Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 263, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 November 1916 — CRAB WAS FIRST VEGETARIAN [ARTICLE]

CRAB WAS FIRST VEGETARIAN

Eccentric Englishman Met With Much Opposition When He Started to i Spread His Ideas. The first preacher of vegetarianism to gain any wide fame was Roger Crab, an eccentric Englishman, who died 236 years ago. He feught In the parliamentary army under Cromwell, and received a wound in the head, which may have accounted for some of his later vagaries. After the close of the Civil war he sold all his goods and distributed the proceeds among the poor, then took up his residence in a hut near Ickenham, where he was said to have lived on three farthings a week. Having decided that it was sinful to eat any kind of animal food, be subsisted on a diet of bran, dock leaves, mallows and grass. For dessert he had a pudding made of bran and turnip tops chopped together. When he attempted to spread his ideas he met with much popular opposition. He then denounced his opponents in most lurid terms, and was on various occasions cudgeled and put in the stocks. Four times he was arrested on suspicion of being a wizard, and was sent from prison to prise n. He persisted in his course in spite of all persecution, refusing to eat any animal food while in jail. He wrote two pamphlets, entitled "The English Hermit, or The Wonder of the Age,” and “Dagon’s Downfall, or The Great Idol Digged Up Root and Branch; “The English Hermit’s Spade at the Ground and Root of Idolatry.” Crab lived to ripe old age, but made few converts to his doctrine. —Exchange. J ■ *