The NAVS of the UK is the world's first anti-vivisection organisation, founded in 1875 by Frances Power Cobbe, a humanitarian who authored articles and leaflets opposing animal experiments.

[2][3][4][a] Other founding members were the physician George Hoggan, journalist Richard Holt Hutton and clergyman Henry Edward Manning.

[6] This caused some early members such as George Hoggan the then honorary secretary and vice-president Archbishop of York William Thomson to resign.

[6] At a Council meeting on 9 February 1898 the following resolution was passed: The Council affirms that, while the demand for the total abolition of vivisection will ever remain the ultimate object of the National Anti-Vivisection Society, the Society is not thereby precluded from making efforts in Parliament for lesser measures, having for its object the saving of animals from scientific torture.

[6] In 1906, a statue was erected in Battersea Park of a brown terrier dog, one of a number of animals described in the journals of two Swedish anti-vivisection campaigners that was reported to have been illegally dissected during a demonstration to medical students at the University of London.

The NAVS and others [citation needed] erected a new statue with the same inscription in 1985, again in Battersea Park, where it remains to this day.

It published its findings in 1912, recommending an increase in the numbers of Home Office Inspectors; further limitations with regard to the use of curare (a paralysing drug which does not deaden pain, but can heighten it); stricter provisions as to the definition and practice of pithing; additional restrictions regulating the painless destruction of animals which show signs of suffering after experimentation; a change in the method of selecting, and in the constitution of, the advisory body of the Secretary of State*; and keeping of special records by vivisectors.

This was a long way from abolition; it did not deal with the issue of secrecy and public accountability; it left the vivisection community protected from outside control and scrutiny.

Throughout the 20th Century, the NAVS lobbied government and drafted various Bills against a seemingly unstoppable rise in animal experiments ‘reaching almost 6 million per year in the UK by the 1970s’.

In 1973, the NAVS, now based in Harley Street, London, sought a new strategy and founded the Lord Dowding Fund for Humane Research.

[1] The Fund was named after Hugh Dowding, the Air Chief Marshal and Battle of Britain Second World War hero.

The Lord Dowding Fund continues to be responsible for ground breaking medical and scientific research that does not involve animals.

During 1916 and 1917, Elam obtained work as supervisor of a typewriting pool at the Medical Research Council (MRC), gaining a wealth of information she was to use later in articles published under the auspices of the LPAVS during 1934 and 1935.

The meeting was held at the Aeolian Hall in London and as Chair, Elam read out 20 letters from Members of Parliament in support of the bill, and stated that, 'A large majority of the public were strongly in favour of the measure, and she felt sure that victory would be theirs if a determined effort were made, especially if women made proper use of their new political power'.

Finally, she complained that animal experimentation was doubly cruel because of the unnecessary repetition of experiments to replicate or prove the same point, which in many cases she argued could have been arrived at by simple, common sense.

After sustained lobbying by animal welfare organisations and other interested parties, in 1983 the UK Government announced that it intended to replace the Cruelty to Animals Act (at that time still in force despite it being introduced nearly one hundred years previously) and published a White Paper that (after consultation) would eventually form the basis of the new legislation.

In light of its perceived weakness of the Government's proposals, and realising that outright abolition was unachievable in the current political climate, NAVS worked with other UK groups such as BUAV, Animal Aid and the Scottish Society, in the drawing-up of a list of key experiments that should be banned under new legislation.

Although only minor concessions were secured in this area when legislation was subsequently passed in September 2010, the authors of the directive acknowledged that it was "an important step towards achieving the final goal of full replacement of procedures on live animals for scientific and educational purposes as soon as it is scientifically possible to do so".