Sidney Trist

Sidney Trist
MJI[1]
Trist in 1908
Born
Sidney George Trist

1865 (1865)
Newton Abbot, Devon, England
Died (aged 53)
Wandsworth, London, England
Resting place
Torquay Cemetery
Occupations
  • Social reformer
  • journalist
  • editor
Years activec. 1894–1918
Notable workThe Under Dog (1913)
Spouse
Florence Mogg
​
(m. 1893)​
Children4
Signature

Sidney George Trist MJI (1865 – 2 December 1918) was an English social reformer, journalist, and editor. He was active in the movements for animal welfare, vegetarianism, as well as those opposing vivisection and vaccination. Trist edited several animal welfare periodicals, including The Animal World, The Animals' Friend, and The Animals' Guardian. He served as secretary of the London Anti-Vivisection Society and was a committee member of Battersea Dogs' Home.

Trist wrote and edited pamphlets and books including A Birds-Eye View of a Great Question (1894), Birds and Beasts Within Our Gates (1901), and the illustrated essay collection The Under Dog (1913). Later scholars have discussed his use of visual material in animal advocacy, and in 2017 Hilda Kean dedicated The Great Cat and Dog Massacre to him.

Biography

Early life

Sidney George Trist was born in Newton Abbot, Devon, in the third quarter of 1865.[2] His father was George Dyer Trist of Torquay.[3][4] He later lived in Wandsworth, London.[5]

Career

Back cover of the October 1914 issue of The Animals' Guardian

Early activism and pamphlets

Trist began his public career as an anti-vivisection campaigner and pamphleteer. In 1894, he published his first tract, A Birds-Eye View of a Great Question, which argued against vivisection.[6]

Trist later issued several pamphlets critical of vaccination, particularly the rabies vaccine. These included Pasteurism Discredited and A Rational Cure for Hydrophobia.[7][8] Other works from this period included The Danger to Hospital Patients in the Practice of Vivisection and A Cloud of Witnesses.[9][10]

Mark Twain wrote a letter to Trist in 1899 condemning vivisection. Trist circulated the letter in the press and arranged for copies to be printed as a pamphlet by the London Anti-Vivisection Society.[11]

In 1903, Trist spoke at an anti-vivisection meeting with members of the Church Anti-Vivisection League.[12] He also spoke at the Fourth Triennial International Congress of the World League Against Vivisection, held at Caxton Hall.[13]

Editorial and organisational roles

Trist edited the animal welfare periodicals The Animal World and The Animals' Friend.[14][15]: 49  He was also secretary of the London Anti-Vivisection Society, later the London and Provincial Anti-Vivisection Society, and editor of its publication, The Animals' Guardian.[16][17]

Trist was later elected to the committee of Battersea Dogs' Home, where he, according to Hilda Kean, "ensured that its policy of never selling any dog to a vivisector was maintained".[16]

Trist's advocacy of vegetarianism in the journals he edited alienated some anti-vivisectionists, who considered his position too radical.[18]

Books and collaborations

In 1901, Trist published Birds and Beasts Within Our Gates: A Book for Animal Lovers.[19] In 1904, he published Dog Stories, which included works by Émile Zola and an introduction by Jerome K. Jerome.[20][21] Trist also wrote the preface to Albert Leffingwell's The Vivisection Controversy in 1908.[22]

In 1911, when 16 bishops and other clergy joined the pro-vivisection Research Defence Society, Trist criticised their decision in a 5,000-word open letter. The letter used imagery of Christ in a laboratory to condemn their position.[23]

The Under Dog and final works

In 1913, Trist published The Under Dog, an illustrated collection of essays on the treatment of animals by humans.[15]: 49  In its introduction, he wrote that the essays were intended to "expose to the eyes of humanity the naked horrors which abound in their midst, and to which they are either blind or indifferent".[15]: 6  The book was reviewed in several newspapers.[24][25][26] In the same year, he published Tell Me a Story, a collection of animal-themed fiction by various authors.[27]

Personal life and death

Trist married Florence Mogg on 28 October 1893 at Holy Trinity, Wandsworth.[4] They had four children, three sons and one daughter.[5][28]

Trist died on 2 December 1918 at a nursing home in Wandsworth, aged 53.[3][29] He was buried on 6 December at Torquay Cemetery, Devon.[30]

Legacy

J. Keri Cronin states that Trist recognised the role of visual education in advocacy and made illustrations a prominent feature of his publications.[15]: 49 

The historian Hilda Kean dedicated her 2017 book The Great Cat and Dog Massacre to Trist.[31]

