Charles Wesley Hume was elected President of the Birkbeck Student Union in 1913. He began his campaign by calling out proposed regressive changes to the College governing Committee and promoting a change of constitution of Birkbeck as a university rather than a college.

After graduating, he joined the College’s maths department. He also founded the University of London Animal Welfare Society, which held its first meeting in 1926 and took an unsentimental approach to animal wellbeing, accepting veterinarians and animal experimenters into the fold. While this was quite controversial at the time, he advocated the fair treatment of animals in a way that was “dealt with objectively and not sentimentally.”

He later, in 1962-63, gave evidence to the Home Office’s Departmental Committee on Experiments on Animals, which informed the updated Cruelty to Animals Act.