Walter Hadwen

The Case Against Vaccination (1896) by Walter Hadwen

Walter Robert Hadwen MD MRCS MRCP (3 August 1854, Woolwich - 27 December 1932) was a Gloucester GP and pharmaceutical chemist, president of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), and an anti-vaccination campaigner known for his denial of the germ theory of disease. Hadwen began his career as a pharmacist in Clapham then Somerset, then subsequently trained as a doctor at Bristol University. After qualifying, he moved to Gloucester in 1896. Hadwen was recruited as a member of BUAV by its founder and then president Frances Power Cobbe who hired a private investigator to assess his credentials (he was a vegetarian and total abstainer, had a reputation as a "firebrand" orator and was held in "high local esteem"). She subsequently selected him as her successor.