William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (1841-1911), after leaving the army in 1892, served on the boards of many charities concerned with human and animal welfare, including the RSPCA and NSPCC, and wrote numerous works protesting animal cruelty.
He was a founding member of the Humanitarian League which opposed corporal and capital punishment as well as campaigning for the banning of vivisection and all hunting for sport, making it a forerunner to the modern animal rights movement.
Blenkinsopp Coulson became a prominent figure in Newcastle upon Tyne, establishing there the Newcastle Dog and Cat shelter at Spital Tongues.
There is a memorial in Newcastle to Coulson commemorating 'his efforts to assist the weak and defenceless among mankind and the animal world', now situated at the junction of Horatio Road and City Road.
Blenkinsopp Coulson also restored and extended Blenkinsopp Castle, one of his family's medieval homes, in 1877 (it was destroyed by fire in the 1950s).