Arthur MacLoughlin Broome (18 February 1779 – 16 July 1837) was an English clergyman and campaigner for animal welfare. He was one of a group of creators of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in 1824. Broome was appointed as the original society's first Secretary, a post he held until 1828. He held posts at various churches in London, Essex, and Kent, and supported an appeal for earthquake relief in Syria. He wrote about animal theology and also about two 17th-century English clergy. He was guarantor for the RSPCA's debts, which led to his financial ruin and in April 1826 he was sent to a debtors' prison.
Background Broome was born on 18 February 1779, the son of Thomas and Frances Broome in Sidmouth, Devon.Molly Baer Kramer, "Broome, Arthur MacLoughlin [Arthur Eugenius]" Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, available to subscribers According to university records, he matriculated from school and enrolled on 31 March 1798 at Balliol College, Oxford and he graduated with a B.A. in 1801. Also see Oxford Journal, 28 November 1801, p 3. He subsequently was awarded an M.A.See the entry in The Royal Kalendar: and Court and City Register for England, Scotland, Ireland and the Colonies for the year 1822, (London, 1823), p 268.
He applied to the Bishop of London for ordination in the Church of England and on 21 November 1802 was ordained by Bishop Beilby Porteus as a deacon. Porteus was an evangelical church reformer and a noted anti-slavery campaigner.See Bob Tennant, "Sentiment, Politics and Empire: A Study of Beilby Porteus' Anti-Slavery Sermon," in Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its Colonies, 1760-1838, eds. B. Carey, M. Ellis and S. Salih (London; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 2004), 158-174. Broome's association with Porteus no doubt brought him into a network of contacts with similarly minded individuals. After a year's service in the role of a deacon, Broome was then ordained as a priest by Bishop Porteus on 18 December 1803. His first appointment as a priest was to the parish church, St. Peter's Church situated in Roydon, Essex. His next parish appointment was on 7 March 1812 as a licensed curate to serve two churches, both named St. Mary's, in neighbouring villages, Hinxhill and Brook, situated in Kent. On 6 March 1816, he was appointed as a curate to St. Helen's church in Cliffe at Hoo, Kent. Broome remained in Cliffe until he was appointed as a stipendiary curate to St. Mary's Church, Bromley St Leonard's (now called Bromley by Bow) on 23 April 1819. A year later he was appointed as a perpetual curate at this church and he remained in this position until he resigned on 13 February 1824.
Broome was active in serving the Bromley parish and he came into contact with people who were labourers employed in the warehouses of the East India Company. In December 1822, he wrote to the company's directors seeking their financial support for an additional weekly church service.Margaret Makepeace, (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 74. Broome also demonstrated practical care and concern for the victims of a major earthquake that struck Syria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) and in April 1823 preached a sermon for the purpose of raising funds for victim relief.Morning Post, 2 May 1823, p 2 notice of thanks to Broome inserted by W.H. Hyett
Marriage Broome was married to Anna Barne Trollope on 1 May 1817 at St. Margaret's Church, Rochester, Kent.See The Kentish Weekly Post 9 May 1817, p 4; The Monthly Magazine, Vol. 43 (1817), p 479 Anna was born on 6 August 1790 in Huntingdon the eldest child born to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Trollope (1757–1805) of the Royal Marines and Anna Steel (1771–1845).England, Births and Baptisms 1538-1975 available to subscribers Her grandfather was Rev. John Trollope, her great-great-grandfather was the third baronet of Casewick, Sir Thomas Trollope and she was an older cousin of the novelist Anthony Trollope.See the genealogical table in Jill Felicity Durey, Trollope and the Church of England (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p xiv. Some years after her birth, her parents and siblings were relocated from Huntingdon to Rochester, Kent close to where Trollope's military unit was stationed, and Lieutenant-Colonel Trollope died suddenly in 1805 in Somerset while en route to his unit.See his obituary in The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LXXV, Part 2, 1805 p 775 Anna's brother George Trollope held the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Navy but died of consumption (tuberculosis) on 4 August 1837."Deaths" Leeds Intelligencer, 12 August 1837, p 5. Anna's wider family included several cousins who were ordained clergy in the Church of England.See Jill Felicity Durey, "Ecclesiastical Patronage in Trollope's Novels and Victoria's England," The Churchman, Vol. 109, no. 3, (1995) pp 250-269. Broome and his wife Anna had one daughter, Maria Anna Broome.Maria is named as one of several defendants in the case Trollope v. Routledge 1845 T92, see The National Archives.
