Muriel Dowding
British noble
Muriel Dowding, Baroness Dowding (née Albino; other married name Whiting; 22 March 1908 – 20 November 1993) was an English humanitarian and animal rights activist known for championing anti-vivisection, vegetarianism and the improvement of animal welfare. Like her second husband Lord Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding she was a vegetarian, an anti-vivisectionist, spiritualist and theosophist. She coined the term cruelty-free and was a pioneer of the cruelty-free movement.
In 1959, Dowding founded the charity Beauty Without Cruelty (BWC) and Beauty Without Cruelty Cosmetics (BWC Ltd) in 1963, to highlight the suffering of animals in the fur and cosmetic trade and led the way in the commercial production of synthetic alternatives to fur and cruelty-free cosmetics. She was a president of the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) and vice-president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). In 1969, she cofounded the International Association against Painful Experiments on Animals (IAAPEA).
Early life and marriage
Dowding was born Muriel Albino in Paddington, London, the eldest of two daughters of John Angelo Albino (whose family came from the Province of Como, Italy) and Hilda Gertrude Albino (née Barnes). Her first school was Mr Thomas’ School for the Sons of Gentlemen, in Porchester Terrace, London and she was the only girl in the school. Her parents separated when she was 8 and later divorced and she went to live with family friends, returning to her mother aged 15. She had an unconventional childhood and was greatly influenced by her mother’s theosophical and spiritualist views who, as a vegetarian, an astrologer and a trained spiritual healer, held a weekly prayer healing circle at their home which Dowding and her sister Kathleen (Tottie) joined.
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This entry incorporates text from “Muriel Dowding” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.