This is clearly a splendid time. In August 1935 Cruel Sports reported that a group of women from the Leeds branch had protested against the Kendal and District Otter Hounds in July. John Mackenzie points out that Landseer did not decry human participation in the raw cruelty of the natural world. . A part of this pamphlet, which included this quotation, was reprinted in Cruel Sports magazine in 1929. . In order to share these principles with the public, the League adopted a strategy that involved open meetings, lobbying of influential individuals, letter writing campaigns to newspapers and magazines and the production of pamphlets, monthly journals and other scholarly publications.Footnote 69 The History of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds, Rod, Pole and Perch: Angling and Otter-hunting Sketches, Putting Animals into Politics: The Labour Party and Hunting in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, A blow to the men in Pink: The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Opposition to Hunting in the Twentieth Century, Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers, The Otter Speared, Portrait of the Earl of Aberdeen's Otterhounds, or the Otter Hunt, http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/laing-art-gallery/collections.html. Justice for the Animals, Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, October 1929, 128. Leeds Women Protest at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, August 1935. . Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. He denounced otter hunting as the lowest-down pastime that has survived into the twentieth century. As to the quickness of the kill, campaigners pointed to the duration of separate hunts as evidence to the contrary. He did however come to the conclusion that their conduct had been reprehensible.Footnote This act of individual defiance was, however, soon silenced by the laughter of the unreceptive audience. Rogers, W. H., Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds (Taunton, 1925), p. 225 These kinds of demonstrations continued throughout the 1930s. 2. 72. And as a relatively inexpensive sport, such social changes meant otter hunting had become a less appealing target for them. The Humanitarian League was dissolved in 1919, and the main organisation to campaign against otter hunting became the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, founded in 1924. Figure 1. 86 67 Each of these examples shows how a certain body of evidence, produced by otter hunters to promote their sport, was used by campaigners to argue their case against it. He agrees that the otter lives on fish, but so also do herons and wild duck and pike and kingfishers and cats and men and women. Each image is accompanied with a caption and a paragraph explaining the scene. Once all of them are out, plug up the hole and it is as simple as that. A key criticism was of the voyeurism of watching the otter die. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s however verbal disapproval was replaced with more subtle visual rebukes. Allen, Daniel, The Hunted Otter in Britain, 18301939, in Middleton, K. and Pooley, S., eds, Wild Things: Nature and the Social Imagination (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar; Men, women and children could all actively participate together in this sport. They might be horrified if you suggested that they wished the otter any harm. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. The group's membership steadily grew from over 300 in 1925, to over 2000 in 1929, and 3000 in 1938. About the Otter, Cruel Sports, June 1928, 73. In 1844 Landseer's The Otter Speared polarised opinion about otter hunting which was condemned by many as barbaric. Hunting is a good excuse for a hard day's exercise. During peak hunting years, during the mid-1800s, according to harvest records that Larson presented, between 1804 and 1807 nearly 15,000 sea otters were killed. 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. 31. This in a sense gave the League the moral high ground. 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 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. Google Scholar. After only two months, the pressure on the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals proved too much and in July 1906 Animal World announced that the committee was not prepared to take any action on the motion moved by Stephen Coleridge with regard to otter hunting. 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 An anonymous informant writing in The Humanitarian in August 1908, for instance, questioned the unwomanly conduct of the ladies in the field: The conduct of the women is beyond me to describe. Although this demonstration was by all accounts quiet and orderly, the encounter did produce a rather interesting spectacle. 