Cruel Sports magazine readily employed this strategy. As to the quickness of the kill, campaigners pointed to the duration of separate hunts as evidence to the contrary. He provides a typical instance from a Monthly Review (June 1906) article by J. C. Tregarthen: An otter's cub was captured and confined in the stableyard of a house near a river where the mother had been hunted during the day. 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. 55. 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. The crucial connection, he discovered, was sea urchins. He denounced otter hunting as the lowest-down pastime that has survived into the twentieth century. Colonies were discovered around Alaska's Aleutian Islands and Prince William Sound in the 1930s. 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 Stephen Coleridge was the second son of Lord Chief Justice of England, John Duke Coleridge, and great nephew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Cameron, L. C. R., Rod, Pole and Perch: Angling and Otter-hunting Sketches (London, 1928), p. 52 They were killed mostly for their fur, which was desirable He presented the case for his unauthorised but friendly amendment at the Egyptian Hall, Mansion House. 58. Offering close proximity and participatory practices of seeing (gazing) and doing (the stickle), any member of an otter hunt could participate in infamous scenes. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. In the latter, the fox has some chance of escape but in the former the otter's chances of escape are clearly much less. 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. The main institutional differences were in their ideals and methods. 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. } The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. In just a few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town. You can travel down 10 miles of coastline and never see an animal, he said. The loss is more than cosmetic. In the Aleutians delicate seascape, otters hold the entire ecosystem together. 10 Salt, Henry, Seventy Years Among Savages (London, 1921) p. 141 23 Even if she is prevented from doing so, she will hang about the place where they are, and perhaps be killed wet when the cubs, too, will perish.Footnote of compassion, love, gentleness, and universal benevolence, the Humanitarian League clearly set itself apart from other reform oriented bodies. 78. This approval generated considerable adverse reactions and increased press coverage. When, however, other members of the Hunt were moved to action by the scandal,Footnote 73 The hunting and killing of female otters during the breeding season was a recurring theme in anti-hunting literature. hasContentIssue false, Copyright Cambridge University Press 2016. Figure 2. Unlike other blood sports, the main excitement in otter hunting was seen to derive from the involvement in the visceral spectacle of the kill. 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. 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. What are perhaps more interesting are his reasons for wanting to preserve the otter. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports based itself on the radical elements of the Humanitarian League. He focussed on several key themes including the hunting of pregnant otters and the demoralising effects of participating in the hunt. This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. The belief that any sentient being deserved protection from ill-treatment generated a comprehensive list of animal related activities marked for legislative change. Leeds Women Protest at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, August 1935, 59. As otters were removed during the hunting years, there was a large decrease in the catches of fish species from the eelgrass habitats. 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 After mobilising factual evidence, graphic descriptions and controversial comparisons, Bates concludes his essay bemoaning the seeming insanity of the legal position of hunted animals. 1847Google Scholar; 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 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 90. Bates begins by considering the main excuse for killing otters, the supposed need to reduce predation on fish. 4. A sanctuary was created in Amchitka Island, whose sea otter population grew to outstrip its supply of prey. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, Annual Report (London, 1931), 34. . the magazine had a massive readership. 6 Twenty-five years later, Smith and his colleagues conducted two years of monitoring surveys at 1,200 sites across the state to assess how well the population was doing. Rogers, W. H., Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds (Taunton, 1925), p. 225 This official regulatory association was set up to standardise conduct in the field, eliminate internal squabbles over hunting countries and promote the otterhound breed. In 1901 he also contributed a four page paper, The Otter Worry, to the League's sixty-three page pamphlet British Blood Sports: Let us go out and kill something. Osman, Colin, Man, Felix Hans (18931985), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 57. The cruelty was not disputed and Bell's defence to the charge showed little remorse. 73. 