Publications

Author

  • A Birds-Eye View of a Great Question (1894)
  • Pasteurism Discredited: What Scientific and Medical Witnesses Assert (1895)
  • A Rational Cure for Hydrophobia: Buissonism versus Pasteurism: A Contrast and a Moral (1896)
  • The Danger to Hospital Patients in the Practice of Vivisection (1896)
  • A Cloud of Witnesses (c. 1899)

Editor

References

  1. ↑ "Foreigners Licensed to Vivisect in the United Kingdom". The Animal's Defender and Zoophilist. 13: 246. 1 January 1894.
  2. ↑ "Births Sep 1865: Trist, Sidney George". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  3. 1 2 "Deaths". Torquay Directory and South Devon Journal. 4 December 1918. p. 5. Retrieved 21 February 2026 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  4. 1 2 "Marriages". The Western Times. 2 November 1893. p. 2. Retrieved 21 February 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. 1 2 United Kingdom census (1911). "Sidney George Trist". Ancestry.com. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  6. ↑ Pittard, Christopher (2011). Purity and Contamination in Late Victorian Detective Fiction. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing. p. 185. ISBN 978-1-4094-3289-0.
  7. ↑ "Pasteurism Discredited: What Scientific and Medical Witnesses Assert". WorldCat. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  8. ↑ "A Rational Cure for Hydrophobia: Buissonism versus Pasteurism: A contrast and a Moral". WorldCat. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  9. ↑ "The Danger to Hospital Patients in the Practice of Vivisection". WorldCat. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  10. ↑ Bryant, Sydney (16 June 1899). "Baron Brampton on Vivisection". The Church Weekly. London. p. 23. Retrieved 13 May 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ↑ Twain, Mark (2011). Fishkin, Shelley Fisher (ed.). Mark Twain's Book of Animals. University of California Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-520-27152-4 – via Google Books.
  12. ↑ "The Church Anti-Vivisection League". Western Daily Press. 12 October 1903. p. 4 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ↑ "Pen Pictures of the International World League Congress Held in London". Springfield Reporter. 23 December 1910. p. 7. Retrieved 13 May 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  14. ↑ Gregory, James (2013) [2005]. "British Vegetarianism and the Raj". p. 8. Retrieved 5 January 2024 – via Academia.edu.
  15. 1 2 3 4 Cronin, J. Keri (2018). Art for Animals: Visual Culture and Animal Advocacy, 1870–1914. Penn State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-08009-3.
  16. 1 2 Kean, Hilda (1998). Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800. London: Reaktion Books. p. 138. ISBN 978-1-86189-061-0.
  17. ↑ Downs, James (11 February 2019). Ministers of 'the Black Art': the engagement of British clergy with photography, 1839–1914 (PhD thesis). University of Exeter. p. 155. hdl:10871/35917. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  18. ↑ Gregory, James (2007). Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-century Britain. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 94–95. ISBN 978-0-85771-526-5.
  19. ↑ "Birds and Beasts Within Our Gates A Book for Animal Lovers(autographed by A.W. Tozer) by Edt by Sidney G. Trist - 1901". Biblio.com. Archived from the original on 22 October 2021. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  20. ↑ "Dog stories". WorldCat. Retrieved 8 January 2024.
  21. ↑ "Books with contributions by Jerome". The Jerome K Jerome Society. Retrieved 8 January 2024.
  22. ↑ Leffingwell, Albert (1908). "Preface". The Vivisection Controversy: Essays and Criticisms. London and Provincial Anti-Vivisection Society – via Internet Archive.
  23. ↑ Li, Chien-hui (2012). "Mobilizing Christianity in the Antivivisection Movement in Victorian Britain" (PDF). Journal of Animal Ethics. 2 (2): 141–161. doi:10.5406/janimalethics.2.2.0141. ISSN 2156-5414.
  24. ↑ A. J. G. (10 July 1913). "'The Under Dog.' Edited by Sidney Trist". The World of Books. Evening Sentinel. p. 6. Retrieved 13 May 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  25. ↑ "'The Under Dog'". The Tiverton Gazette & East Devon Herald. 22 July 1913. p. 3. Retrieved 13 May 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. ↑ "The Under Dog". Recent New Books. The Gazette. 7 August 1913. p. 7. Retrieved 13 May 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  27. ↑ "Tell Me A Story - edited by Sidney Trist - 1913". Barnebys (in Swedish). 2 May 2013. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  28. ↑ "Births". Evening Standard. 11 January 1900. p. 8. Retrieved 21 February 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  29. ↑ "Deaths Dec 1918: Trist, Sidney G." FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  30. ↑ "Sidney George Trist". England, Devon, Ford Park Cemetery and Torquay Cemetery Burials, 1848-1974. FamilySearch.
  31. ↑ Kean, Hilda (14 March 2017). The Great Cat & Dog Massacre: The Real Story of World War II's Unknown Tragedy. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-31846-2.

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