2956Google Scholar; Cruel Sports illustrated this incident with a photograph headed Burning the Truth! According to the League's Report for 1931, the demonstration at Colchester resulted in a local ban being placed on the hounds.Footnote As otters were removed during the hunting years, there For many, the behaviour of these dynamic and somewhat bedraggled women, clad in sodden attire, was far from ladylike. Covering two pages (812), it was retitled Sport and the Otter.. . He met his future wife Ida Hibbert at an otter hunt, and proposed to her at a hunt ball. 2. The recent exposure in Devonshire, where a master of otter hounds was sentenced to imprisonment. On Tuesday 28th April, a small group of members from the Oxford Branch assembled in Islip to demonstrate against the Buckinghamshire Otter Hounds (Figure 2). Google Scholar. . After introducing her pack, the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, the article listed the women who actively enjoyed the sport: Of the invariably large and influential following we may mention Mrs Mantell, Mrs Killogg-Jenkins, and Miss Woodruffe, Mrs Trimmer and Miss and Mrs J. Awbrey.Footnote Sea otter conservation began in the early 20th century, when the sea otter was nearly extinct due to large-scale commercial hunting. The sea otter was once abundant in a wide arc across the North Pacific ocean, from northern Japan to Alaska to Mexico. L. C. R. Cameron, Otters and Otter-Hunting (1908), cited in Collinson, The Hunted Otter, p. 6. She argued that Otter-hunting is an incredibly vile sport, because it is deliberately carried on in the breeding season and was amazed that a larger number of influential people do not feel it their duty to make active protests against these things. With no utilitarian reason for killing, the hunted otter was simply something killed for fun. See inside.. In just a few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town. Bates begins by considering the main excuse for killing otters, the supposed need to reduce predation on fish. UKWOT has Is there no legislation which would enable, say, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to get upon the track of the Workington murderers and make them suffer? Otter hunting involves the harrying of females heavy with young, the destruction of mothers in milk, the lingering starvation of a number of suckling cubs, and a heavy death roll and the the aggregate of animal suffering caused is necessarily great.Footnote Holding an extreme and uncompromising policy, it developed more dynamic methods in an attempt to gain both publicity and prohibition. Ernest Bell, Cat Worrying by Sportsmen, The Animals Friend (1905), 1823. The men then lit some cotton waste, smoked out the otter, and pelted it with stones. 44 Otherwise inaccessible wild and watery landscapes could also be explored: in otter hunting, the hounds, the invigorating air of the early morning, and the superb beauty of England's valleys and dales constitute the chief attractions. The second letter from An Old Fashioned Sportsman denounced otter hunting on sporting grounds and used the Barnstaple cat-worrying case to strengthen his argument: I belong to an old family of Tory sportsman who have been brought up to view with disgust such amusements as involve the fiendish cruelty and worrying of one poor little animal for many hours by a motley crowd of men, women and even children, some armed with spears. Although in the book he admits this was partly due to the animal's nocturnal behaviour, in the shortened leaflet the omission of the introductory paragraph made otter hunting the prime reason for his misfortune. In 1929, there was a picture of a middle-aged woman and a teenage girl being blooded by the Joint Masters of the Wye Valley Otter Hounds in front of a crowd of smiling spectators. . 70 3. 9. In addition to this justification, any suggestion of cruelty is light-heartedly dismissed: It is improbable that most of the people who go otter hunting worry much about the humanities or the natural law of the thing. Newcastle Daily Journal, 29th May 1914, cited at http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. Another aspect of otter hunting that attracted critical attention was the type of people involved and the behaviour it induced. earlier attempts at concealment were also exposed. . 73 sea otters, urchins and starfish make It depicts Varndell as a solitary figure deep in thought. He declared that Coleridge was entirely out of order in discussing this matter now, adding that he was not speaking of the merits of the subject, but only say it is out of order now. Coleridge replied that: If at your Annual meeting such a motion as that is out of order, then I say this great Society will stultify itself if it does not hear me. 11. 30. 51. The Guardian, 9th May 2010. Diana Donald argues, however, that the resulting canvas, six and a half feet high, had no precedent in British sporting art in the way it combined archaic pageantry and brutal actuality with the hunter twisting the spear so the otter does not immediately fall to the hounds. 65, The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports was the first organisation to engage directly with otter hunters at otter hunts and the first ever protest against otter hunting appears to have taken place in 1931. In fact, this member felt that the latter was worse than the former: In the one case a crowd of men became infected with a sudden attack of blood lust, and were carried away by the excitement of the moment to the temporary exclusion of all feelings of humanity. Their aim, to enforce the principle that it is iniquitous to inflict avoidable suffering on any sentient being, was tied to both the criminal law and prison system, and the prevention of cruelty to animals. Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, 1928 p. 85. 41. Solved 1. "*Sea otters are native to the western cosst of This approval generated considerable adverse reactions and increased press coverage. The National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports sought to enlist the support of well-known individuals, including the journalist and author H. E. Bates (19051974) who became a mainstream country writer. The following month the four-page leaflet, Otters and Men, was issued at the price of 1d. artificial membrane that mimics the. AP Bio Final Questions Flashcards | Quizlet Justice for the Animals, Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, October 1929, 128. He was also a member of the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports and an unwavering opponent of otter hunting. And since I have never seen an otter, except behind the glass of a painted case, who am I to say that the otter does not enjoy the fun of having its belly bloodily ripped? Henry Salt also argued in the Morning Leader on 31st August 1907, almost two months after the incident, that such scandals as this bludgeoning of a hunted otter and the recent worrying of cats by the master of the Cheriton Otter Hounds were a sign that cruelty in one direction often leads to cruelty in another, and that in such a sport as otter-hunting the line between practice and malpractice is apt to be overlooked.Footnote 76, There is a real sense that women should have had the emotional authority to know better.Footnote and . The 1911 pamphlet attempted to shed light on the overall death roll of otter hunting. He thought that the aesthetics of otter hunting could be maintained if public opinion or legislation limited the killing of otters to ten per annum in any one county and then it might be possible to keep up a picturesque sport without unduly lessening the number of otters in our rivers.Footnote Daily Mail, 23rd May 1906, cited in 19 Douglas Macdonald Hastings, Hunting the Otter, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, 5256, p. 52. The incident was widely reported and horrified the public. Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. Having been allowed bail, the pair's charges were later revised on appeal to a five pound fine, on the understanding that Bell gave a donation of one hundred pounds to the North Devon Infirmary. artificial The letter proposed that drag hunting provides all the thrill of the chase without a living victim, and we earnestly request you to consider its adoption in preference to hunting live creatures.Footnote Otters Mr Rose of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds described the proposed Bill as most unfair and ridiculous and argued that otter hunting was grossly misrepresented: Long spiked poles are never used for the purposes suggested, but for assisting followers across ditches, rivers and fences. At dawn she withdrew to the river, where she was again hunted, but after several hours pursuit managed to escape. J. C. Bristow-Noble, Madame, 22nd July 1905, 171, cited in Cheesman and Cheesman, Diaries of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, p. 43 [Actually it was Mrs Kellogg-Jenkins, Battle, who had been born in San Francisco, 1911 census]. 66. Opponents, on the other hand, were offended by this inclusivity. Although its founder Edward Hulton was a Conservative, the publication was politically left leaning and its editors Stefan Lorent and Tom Hopkinson took an anti-fascist stance. By 2016, over 4,000 river otters had been translocated to 23 states. This reversal shows that the campaigning did have an impact, albeit a small one, on the public perception of the activity. This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. View all Google Scholar citations The social image being constructed is of a group of people who are not just morally right, but are more decent than the hunters, who are by contrast portrayed as disreputable, aggressive and shameful. 31. The first to second the motion was Ernest Bell who pointed out that otter hunting was just as unsportsmanlike as shooting birds from traps. 11 The aesthetic quality of animals was also important to him. The Trust recently secured the first ongoing class licence to capture and transport live Eurasian otters trapped in well-fenced fisheries in England. It appears to be more about human behaviour than animal suffering. The following year Bell and his followers formed the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports. He proposed that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should take its courage in both hands and accept his amendment: That it be an instruction from this General Meeting of Subscribers of the RSPCA to the Committee, forthwith to secure its presentation to Parliament, the object of which shall be to make otter hunting illegal..Footnote 8 Some inhuman wretch: Animal Maiming and the Ambivalent Relationship between Rural Workers and Animals, Rural History, 25 (2014), 13360CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 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