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 He reported that around 450 otters were killed every year which meant that in my short life of thirty years. He saw that miserable little animal was pursued by men with large poles with spikes in their heads, men who would put on a tall hat and go to Church on Sundays, while women disgracing their sex stood by and lent their countenance and encouragement to the brutal proceedings. But Bristow-Noble emphasised that we should. This indicates that despite the ongoing challenge from the anti-blood-sports movement, in 1939 hunting rhetoric still informed the public's perception of otters and otter hunting. the quarry itself is quite a secondary consideration.Footnote 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 Demonstration at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds. A fortnight after this event, on 13th May 1931, the second reported demonstration against otter hunting generated a rather more hostile response. 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 This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. . Raymond, Graham At its centre an exhausted hunter holds an otter aloft over a pack of baying otterhounds. for this article. By setting this against contemporary instances he insinuates the unchanging attitudes of otter hunters over the centuries. 70 [23] Williamson, Henry, Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Interestingly, the magazine did not choose a classic scene of hounds in a watery landscape. 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. 41. Demonstrations at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds, Cruel Sports, June 1931, 51. That year, some conservation measures were established, but unregulated killing resumed in 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska. Google Scholar. 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]. . With no sportsmen involved, the incident gained universal condemnation from otter hunters, members of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports and the general public. 13. Published online by Cambridge University Press: One of the first men of influence to join the Humanitarian League was Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (18411911). Hastings (190982) became a leading war reporter for Picture Post. Google Scholar. A part of this pamphlet, which included this quotation, was reprinted in Cruel Sports magazine in 1929. 2. Although this demonstration was by all accounts quiet and orderly, the encounter did produce a rather interesting spectacle. 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. But in the early 2000s, their numbers exploded: From 2002 to 2011, the sea-otter population more Google Scholar. During the summer months its pages were sprinkled with photographs of women and girls being blooded at otter hunts. Humanitarian, April 1918, 100, cited by 33. 66. 67. This indiscriminate killing of females and cubs was shown to be by no means isolated. Bates wanted to reclaim the otter from this minority for the British public. The scientist built a tube that was divided by an. In recent years, sea otters have expanded into the upper reaches of Glacier Bay including Scidmore Bay, Russell 47. Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. In the Aleutian Islands, a massive and unexpected disappearance of sea otters has occurred since the 1980s. The cause of the decline is not known, although the observed pattern of disappearances is consistent with a rise in orca predation. Sea otters give live birth. Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 61. . The seasonality, setting and pedestrianism of otter hunting appealed to Edwardian sporting and leisure sensibilities. 88. 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. 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 Perhaps surprisingly, despite four decades of campaigns against the sport, the article does not describe otter hunting as something controversial. Kean, Hilda, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, History Workshop Journal (1995), 40:1, 1638 Vivisection, the slaughter of animals for food, the fur and feather fashion trade, and blood sports were all targeted.Footnote Moreover, otters are not hunted by fishermen, but by people whose notions of fun are to go out and kill something.Footnote The public profile of otter hunting was raised by the publication in 1927 of Henry Williamson's Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers. Coleridge won the audience at the meeting over to his case. 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. Salt edited the two Humanitarian League journals: Humanity, later renamed The Humanitarian (18951919) and The Humane Review (19001910). Rivers are then lovely with kingcup and ladysmock, meadows are starred and belled with daisy and cowslip, and, above all, the female otter is in cub. Otter-hunting is cowardly and unmanly; Otters are hunted by people who should know better; Otter hunting is a relic of barbarism; Otters are hunted in the breeding season which is despicable were just some of the truths blazoned on boards that day. This meant the League had far fewer opportunities to criticise otter hunting and by 1918 it recognised that it was the extravagance of spending vast sums of money on hunting and shooting, rather than the cruelty of blood sports, which aroused public resentment.Footnote WebNo hunting (except waterfowl) during removed only by the user. 30. This was the month when the Barnstaple cat-worrying case was in the public eye. Why Otters Are Endangered? 64. 18. 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. Mackenzie, John M., The Empire of Nature (Manchester, 1988), p. 33 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? The National Anti-Vivisection Society was founded by Frances Power Cobbe in 1875; the Plumage League was established in 1889 and became the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1904. 68 Smith, Virginia, Bell, Ernest (18511933), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [online]Google Scholar. 