As this practice was almost exclusivelyFootnote About Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, July 1928, 85. 1 Like the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports advocated the state regulation of British wildlife, and were outraged by the hunting and coursing of highly sentient creatures for sport. Alongside the written article, twelve pictures are used to provide a step by step visual account of a day's hunting with the Crowhurst Otter Hounds. This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. Coulson thought hare hunting was crueller than otter hunting because the hare was timid defenceless and nervous, whereas the otter was a gallant little animal which died after a long hard-fought battle.Footnote The first to second the motion was Ernest Bell who pointed out that otter hunting was just as unsportsmanlike as shooting birds from traps. 67. This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. In his view, otters were more visible than fish and therefore their lives were more valuable: the time has come when active steps should be taken to promote the preservation of the otter, a creature far more beautiful, wonderful and obvious than any fish.Footnote The otter hunters involved had been using cats in a specially constructed wooden tunnel to train their young terriers to bolt otters. 87. Summer hunting across rugged river valleys offered strenuous physical exertion in the sun, whilst facilitating a picnic and a paddle. In Alaska, 467 sea otters were translo-cated to several locations from 1965 to 1969. Mackenzie, John M., The Empire of Nature (Manchester, 1988), p. 33 14. Perhaps surprisingly, despite four decades of campaigns against the sport, the article does not describe otter hunting as something controversial. Vivisection, the slaughter of animals for food, the fur and feather fashion trade, and blood sports were all targeted.Footnote Published online by Cambridge University Press: Kean, Hilda, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, History Workshop Journal (1995), 40:1, 1638 21 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. F. Pamphlet Series. The group's membership steadily grew from over 300 in 1925, to over 2000 in 1929, and 3000 in 1938. View all Google Scholar citations Although this unusual interlude was tolerated with good humour at first, one follower of the hunt retaliated by burning a number of leaflets. Total loading time: 0 Nothing daunted, she returned at nightfall to the yard and once more endeavoured to free her cub, but with no better result than before. The last known native sea otter in Washington state, Larson said, was shot in 1910 near Willapa Bay. This carry on as normal sentiment was initially broadly endorsed, but could not be sustained by all. 27 But Bristow-Noble emphasised that we should. This in a sense gave the League the moral high ground. . This increase in reintroduction effort would come to be known as one of the most ambitious and extensive carnivore restoration efforts in history. Allen, Daniel, Otter (London, 2010)Google Scholar; .but an essential portion of any intelligible system of ethics or social science.Footnote 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. The Otter Worry, The Humanitarian, September 1907, 164. On rare occasions women were singled out for criticism during this period: Why the educated, rich, or the uneducated for the matter of that, have nothing better of more edifying to do with their time is beyond one's comprehension. Downing, Graham, The Hounds of Spring. The letter argued that no reasonable excuse can be found for such conduct, misnamed sport which was morally wrong and barbaric. . . Although Coleridge's speech was welcomed with loud cheers and rapturous applause, the chairman of the committee was far from impressed by the impromptu inclusion of the subject. The Master of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds surveys a line of Country. 57. Holding an extreme and uncompromising policy, it developed more dynamic methods in an attempt to gain both publicity and prohibition. The incident was widely reported and horrified the public. He also pointed out that Geoffrey Hill of Hawkstone had killed 544 otters between 1870 and 1884, and that William Collier of Culmstock had also accounted for 144 between 1879 and 1884. 6 These kinds of demonstrations continued throughout the 1930s. socially, much of society still subscribed to the Victorian notion of womanhood. Douglas Macdonald Hastings, Hunting the Otter, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, 5256, p. 52. 31. 72 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; 77. Why Otters Are Endangered? Salt, Henry, Seventy Years Among Savages (London, 1921) p. 141 In February 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave all women over the age of thirty the right to vote. Otter hunting was a minor field sport in Britain but in the early years of the twentieth century a lively campaign to ban it was orchestrated by several individuals and Indeed, Coulson, Collinson and other campaigners believed that the kill had ill effects on the mental well-being of every person involved. In the latter, the fox has some chance of escape but in the former the otter's chances of escape are clearly much less. 5 There were several large sources of South American otter skins. For Bell, the only difference between an otter and a cat was their legal status. 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.) This act of individual defiance was, however, soon silenced by the laughter of the unreceptive audience. 62. Reflecting on the period, W. H. Rogers of the Cheriton Otter Hounds wrote: Some doubts were expressed as to the propriety of hunting while so many poor fellows were being killed and wounded in the trenches, but the view prevailed that if the Hunt was once dropped it would be very difficult to restart it, and that those who were away would wish us to keep things going against their return.Footnote 75 23 Otter reintroductions were common during this time. A part of this pamphlet, which included this quotation, was reprinted in Cruel Sports magazine in 1929. