Henry John Williams


Henry John Williams was an English humanitarian, animal rights and vegetarianism activist and the founder of the Order of the Golden Age.

Life and work

Williams was the son of an Anglican minister and the younger brother of Howard Williams, who was the author of The Ethics of Diet and a fellow humanitarian.
At the age of 40, Williams was inspired by his brother to become a vegetarian. He later published the pamphlet A Plea for a Broken Law, which made a case for vegetarianism from a theological point of view. He founded an animal rights society, the Order of the Golden Age in 1881, it was constituted in 1882. Due to a lack of funds, the organisation was inactive until 1895, when Williams, Sidney H. Beard and others met and discussed how to remedy its dormancy. Williams wrote for the Order's journal The Herald of the Golden Age.
Williams was Rector of Kinross, Hon. President of the Scottish Vegetarian Society and a member of the Humanitarian League's Humane Diet department.
He died in 1919, at the age of 81; his brother published an obituary in the May 1919 edition of The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review.

Selected publications