Elsie Shrigley

Elsie Shrigley (1899-1978) was a British vegan pioneer who, with Donald Watson, co-founded the UK Vegan Society in London in November 1944 and remained an active committee member and advocate for the rest of her life.

Road to 1944

Shrigley had followed a non-dairy vegetarian diet for years when, during the Second World War, the Vegetarian Society’s Vegetarian Messenger declined to publish a dedicated column or sub-group for members who also excluded eggs and dairy. Her correspondence with Donald Watson over this refusal is the immediate spark that Leah Leneman documents in No Animal Food (1999) as the catalyst for a new organisation.

Founding the Vegan Society

On 1 November 1944, Shrigley was among the small group — Watson, Leslie Cross, Fay K. Henderson, and others — who met at the Attic Club in Holborn, London, and agreed to form a separate society for “non-dairy vegetarians.” The word vegan, coined by Watson from the first three and last two letters of vegetarian, was adopted at that meeting, and the first issue of The Vegan News went out later that month.

Later work

Shrigley served on the Vegan Society’s committee across the following decades, supporting its move from Watson’s Leicester mimeograph to a formal London-based organisation and helping sustain the magazine and membership through the lean 1950s. She is named in Society histories as one of its two indispensable founders, though she sought less public prominence than Watson and left a smaller documentary trail.

For the founding event, see the 1944 Vegan Society; for her co-founder, see Donald Watson; for the movement itself, see Veganism.