[1] He also served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and received the Territorial Decoration for his service in World War I.

The son of David Oldfield of Ryton, Shropshire, a provision dealer, and his wife Margaret Bates, he was born on 28 February 1863 in Shrewsbury.

[2] Oldfield was President of the West London Food Reform Society, a vegetarian group based in Bayswater, founded in 1891.

[10] Oldfield met Gandhi through Pranjivan Mehta, in 1890, and the two became friends, sharing rooms in Bayswater for some months in 1891.

He was not a vegan: he recommended a daily diet of dandelion leaves, eggs, grapes, honey, lettuce, milk, salad, and watercress.

[21] A reviewer in 1909 noted that "as fruitarian dietary includes milk, butter, eggs, cheese, and honey, along with fruits, nuts, and vegetables, healthy existence is quite possible for Dr Oldfield and his followers.

"[22] A recipe of his "Margaret Plum Pudding" was included in Cecilia Maria de Candia's cookbook, The Kitchen Garden and the Cook (1913).

"[24] In 1949, he said that "as a scientist I am a fruitarian, and live on the kindly fruits of the earth which include eggs, milk, butter, cheese and honey".

[7][27] Gertrude Hick, the nurse whom Oldfied later married, was trained in London and appointed sister in charge at the hospital in early 1895.

[28] By 1904 it had become the Oriolet Hygienic Home of Rest and Open Air Cottage Hospital, run by Florence Booth for the Salvation Army.

[29] In 1897 Oldfield announced the foundation of the Hospital of St Francis in South London, on anti-vivisection principles.

[32][35][36] The hospital at Lady Margaret Manor was located on an extensive farm estate surrounded by acres of woodland.

[38] Oldfield who was present in the cottage downstairs at the time of the fire stated that a log must have fallen out of the fireplace onto the carpet upstairs.

[7] He later in 1913, with rank of Major, criticised the absence of standard training for Regimental Medical Officers of the Territorial Army.

[42][43] During World War I, he held a commission as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 3rd East Anglian Field Ambulance Corps, a Territorial in the Royal Army Medical Corps,[2] raising and commanding a casualty clearing station that served at the Western Front, for which he was mentioned in despatches.

[2][41][44] In 1901, the University of Oxford awarded Oldfield a doctorate in civil law for his thesis on capital punishment.

This was the home area of his friend Gandhi, born at Porbandar;[48] and best man at his wedding in 1899 was Trimbakrai Jadavrai Desai, then a law student at Gray's Inn in London, from Limbdi State of the Kathiawar Agency.

[50][51] In April 1903 Oldfield published in the Hibbert Journal an article "The Failure of Christian Missions in India".

In 1904, he commented that "as a medical man, seeing much of pain and suffering and dying, my experience does not lead me to think that it is the profession of the Christian creed which is by any means the sole method of securing happiness of soul in this world, or which removes the fear of passing on to the next.

As it is taken in modern civilization, it is affected with such terrible diseases (readily communicable to man), as cancer, consumption, fever, intestinal worms etc., to an enormous extent.