12. The hunting and killing of female otters during the breeding season was a recurring theme in anti-hunting literature. When Oregon and the federal government removed families from the area more than 150 years ago, Peter Hatch said, sea otters were still present. Should Otters be Hunted?, Madame, 9th September 1905, 515, cited in Cheesman and Cheesman, Diaries of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, p. 44. Finally the author of the original article, J. C. Bristow-Noble, responded resentfully that On behalf of some of these daughters of Eve, I have now to state that it is of their opinion that the quarry, as is frequently the case, should always be allowed to escape. This weekly magazine, first published on 1st October 1938, was a pioneering outlet for British photojournalism. The hypocrisy of clergy preaching high moral standards and Christian virtues yet killing for fun was regularly exploited by members of the Humanitarian League. 40, As a result of the Humanitarian League's campaigning, by 1906 otter hunting had become an issue of public debate. The Hawkstone Otter Hounds disbanded in 1914, putting down most of their hounds. The RSPCA and its Objects, The Animal World, July 1906, 154. 1. In other words, if the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did not introduce a bill, then the Humanitarian League would do so. of the hunting fraternity. When the Otters Vanished, Everything Else Started to He reported that around 450 otters were killed every year which meant that in my short life of thirty years. phospholipid bilayer of a cell. . WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. 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. The first publication solely concerned with exposing the cruelties of otter hunting was Joseph Collinson's 1911 The Hunted Otter, a twenty-four page booklet in Ernest Bell's A. He argued that if the government cared for the preservation of beauty in England, the otter would long ago have been placed on the protected list, and would not have been subjected to the undiscriminating attacks of sportsmen.Footnote Ernest Bell, The Barnstaple Cat-Worrying Case, The Animals Friend (1906), 43. 33 We can gain an insight into the exact message they were trying to make from the letter which was handed to the master, Sir Maurice Bromley-Wilson, and followers: The Leeds branch of the League for Prohibition of Cruel Sports has organised this protest against otter-hunting to indicate that there is a growing public feeling against this and other so-called sports. Addressing the issue in Cruel Sports, a member with the pseudonym Wansfell could not see how it was fair to hold the Workington roughs up to obloquy without doing the same to devotees of organised otter hunting. The Humanitarian League's reaction to this case was interesting. Varndell had mastered the Crowhurst Otter Hounds since 1905, and had missed only four days hunting in thirty-five years.Footnote Figure 2. This pack disbanded in 1919 when he became master of the Hawkstone Otter Hounds. Again this article was accompanied with a striking photograph of several ladies holding banners (Figure 3). 4 Which of the following 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. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote . This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. Bates begins by considering the main excuse for killing otters, the supposed need to reduce predation on fish. 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]. Exploitation of otters Griffin, Carl J. Correspondence. 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. Brought up as a sportsman and still a keen angler, this well-known Northumberland country gentleman and Justice of the Peace was a staunch and fearless friend of animals.Footnote women too seem frenzied with the desire to kill.Footnote The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, Annual Report (London, 1931), 34. Swamp Otters He is remembered today for his monumental two-volume Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages (191921); for his natural history collections now held at Kew, the British Museum, and London Zoo; and for his identification of the okapi (Okapi johnstoni) in the Congo in 1901.Footnote He wanted society to step back and reconsider the moral distinction between wild and domestic animals. [After a pause.] Can sea otters save the world 2. But model men would find pleasure neither in torturing, nor annihilating any of them.Footnote Donald, Diana, Picturing Animals in Britain 17501850 (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. } Big game hunter Sir Henry Seton-Karr and otter hunter Mr David Davies, Member of Parliament, were among its sixty-one ordinary members.Footnote 9, In this paper we consider the ways campaigns against otter hunting were carried out in the period 1900 to 1939. The underlying motivation for these very specific criticisms is a much broader belief that all living beings feel pain and suffer. 41 Google Scholar. In The Times on 13th June 1928 Williamson was described as the finest and most intimate living interpreter of the drama of wildlife. But what matter? 73. . 