William Youatt

William Youatt (1776 – 9 January 1847) was an English veterinary surgeon and animal welfare writer.

Life

Youatt was the son of a non-conformist minister. He was educated for the nonconformist ministry, and undertook ministerial and scholastic duties in London. He was in Chichester, Sussex by 1803, when he married Mary Payne on 12 December at All Saints Chichester. At some uncertain date, in 1812 or 1813, he joined Delabere Pritchett Blaine (1768–1848) in conducting a veterinary infirmary in Wells Street, Oxford Street. This partnership continued for a little more than twelve years, when the business passed into Youatt's hands.

In 1828, Youatt began to deliver a series of lectures and demonstrations to veterinary students at his private residence and infirmary in Nassau Street. These were independent of, and to some extent designed to supplement, the teaching of the London Veterinary College. From the end of 1830 these lectures were delivered at University College London. In 1835 they were abandoned, but instead Youatt continued for four years to print a monthly series of written lectures in the Veterinarian, a professional monthly which he had started in 1828. In this venture he was soon joined by William Percivall, veterinary surgeon to the 1st life guards. This journal, which was still in existence in 1900, was kept alive in the early years only by Youatt's dogged perseverance, at a time when even his co-editor, Percivall, wished to abandon the venture.

During 1835 Youatt was appointed as the Honorary Veterinarian Surgeon of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (later the RSPCA). He was an entrant in an essay-writing competition in 1837 where a benefactor of the RSPCA offered a prize of one hundred pounds for the best piece: