Thomas Fauset MacDonald

Thomas Fauset MacDonald (1862 – 14 December 1910) was a Scottish physician and veterinarian who was active in the British anarchist movement and later the Australian white supremacist and eugenics movements.[1][2]

Fauset MacDonald
Born
Thomas Fauset MacDonald

1862 (1862)
Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland
Died (aged 48)
San Pedro, Ivory Coast
EducationUniversity of Glasgow
Occupations
  • Physician
  • Veterinarian
  • Political agitator

Biography

MacDonald was born in 1862 to Thomas MacDonald, a GP, and Jane MacDonald. He followed his father into medicine, studying at the University of Glasgow and graduating in 1882.[3] He travelled to Australia and New Zealand and studied tropical diseases, returning to Scotland in 1889.[4]: 93  In 1892 he was awarded a veterinary degree.[1][3]

Poster advertising a talk by MacDonald in Leicester in 1894
Poster advertising a talk by MacDonald in Leicester in 1894

In 1893, MacDonald began to take an active part in the anarchist movement in London, becoming a financial backer and for a time an unofficial editor of the Socialist League's newspaper Commonweal.[2][4]: 93  At this time MacDonald also inspired the character Dr Armitage in Olivia Rossetti's semi-fictional novel A Girl Among the Anarchists.[2] Former Commonweal editor David Nicoll publicly accused MacDonald of being a police spy and of supplying the sulphuric acid used to build the bomb which had killed Martial Bourdin in February 1894.[2][4]: 105 [5] Efforts were made unsuccessfully by Max Nettlau and Peter Kropotkin to have Nicoll withdraw the accusations.[4]: 108 

In 1895 MacDonald moved to Queensland, Australia. In 1897 he moved to Geraldton, Queensland, where he ran a small cottage hospital.[2] From 1903 he began advocating for white supremacy and eugenics, while occasionally still speaking on socialism and anarchism.[2][6] In 1906 he moved to Wellington, New Zealand where he became active in the New Zealand Socialist Party, but was soon removed from the party.[2] In 1907 he founded the White Race League with himself as president, though his presidency was short-lived. In 1909 he published a book of verse titled North Sea Lyrics.[2]

In 1910 he moved to San Pedro, Ivory Coast, dying there later that year from yellow fever aged 48.[1][2]

References
  1. "Dr. T. F. MacDonald". British Medical Journal. 1 (2611): 117. 14 January 1911. doi:10.1136/bmj.1.2611.117-b. ISSN 0959-8138. S2CID 220013077. Archived from the original on 13 October 2022. Retrieved 13 October 2022.
  2. Ray, Rob (2018). A Beautiful Idea: History of the Freedom Press Anarchists. London: Freedom Press. pp. 255–264. ISBN 978-1-904491-30-9. OCLC 1052463857.
  3. "Biography of Thomas Fauset MacDonald". University of Glasgow. Archived from the original on 2022-10-13. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  4. Oliver, Hermia (1983). The International Anarchist Movement in Late Victorian London. Beckenham: Croom Helm. ISBN 0-312-41958-9. OCLC 9282798.
  5. Nicoll, David (20 June 1897). "The Greenwich Mystery". Commonweal. London.
  6. Wyndham, Diana Hardwick (July 1996). Striving for National Fitness: Eugenics in Australia 1910s to 1930s (PhD thesis). University of Sydney. Archived from the original on 2015-01-14. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
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