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote 53, To show that this practice was not a thing of the past, Collinson then lifted more recent examples from the May 1906 Animals Friend: An otter, after being worried for four hours, gave birth to two cubs, and was afterwards hunted for two hours more before she was killed. In these terms the iconic image of Varndell could be seen as positively publicising the face of otter hunting. 80. 33 39. with exception of the three spurious sports of carted-stag hunting, rabbit coursing and shooting pigeons from traps.Footnote Williamson, Henry, Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers (London, 1927)Google Scholar; By Zulma Cary. A prime example was when an article appeared in the 22nd July 1905 edition of Madame, a magazine aimed at wealthy women, proudly informing readers about the first lady Master of Otter Hounds, Mrs Mildred Cheesman. Hounds Feather as They Search the River Banks; (10) Followers Take to the Water; (11) This Is the Kill; (12) The Whip Holds Up the Trophy. confined to otter hunting, they also tried to divide the hunting fraternity by distinguishing the sporting conduct of otter hunters from fox hunters, stag hunters and hare hunters: If the sporting set consider it unsporting to hunt some animals in the breeding season, why does this not apply to otters?Footnote It also shows just how much the mere thought of otter hunting could unsettle an individual. 35 Sea urchins are voracious grazers of kelp. The History of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds (Powys, 1988), p. 24.Google Scholar. 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. 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. 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. 4 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. Reverend H. C. G. Matthew, Coleridge, Stephen William Buchanan (18541936), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). In 1928, it showed a cheerful young woman glorying over being blooded at an otter-hunt (Figure 4).Footnote 60. The word fun is the binding theme in Bates argument. George Greenwood made a similar observation in the 1914 publication, Killing for Sport: Men and, good heavens! Covering the issues which most concerned. WebSea otters were hunted to near extinction during the maritime fur trade of the 1700s and 1800s. Initially L. C. R. Cameron, author of Otters and Otter-Hunting (1908), was incredulous that the incident could have happened at all while F. G. Aflalo, editor of the Encyclopaedia of Sport, thought the reports demonstrated the ignorance of the critics of hunting.Footnote Figure 5. The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands (Edinburgh, 2005)Google Scholar. . Prior to the maritime fur trade which began in the late eighteenth century, sea otters ranged from Japan, north through the Aleutian Islands and down the Pacific coast of North America to Baja California (Barabash-Nikiforov 1947). Figure 4. 40, As a result of the Humanitarian League's campaigning, by 1906 otter hunting had become an issue of public debate. Google Scholar. His letter writing campaign against rabbit-coursing on Sundays in Surrey led to its prohibition in 1924. These public demonstrations shed light on the respectability of the animal welfare movement. John Mackenzie points out that Landseer did not decry human participation in the raw cruelty of the natural world. 89. The Picture Post styles otter hunting as just another peculiar pastime the notoriously crazy English enjoy in the countryside. 50. 71. Kean, Hilda, Animal Rights (London, 1998)Google Scholar; Scientists and tribal leaders say reintroducing otters would restore balance to degraded kelp forests, boost fish species, protect shorelines, generate tourist dollars 03 March 2016. Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1906 Annual Report (1906), p. 127. For Bates, much like Henry Salt, the pain and suffering experienced by animals were indistinguishable from those experienced by humans. 76. The chairman eventually agreed to put the resolution to the meeting and it was carried with acclamation. 69 5. In 1939 another iconic image came out on the front cover of the Picture Post (Figure 5). Throughout the period campaigners repeatedly pointed to this subject as proof of the inconsistency and heartlessnessFootnote 47 The Trust recently secured the first ongoing class licence to capture and transport live Eurasian otters trapped in well-fenced fisheries in England. The aesthetic quality of animals was also important to him. The hunting and killing of female otters during the breeding season was a recurring theme in anti-hunting literature. Wright, Catherine 59. 62 But what matter? Varndell had mastered the Crowhurst Otter Hounds since 1905, and had missed only four days hunting in thirty-five years.Footnote Smith, Virginia, Bell, Ernest (18511933), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [online]Google Scholar. 16, Otter hunting was compared unfavourable to other types of hunting. Tichelar, Michael, Putting Animals into Politics: The Labour Party and Hunting in the First Half of the Twentieth Century, Rural History, 17 (2006), 21334, 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also 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. By the mid-1960s, Amchitka Island was being used a site for nuclear testing, which eventually killed many sea otters in the area. 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? 