Person    | Male  Born 28/2/1863  Died 2/2/1953

Dr Josiah Oldfield

Lawyer, physician, and writer on health. And creator of hospitals - read on.

Born Shrewsbury. At Oxford University he became a vegetarian and a friend of Gandhi. First qualified as a barrister and then in 1897 as a doctor of medicine. Member of the Fruitarian Society. Director of Oriolet Fruitarian Hospital 1895 - c.1898. In 1898 he moved to London to found his own hospital - the anti-vivisection Hospital of St Francis, at 145 New Kent Road (closed 1902). 1903 founded the Lady Margaret Fruitarian Hospital in Bromley which had a chapel where Oldfield held services himself.  President of the West London Food Reform Society, a vegetarian group based in Bayswater, founded in 1891. Founded the Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment in 1901.

1903 he opened a hospital in Darenth House, 34 Camberwell Green - to be called the South London Hospital. It closed in 1904 and in 1906 was absorbed by the Battersea Hospital, the Anti-Vivisection Hospital. 1908 he founded the ' Fruitarian Village', the Margaret Manor hospital in Doddington, Kent. In 1921 the Bromley hospital relocated to the site at Lady Margaret Manor.

In WW1 served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Facebook shows a lovely menu cover (in which fruit features prominently) for the Officers’ Mess of the 3rd East Anglian Field Ambulance, whose Commanding Officer was Lt. Col. Josiah Oldfield. Spradbery, the designer of the cover, wrote: "The Colonel established a vegetarian mess and officers’ quarters … the place was popularly known as the Cabbage Patch."

Died Kent. His fruitarianism seems to have been vegetarianism in all but name. He is quoted: "I object absolutely to vegetarianism, because the word smacks of onions and cabbage."

Sources: People Pill, where this 1938 image shows Oldfield full length in a voluminous gown, and Lost Hospitals of London.

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This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Dr Josiah Oldfield

Commemorated ati

Oriolet Hospital and Dr Oldfield

The site of the Oriolet Fruitarian Hospital (1895 - 1903) and its director Dr...

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Other Subjects

Friends of the Royal London Hospital

Friends of the Royal London Hospital

Registered charity also known as 'Friends of the London Hospital (Whitechapel)' and 'League of Friends'. We're guessing that this is the current form of the 1908 "friends of the hospital" that erec...

Group, Community / Clubs, Medicine

1 memorial
Insp.-Gen. Belgrave Ninnis, CVO, MD, FSA, RN

Insp.-Gen. Belgrave Ninnis, CVO, MD, FSA, RN

Chief Commissioner in the St John Ambulance Brigade, No. 1 District Metropolitan Corps, 1898-1911. Knight Justice in the Order of St John. Inspector-General Belgrave Ninnis was a Royal Navy surgeo...

Person, Armed Forces, Emergency Services, Exploring, Medicine

1 memorial
Charing Cross Hospital

Charing Cross Hospital

This hospital was established in 1818 in Suffolk Street as the West London Infirmary and Dispensary. 1821 moved to Villiers Street, becoming known as Charing Cross Hospital in 1827. A new building ...

Place, Medicine

2 memorials
Chelsea Hospital for Women

Chelsea Hospital for Women

Set up in a house at 178 King's Road, this hospital, like many at the time, quickly found its premises too small. It moved into the first hospital to be built dedicated to gynaecological diseases, ...

Group, Medicine

1 memorial
St Olave's Hospital

St Olave's Hospital

Built originally as the Rotherhithe Infirmary in the early 1870s. It became the infirmary of St Olave's Union in 1875, and was renamed St Olave's Hospital in 1930. In 1966 it became part of the Guy...

Place, Medicine

1 memorial