Writing In 1815, Broome compiled a work about two seventeenth-century Church of England clergy, Thomas Fuller and Robert South which consisted of selected excerpts from their writings as well as a short biographical profile of Fuller.Rev. Arthur Broome, Selections from the Works of Fuller and South, with Life and Character of Fuller (London, 1815). Two years later, he reissued the text, which was expanded to include a biographical profile on South.Broome, Selections from the Works of Fuller and South (London: Lackington, 1817). The Gentleman's Magazine carried a positive review of Broome's book. Vol. 87 (May 1817) pp 436-437. Broome dedicated this book to the law reformer Basil Montagu who was also a fan of the writings of Fuller and South.See Basil Montagu, Selections from the works of Taylor, Latimer, Hall, Milton, Barrow, South, Brown, Fuller and Bacon (London: William Pickering, 1839) Broome also edited and annotated an important eighteenth-century text in animal theology, A Dissertation on the Duty of Mercy and Sin of Cruelty to Brute Animals (1776), that was written by Rev. Humphrey Primatt.Broome ed. (London: the author, 1831).
RSPCA founder The era in which he lived as well as his personal convictions formed the basis of Broome's role as a campaigner on behalf of animal welfare. The eighteenth and nineteenth century intellectual climate in Britain concerning the use of animals is reflected in different schools of thought that developed around theological, philosophical and moral reflections.Further discussion see Rob Boddice, A History of Attitudes and Behaviours Toward Animals in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain: anthropocentrism and the emergence of animals (Lewiston, New York; Queenston, Ontario; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008). Some clergy of the late eighteenth century expressed the theological view that the maltreatment of animals was sinful, linking this view to biblical passages denouncing cruelty (e.g. Proverbs 12:10; Numbers 22:21-34) and with passages of mercy (Matthew 5:7), as well as on the grounds that non-human creatures have the capacity for feeling pain.On the moral debate over animal pain in England see James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain, and Humanity in the Victorian Mind (Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), and Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 125-166. Representatives of this view include the eighteenth century preachers John Wesley, Augustus Montagu Toplady, James Granger, and Humphry Primatt. Others, such as Richard Dean, added to the anti-cruelty argument based on reflections about the resurrection of Jesus having a positive effect on the problem of evil in its impact on the creation () and leading to a future resurrection for non-human creatures.Richard Dean, An Essay on the Future Life of Brutes, 2 Vols. (Manchester: J. Harrop, 1767) ,
At the time when Broome was a youth and then a student at university, there was a moral groundswell that was opposed to bull-baiting and that resulted in an unsuccessful attempt by William Johnstone Pulteney on 18 April 1800 to pass legislation through England's Parliament to ban the practice.See A Letter to the Right Hon. William Windham on his late opposition to the Bill to Prevent Bull-Baiting by an Old Member of Parliament [Sir Richard Hill MP] 2nd Ed (London: W. Stratford, 1800). Also for discussion Kathryn Shevelow, For The Love of Animals: The Rise of the Animal Protection Movement (New York: Henry Holt, 2008), pp 201-222 A subsequent attempt to pass anti-cruelty legislation was led by Lord Erskine (1750-1823) in the House of Lords in 1809 but it was defeated by opponents in the House of Commons.John Hostettler, Thomas Erskine and Trial By Jury (Hook, Hampshire: Waterside Press, 2010), 197-199. Erskine in his speech on behalf of the Bill combined the vocabulary of animal rights and trusteeship with a theological appeal to biblical passages opposing cruelty.Cruelty to Animals: The Speech of Lord Erskine in the House of Peers (London: Richard Phillips, 1809)
Broome expressed an interest in promoting the welfare of animals by opposing acts of cruelty through publishing anonymously a sermon in 1801 "Unjustifiableness of Cruelty to the Brute Creation."See the brief review and excerpt in The Monthly Review Vol. 36 (1802) p 447. Passages from this sermon were later reproduced in some of Broome's notes to the abridged version of Primatt's book. Broome's interest in creating an organisation to promote animal welfare and oppose cruelty was apparent in a letter of his that was published in The Kaleidoscope on 6 March 1821 that asked for information about the existence of an anti-cruelty organisation that may have been operating in Liverpool."To Correspondents" The Kaleidoscope, 6 March 1821 p 288. Also see The Monthly Magazine Vol. 51 April 1, 1821 p 3 Another piece of evidence concerns a notice that appeared in various newspapers and that was signed under the pseudonym "Clerus": An Individual who feels for the sufferings of the Brute Species, and laments, in common with every benevolent mind, the wanton cruelties which are so frequently committed with impunity on this unoffending part of God's Creation, earnestly appeals to the Public in their behalf. He suggests the formation of a Society by whose united exertions some check may, if possible, be applied to an evil, the toleration of which is equally repugnant to the dictates of humanity and to the spirit and precepts of the Christian religion. Persons whose sentiments accord with those of the Writer, on this subject, and who are willing to promote the object he recommends, are requested to address a few lines (free of postage), to "Clerus", 25, Ivy-lane, Paternoster-row."See "The Brute Species". "Notice" in Morning Post, 17 February 1821, p 3. Similarly see "Cruelty to Animals" The Sporting Magazine, Vol. VIII New Series No. XLIII (April 1821), p 33. The italics was in the original notice.