George E. Macdonald
From Philosopedia
Macdonald, George E. (11 April 1857 – 1937)
Macdonald was an editor of the atheistic Truthseeker from 1909 to 1926. With S. P. Putnam, he had edited the San Francisco journal, Freethought (1888–1891).
His Thumbscrew and Rack: Torture Instruments Employed in the 15th and 16th Centuries (1904) has been reprinted and contains descriptions of how the church used not only racks and thumbscrews but also the wheel and the cruel spider, which was devised to rip off a woman’s breast. Such devices, he claims, were powerful tools to get individuals to conform to religious dogma.
Born in Maine, Macdonald was largely self-educated, working as a youngster on an uncle's farm in New Hampshire after his parents' deaths. He joined his brother, Eugene Montague Macdonald, in New York City to work for a printing house. His brother, a foreman for The Truth Seeker, a freethought newspaper founded by D.M. Bennett, later purchased the paper with two others and established The Truth Seeker Co.
George, who contributed to The Truth Seeker, particularly humor pieces, eventually founded Freethought, a rationalist newspaper out of San Francisco in 1877. In 1907, he took over editorship of The Truth Seeker until 1937. He edited the book, Fifty Years of Freethought, which, in a folksy style, chronicled events in American freethought. Vol. I was published 1927 and Vol. II, with a foreword by Clarence Darrow, was published in 1931. Darrow called Macdonald "a valiant soldier for human liberty."
