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T. L. Nichols
Nichols from an 1885 advertisement
Born
Thomas Low Nichols

(1815-12-13)December 13, 1815
Orford, New Hampshire, U.S.
DiedJuly 8, 1901(1901-07-08) (aged 85)
Chaumont-en-Vexin, France
Education
Occupations
  • Physician
  • journalist
  • writer
  • activist
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1848; died 1884)​
Signature

Thomas Low Nichols (December 13, 1815 – July 8, 1901) was an American physician, journalist, writer, and advocate for a number of causes including free love, hydrotherapy, food and health reform, vegetarianism and spiritualism.

Born in Orford, New Hampshire, Nichols initially studied medicine at Dartmouth College but dropped out and became a radical journalist, working for newspapers in Lowell and New York. His tenure as an editor and proprietor of the Buffalonian led to a brief prison sentence for libel, documented in his work Journal in Jail (1840). Nichols married Mary Gove in 1848 and completed his M.D. at New York University in 1850. Together, they established a school for water-cure therapists and authored books on health and reform.

Nichols actively participated in associations promoting hygienic practices, vegetarianism, and public health. He founded journals like Nichols' Monthly and Nichols' Journal to advocate for his beliefs, which included free love, universal suffrage, and libertarianism. Nichols and his wife were associated with Josiah Warren's Modern Times community before founding the Memnonia Institute in Yellow Springs, Ohio, which eventually failed. After converting to Roman Catholicism, the couple moved to London to escape the American Civil War, where Nichols continued writing, founded the Co-operative Sanitary Company, and advocated for various causes including temperance, dress reform, and vegetarianism. Following Mary's death in 1884, Nichols relocated to Sutton, Surrey, before his death in Chaumont-en-Vexin, France, in 1901.

Biography

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Nichols was born on December 13, 1815,[1] in Orford, New Hampshire.[2] He studied medicine at Dartmouth College, until he dropped out and became a radical journalist.[2] Nichols apprenticed on newspapers in Lowell and New York, before becoming an editor and partial proprietor of the Buffalonian in 1837. An article he published while editor of The New York Aurora, led to him serving four months in prison for libel;[3] Nichols later published Journal in Jail, an account of his experience, in 1840.[4]

Nichols married Mary Gove in July 1848.[4][5] He completed his M.D. at New York University in 1850.[5] Later, the couple founded a school for training water-cure therapists and published several books on health, food and other reforms.[4] Nichols was secretary of the American Hygienic and Hydropathic Association and the Society of Public Health and vice-president of the American Vegetarian Society.[2]

Sketch of Nichols in jail

Between 1853 and 1857, Nichols published two journals, Nichols' Monthly and Nichols' Journal, to advocate for his beliefs.[4] In Nichols' Monthly, he partially published an epistolary utopian story, which he infused with his beliefs about free love, universal suffrage and libertarianism. In 1860, it was published in novel form as Esperanza: My Journey Thither and What I Found There.[6]

For some time, the couple lived in Josiah Warren's Modern Times free love anarchist community, based on Long Island.[7] In 1856, the couple left and founded a "school of life", called the Memnonia Institute, based in Yellow Springs, Ohio.[8] It collapsed in 1857 and the couple converted to Roman Catholicism.[2]

The couple relocated to London to escape the American Civil War.[2] Nichols published two further novels Uncle Angus (1864) and Jerry (1872), as well as a best-selling autobiography Forty Years of American Life in 1864.[2] Nichols started the Co-operative Sanitary Company in 1875 and the couple co-founded a health publication, the Herald of Health. The couple campaigned for temperance and dress reform and against military conscription, vivisection, vaccinations and capital punishment.[2] They also helped create several vegetarian restaurants in London.[2]

Nichols wife died in 1884. After her death, he moved to Sutton, Surrey, where he continued to publish his pamphlets.[2]

Nichols later moved to Chaumont-en-Vexin, France.[9] He died there on July 8, 1901, at the age of 85.[10]

Vegetarian restaurant

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In 1879, Nichols established the first vegetarian restaurant in London. It was the named the Alpha and was located at 23 Oxford Street.[11] Clerical staff from Crosse & Blackwell and members of the Food Reform Society attended the restaurant.[11] It served 300 dinners a day and sold Nichols's books and pamphlets.[12] The 1889 menu for the Alpha featured several meals with lentils as a main ingredient.[11] The restaurant closed in the late 1890s.[13]

Nichols was also associated with the Alpha Food Reform Restaurant that was managed by James Salisbury in the 1880s at 429 Oxford Street. The restaurant was popular with members of the National Food Reform Society.[14] It closed in 1908.[15]

Legacy

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Animal rights and vegetarianism activist Ernest Bell, credited Nichols' pamphlet How to Live on Sixpence A-day, as the initial inspiration for his own vegetarianism.[16]

Selected publications

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References

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  1. ^ "Thomas Low Nichols". Biography & Genealogy Master Index. Accession Number: 3377635. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Company. 2009.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Aspinwall, Bernard (September 23, 2004). "Nichols, Mary Sergeant Gove (1810–1884), campaigner for medical reform and women's rights". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58353. Retrieved July 5, 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. ^ "Walking Tour: Walt Whitman's Printing House Square in New York City". Academy of American Poets. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d Trahair, R. C. S. (1999). Utopias and Utopians: An Historical Dictionary. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 286–287. ISBN 978-0-313-29465-5.
  5. ^ a b Cayleff, Susan (2010). Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women's Health. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. pp. 112–113. ISBN 9781439904275. Retrieved August 25, 2020.
  6. ^ "Authors: Nichols, Thomas Low". Science Fiction Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 7, 2020.
  7. ^ D'Emilio, John; Freedman, Estelle B. (2012). Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, Third Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-226-92381-9.
  8. ^ Stearns, Bertha-Monica (1942). "Memnonia: The Launching of a Utopia". The New England Quarterly. 15 (2): 280–295. doi:10.2307/360527. ISSN 0028-4866. JSTOR 360527.
  9. ^ Silver-Isenstadt, Jean L. (2002). Shameless: The Visionary Life of Mary Gove Nichols. Baltimore, Maryland: JHU Press. p. 248. ISBN 978-0-8018-6848-1.
  10. ^ "Deaths". Evening Standard. July 16, 1901. p. 8 (subscription required).
  11. ^ a b c Assael, Brenda (2018). The London Restaurant, 1840-1914. Oxford University Press. p. 48. ISBN 978-0192549716.
  12. ^ Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina (2010). Managing the Body: Beauty, Health, and Fitness in Britain 1880-1939. Oxford University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0199280520.
  13. ^ Gregory, James (2007). Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth-century Britain. I. B. Tauris. p. 134. ISBN 978-0857715265.
  14. ^ "Leigh:A Vegetarian Dinner". Kent & Sussex Courier. March 27, 1885. p. 8. (subscription required)
  15. ^ "Alpha Food Reform Restaurant". Aberdeen Press and Journal. May 1, 1908. p. 9. (subscription required)
  16. ^ "Ernest Bell, President of the Vegetarian Society". The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review. October 1933.

Further reading

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National Health Association

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