6 12 42. A fortnight after this event, on 13th May 1931, the second reported demonstration against otter hunting generated a rather more hostile response. Varndell became huntsman in 1904. Ruskin's critique of the painting did little to diminish the popularity of Landseer's art in the nineteenth century and hunts, hunters and otter hunting increased substantially in popularity, reaching a peak in the Edwardian period.Footnote The Master of the Wye Valley Otter Hounds, on the other hand, styled himself as a utilitarian, hunting through the war not for sport, but in order to keep down the head of otters in the interests of the fisheries.Footnote 8. 41. The idea of introducing a slaughter limit helps to explain why his case for protecting the otter did not play a part in the rhetoric of the Humanitarian League or the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports. UKWOT has 84. Figure 5. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sport, Annual Report (London, 1926). The first issue in 1939, for instance, sold 1,350,000 copies. See Six weeks later, on 9th September, the magazine's editor revealed that many readers had taken umbrage with the article, and invited further correspondence on the subject. The seasonality, setting and pedestrianism of otter hunting appealed to Edwardian sporting and leisure sensibilities. Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 58. Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. For Bell, the only difference between an otter and a cat was their legal status. men and women,Footnote [23] With this in mind Johnston seemed to overlook the behaviour of otter hunters and instead placed blame on anglers: Salmon is produced in such enormous abundance in North America and Norway, and is so very unlikely (owing to its habit of resorting to the sea) to become exterminated in British waters by the otter, that it would be a shame if this remarkable aquatic weasel. With fox hunting, he argued, few perhaps ever see the death, and it is over almost in an instant but, owing to his strength and cat-like tenacity of life, the otter fights long and dies hard. 35. It is a brutal, demoralising amusement. Here, the criticism of otter hunting seems to be directed more at the spectator's reaction to the prolonged death-agony, than the actual experience which the animal is going through. This indiscriminate killing of females and cubs was shown to be by no means isolated. The latter is essentially a personal consideration of riverside life along the Ouse and the Nene. 72 In 2010 a painting normally considered too upsetting for modern tastes which while impressive was also undeniably gruesome was displayed at an exhibition of British sporting art at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. Sea otter conservation - Wikipedia Sea otters were locally extinct in British Columbian waters in Canada, until a plane containing a romp of otters arrived and set off a population boom with When the otter reached temporary sanctuary in a holt twenty men got on to the bank and endeavoured by jumping and other means to force the earth down into the unfortunate animal's hiding place until worn out by fatigue and fright surrounded by men and dogs the otter became as easy prey to its enemies. Daily Mail, 23rd May 1906, cited in Returning sea otters to Oregon could revive kelp forests Instead, it tells the reader that the otter is hunted partly because it is tradition to do so; partly because he provides excellent sport, and partly because it is still necessary to regulate his kind.Footnote "useRatesEcommerce": false Hastings (190982) became a leading war reporter for Picture Post. Bates wrote this chapter on the basis that he liked otters but, despite living within a mile of a river valley, had never seen one in the wild. When, however, other members of the Hunt were moved to action by the scandal,Footnote Moore-Colyer, R. J., Feathered Women and Persecuted Birds: The Struggle against the Plumage Trade, c. 18601922, Rural History, 11 (2000), 5773 otter rescue plan that worked too At this time the main justification for killing otters was the damage they did to fish stocks. This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. 76, There is a real sense that women should have had the emotional authority to know better.Footnote In 1901 Coulson had written that: Some of the clergy revel in it the very men who pose afterwards as the expounders of high morality.Footnote In these terms, if fishermen, as the only people with a genuine grievance against otters, did not feel the need to hunt and kill them on the grounds of revenge, then the animal was not a pest. In the Daily Sketch, Mr Harding Matthews, an individual with no declared interest, wrote: Are we to believe that Workington breeds people so utterly spineless as to allow, in public and in broad daylight, the brutal murder of an inoffensive, wild creature? hasContentIssue false, Copyright Cambridge University Press 2016. . 17 The opinion of H. E. Bates provides an insight into one person's perception of the immorality of hunting otters to death. 