9, In this paper we consider the ways campaigns against otter hunting were carried out in the period 1900 to 1939. Promoting the humane principles. Google Scholar. An incredibly vile sport: Campaigns against Otter School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, Keele University, ST5 5BG, UKD.Allen@keele.ac.uk, School of Geography, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UKCharles.Watkins@nottingham.ac.uk, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793315000175, The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands, A Delightful Sport with peculiar claims: The Specificities of Otterhunting, 18501939, Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England after 1850, Wild Things: Nature and the Social Imagination, Otters as Symbols in the British Environmental Discourse, Records of the Culmstock Otterhounds, c. 17901957, Tally-Ho: Fifty Years of Sporting Reminiscences, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, Feathered Women and Persecuted Birds: The Struggle against the Plumage Trade, c. 18601922, Some inhuman wretch: Animal Maiming and the Ambivalent Relationship between Rural Workers and Animals, The Hounds of Spring. Resting upon his well-notched otter pole and fully clad in hunting attire, he gazes into the distance. He sat on the governing bodies of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Canine Defence League, the Cat's Protection League, the Pit-Ponies Protection Society, and the Animals Friend Society.Footnote By placing value on the life of the animal, it was not the act of killing that was condemned, but rather the killers reaction to such an act. 50 45. Some of the recurring questions included: Have we reached such a pitch of humaneness in our treatment of wild animals that no further legislation is desired? and What made it more desirable for individuals, rather than Societies, to promote such legislation? These questions got no response from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the putative otter hunting bill became for many just another means to criticise its inadequacy and hypocrisy. Bell was sentenced to one month's imprisonment with hard labour and John Church, the Hunt's Whip, received half that sentence. 11. 3 In his opinion everyone had a right to enjoy this animal in its natural surroundings, not just otter hunters. Nearly 280 river otters were captured in the Adirondacks and Catskills and relocated to 15 sites in central and western New York during a three-year period in the 1990s. Otter hunting presents to him a picturesque scene, with the scarlet-coated, white-breeched men armed with spears, with shaggy hounds, and the landscape set with great marsh marigolds. It appears to be more about human behaviour than animal suffering. In 1844 Landseer's The Otter Speared polarised opinion about otter hunting which was condemned by many as barbaric. and broadly disregarded spearing as one of the blood-thirsty methods used by our forefathers.Footnote For this reason, Bates believed that all animals, whether wild or domestic, should have the same legal rights. Members of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports were also outraged by this murderous behaviour and equally critical of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but they had a slightly different response to the event. 51. The Humanitarian League's strategy was that whenever an article mentioning otter hunting appeared in a newspaper or magazine, League members would bombard that publication with letters of protest. Bell argued that it offered an insightful glimpse into the mind of the sporting man,Footnote Ernest Bell noted in the Animals Friend journal soon after the prosecution that it was quite right that the press should express horror at such barbarity but questioned whether the deliberate worrying of otters for amusement was any less cruel or reprehensible than the worrying of cats.Footnote Bates begins by considering the main excuse for killing otters, the supposed need to reduce predation on fish. phospholipid bilayer of a cell. 23. 54 The Guardian reported that the grisly content of the painting was the reason why it was taken off permanent display by its owners the Laing Gallery in Newcastle.Footnote 4. In just a few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town. After being chased by the crowd, the female otter took refuge in some brickwork under a bridge. Colonel W. Lisle B. Coulson, The Otter Worry, in Henry Salt, ed., British Blood Sports: Let us go out and kill something (1901), pp. According to Coulson those who engaged in the kill became virtually maddened by it.Footnote This idea is reinforced by the fact that the two members of the audience who stood to offer their support were both members of the Humanitarian League. Moore-Colyer, R. J., Feathered Women and Persecuted Birds: The Struggle against the Plumage Trade, c. 18601922, Rural History, 11 (2000), 5773 61. Allen, Daniel, A Delightful Sport with peculiar claims: The Specificities of Otterhunting, 18501939, in Hoyle, R. W., ed., Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England after 1850 (Lancaster, 2007), pp. [22] In 1957 the treaty was finally re-drafted to account for the population changes in the various locations of sea otters. 42. Men, women and children could all actively participate together in this sport. Bates wanted to reclaim the otter from this minority for the British public. 56. Throughout the essay he applies the term to a number of situations to discredit the idea that animals are killed for public safety, natural history, protection of farmers or sporting exercise.Footnote 30 On 4th April 1928, for instance, several daily newspapers reported that an otter had been stoned to death by fifty working men in Workington. Spearing was no longer permitted in the popular modern form. 90. Demonstration at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds. CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 47. 14 In this case, which was brought by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Master of the Cheriton Otter Hounds, Mr Walter Lorraine Bell, and three of its members were found guilty of charges relating to cruelty to cats. Unlike the working men who may have regretted the spontaneous event, sportsmen not only celebrated their own form of killing; they had created organisations that expected it to occur on a regular basis. 34. 2. 72. Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 61. Rogers, William, Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds (Taunton, 1925)Google Scholar. It is pleasant to read that after such heroic conduct on the part of the poor beast, the hunter's heart softened and the whelp restored.Footnote 74 Brutality of Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, June 1928, 74. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals 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 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. 3.84. The Daily Mail, for instance, received several telegrams from masters of otter hounds opposing Coleridge's criticism and justifying their sport. 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. 77. . Google Scholar. to gratify the anglers craze.Footnote Feature Flags: { If the mere presence of women was condemned, then the role they played in, and joy they gained from, the death of the otter was shocking. . George Greenwood, Chapter 1: The Cruelty of Sport, in Henry Salt, ed., Killing for Sport (1914), p. 6. Figure 2. For campaigners, the killing of indefensible cubs and protective mothers was the antithesis of fair play, sportsmanship and manliness. Colonies were discovered around Alaska's Aleutian Islands and Prince William Sound in the 1930s. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. The commercial trade began in WebIn 1741, Russians began hunting sea otters. His argument in the Hunted Otter was driven by quotations from thirty published sources. The latter formed a pack of Otter Hounds in Llandinam, Wales, bearing his name in 1906. The painting was commissioned as a commemorative portrait of his pack of otter hounds by Lord Aberdeen (17841860), then foreign secretary and later to become prime minister. 79. Although celebrated by reviewers in the Illustrated London News and Athenaeum, the subsequent engraving failed to sell well and John Ruskin argued in 1846 that Landseer before he gives us any more writhing otters, or yelping packs should consider whether such a scene was worthy of contemplation.Footnote Collinson had previously led the Humanitarian League's campaign against flogging and was described by Henry Salt as a young north-countryman, self-taught, and full of native readiness and ingenuity, who at an early age had developed a passion for humanitarian journalism.Footnote This approval generated considerable adverse reactions and increased press coverage. Posted on September 22, 2019. This allowed broader questions to be raised by the publisher and campaigner Ernest Bell (18511933). Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. Drawing his facts from The Field of 8th October 1910, Collinson explained that the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds had recorded a total of twenty-two otters, the Border Counties accounted for twenty-five, and the Hawkstone finished with forty. Tarka soon became an iconic literary figure, and otter-hunting was made tangible to a new and wide audience.Footnote In the minds of campaigners it not only looked ridiculous, it was unacceptable. See . Has data issue: false Sydney Barthropp, Master of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds, died fighting in France in 1914, which led to their disbandment soon after. women too seem frenzied with the desire to kill.Footnote the killing of baby cubs must needs go on, though a grief and pain to all concerned in their ultimate destruction.Footnote 38 20 Ernest Bell, The Barnstaple Cat-Worrying Case, The Animals Friend (1906), 43. 46. 71. 1823. 37, The first malpractice to be exposed in otter hunting itself was an incident that occurred on the River Tweed on 6th July 1907. 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 young and thoughtful. 86 The fifteen hunts in existence in 1880 had grown to twenty-two by 1910.Footnote And as to the women, they evidently have no sense of shame, or pity, for the torture these poor little creatures undergo.Footnote 73 The recent exposure in Devonshire, where a master of otter hounds was sentenced to imprisonment. 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. Sport and the Otter, Cruel Sports, June 1929, 812; this had first appeared in The Western Mail, 1st June 1929. Pain, too, like fun, is a word of many meanings and it is not surprising, perhaps, that for many people the two things are synonymous. [23] He was a founder member in 1903 of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire and an opponent of big game hunting. The National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports, which was formed by an individual who had originally been part of those more radical elements, preferred a gradual approach to abolition and identified educating public opinion as its immediate objective. Master of Crowhurst Otter Hounds, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, Volume 4, Number 3. 85 It argued that if it were necessary, otters should be cleanly killed, i.e. . and provided further evidence of the barbarous spirit engendered by indulgence in blood sports.Footnote Again this article was accompanied with a striking photograph of several ladies holding banners (Figure 3). 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. . Otter hunters were of course proud of this fact; it was one of the many peculiarities that set it apart from other field sports. 8 . . He denounced otter hunting as the lowest-down pastime that has survived into the twentieth century. Rather than defend its sentient or sporting qualities, he was much more concerned with its aesthetic role in the landscape. That year, some conservation measures were established, but unregulated killing resumed in 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska. And even we English whose behaviour in the country is notoriously crazy must have an excuse for wading through rivers in grey bowler hats, blue jackets and white flannel breeches. Otter hunting was a minor field sport in Britain but in the early years of the twentieth century a lively campaign to ban it was orchestrated by several individuals and anti-hunting societies.

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