society. 1892.^: 277
Humanity and Food Reform. 1902.
"Treasurer's Appeal". The Humanitarian. Humanitarian League: 198. December 1916.

Notes

Greek: Δρακούλης; /drəˈkuːliːz/ drə-KOO-leez
James Gregory identifies Lambe as having graduated from the University of Oxford. However, contemporary newspapers state he attended the University of Cambridge.
His middle name is sometimes spelled Burrows in contemporary sources, but Burrowes appears in legal records such as his will and probate.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives his death year as 1907, but both the National Probate Calendar and FreeBMD indicate he died in 1906.