88. Hale, Matthew The otter is as good an excuse as the next one; and, after all, the beast usually escapes.Footnote Although this unusual interlude was tolerated with good humour at first, one follower of the hunt retaliated by burning a number of leaflets. The sea otter rescue plan that worked too well - BBC Future WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. The sequence of events is as follows: (1) The Master of an Otter Hunt Plans His Attack; (2) The Followers are Arriving; (3) Hounds are Released from the Van; (4) The Crowhurst Pack Awaits the Signal to Move Off; (5) The Hunt Begins; (6) The Pack Moves Off to Find the Otter's Drag; (7) A Huntsman and His Pole; (8) Cutting off a Corner; (9.) Holding an extreme and uncompromising policy, it developed more dynamic methods in an attempt to gain both publicity and prohibition. Google Scholar. Downing, Graham, The Hounds of Spring. WebWhich of the following critical values should the scientist use for the chi-square analysis of the data? Darts and arrows were present at the start of hunting. 28 For Bates, much like Henry Salt, the pain and suffering experienced by animals were indistinguishable from those experienced by humans. By setting this against contemporary instances he insinuates the unchanging attitudes of otter hunters over the centuries. In August 1938 the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports gained permission to reprint the chapter in leaflet form. Ernest Bell, The RSPCA, The Animals Friend (1906), 169170; Reverend Joseph Stratton, The Abdication of the R.S.P.C.A., The Humanitarian, August 1906, 59. 23. Johnston's opinion of the otter and motivation for its protection were also quite unusual. Writing in the Morning Leader, Colonel Coulson described how an otter, which had been hunted for seven hours, was struck and killed by a blow from a metal-shod stick wielded by an otter hunter in a boat. Collinson quotes from the second chapter of Isaak Walton's The Compleat Angler: Or the Contemplative Man's Recreation (1653): God keep you all, gentlemen, and send you meet this day with another bitch otter, and kill her merrily, and all her young ones too.Footnote When interviewed by the Oxford Times, Mrs Chapman explained We went to Islip because we thought we ought to make a special protest against otter-hunting. 15, Although this document only had a small readership it proved to be the earliest written condemnation of the sport from an organisation. 56. Scientists and tribal leaders say reintroducing otters would restore balance to degraded kelp forests, boost fish species, protect shorelines, generate tourist dollars Has data issue: false 52. 18, The first published call for the protection of otters came from Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston (18581927) who has been described as one of the main instigators of the scramble for Africa on the ground and considered himself a naturalist above all else.Footnote Stephen Coleridge was the second son of Lord Chief Justice of England, John Duke Coleridge, and great nephew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 79. 9. 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. otters With no utilitarian reason for killing, the hunted otter was simply something killed for fun. A true man would kill fierce animals with as little pain as possible, while those he destroys for food, or raiment, he will destroy mercifully. On occasions deer-hunters hunted and killed hinds-in-calf. 70. Ormond, Richard, Sir Edwin Landseer (London, 1981), pp. It was not until July 1928 that the age was lowered to twenty-one. 11:59 Exit Sea otters are native to the western coast Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1906 Annual Report (1906), p. 127. (Cheers.) 5. 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. 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. He had seen a Master of a pack last summer throw a man into the river for striking at an otter with a walking stick.Footnote At its centre an exhausted hunter holds an otter aloft over a pack of baying otterhounds. feel thankful that the Masters of the various packs of otter hounds do not share this opinion.Footnote Perhaps surprisingly, despite four decades of campaigns against the sport, the article does not describe otter hunting as something controversial. Cruel Sports magazine readily employed this strategy. It argued that if it were necessary, otters should be cleanly killed, i.e. By planting a seed of doubt into the minds of readers over the accuracy of hunting reports, it also implied that otter hunters could not be trusted. 80. . A subsection in the Hunted Otter (1911) entitled Hunted for Seven Hours described the lengthy pursuit of a female otter by the Culmstock Otter Hounds in 1910. Demonstration at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds. The small caption reads: OTTER-HUNTING. And as to the women, they evidently have no sense of shame, or pity, for the torture these poor little creatures undergo.Footnote