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. Scientists and tribal leaders say reintroducing otters would restore balance to degraded kelp forests, boost fish species, protect shorelines, generate tourist dollars The Guardian, 9th May 2010. He wanted society to step back and reconsider the moral distinction between wild and domestic animals. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler: Or the Contemplative Man's Recreation (1653), Chapter 2. 85 It is quite clear from the applause with which my remarks have been received that the subscribers of the Society do wish to hear me. The chairman eventually agreed to put the resolution to the meeting and it was carried with acclamation. Yet although Johnston was not directly involved, his argument brought into prominence the campaign for the otter. 71. It may be outlawed, yet in 1977 one single New York dealer smuggled, amongst many other furs, the skins of 15,470 neotropical and 271 giant otters into the country (Eltringham 1984). This increase in reintroduction effort would come to be known as one of the most ambitious and extensive carnivore restoration efforts in history. Kean, Hilda, Animal Rights (London, 1998)Google Scholar; 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. Joseph Collinson argued that a deplorable feature of this sport is that its followers include all sorts and conditions of people: ministers of religion with their wives, young men and young women, sometimes even boys and girls. 65. Captain T. W. Sheppard, Decadence of Otter Hunting, The Field, 20th October 1906, 658. Men, women and children could all actively participate together in this sport. In his opinion everyone had a right to enjoy this animal in its natural surroundings, not just otter hunters. Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 58. Correspondence. He is astonished that the law of this country still allows this rotten and most bloody exhibition of behaviour and that such repugnant bloodiness survives in a so-called civilised age and country.Footnote 62. It appears to be more about human behaviour than animal suffering. Ernest Bell, Cat Worrying by Sportsmen, The Animals Friend (1905), 1823. His argument in the Hunted Otter was driven by quotations from thirty published sources. 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. 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 For Bates, such suffering could not be enjoyable for the sufferer and should not be enjoyable for onlookers. Bell was sentenced to one month's imprisonment with hard labour and John Church, the Hunt's Whip, received half that sentence. 56. Mr Collier's Otter Hounds were the last to abandon the spear in 1884, as his field did not care to see so gallant a beast suffer such an end.Footnote 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 evidence seems clear enough.Footnote . 39 20. Google Scholar. 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 Coulson compared the death of the fox with the death of the otter to emphasise the cruelty of the latter. Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. 79. He met his future wife Ida Hibbert at an otter hunt, and proposed to her at a hunt ball. Williamson's book was based on considerable personal research and knowledge. Again this article was accompanied with a striking photograph of several ladies holding banners (Figure 3). When Oregon and the federal government removed families from the area more than 150 years ago, Peter Hatch said, sea otters were still present. Brutality of Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, June 1928, 74. 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. 40, As a result of the Humanitarian League's campaigning, by 1906 otter hunting had become an issue of public debate. and After being chased by the crowd, the female otter took refuge in some brickwork under a bridge. 37, The first malpractice to be exposed in otter hunting itself was an incident that occurred on the River Tweed on 6th July 1907. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. In 1928, it showed a cheerful young woman glorying over being blooded at an otter-hunt (Figure 4).Footnote They might be horrified if you suggested that they wished the otter any harm. 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 Considering Johnston's establishment position and his enthusiasm for hunting in the Empire, this was a powerful request. Otter hunters were of course proud of this fact; it was one of the many peculiarities that set it apart from other field sports. Staged at Colchester's North Railway Station, on this occasion members of the Colchester Working Group were the chief agitators and the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds the agitated. He argued that if the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did not oppose otter hunting then it is quite certain that some similar Society will do so to the utter shame of our Society here.Footnote 63. 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. Hostname: page-component-75b8448494-knlg2 11. Sea urchins are voracious grazers of kelp. The men then lit some cotton waste, smoked out the otter, and pelted it with stones. The sport became increasingly popular in the late nineteenth century and the Edwardian period. For Bell, the only difference between an otter and a cat was their legal status. . WebAll the otters that are in there might leave to get away from the smell. F. Pamphlet Series. The Daily Mail, for instance, received several telegrams from masters of otter hounds opposing Coleridge's criticism and justifying their sport. women too seem frenzied with the desire to kill.Footnote 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. The latter formed a pack of Otter Hounds in Llandinam, Wales, bearing his name in 1906. Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 601. The war had a dramatic effect on otter hunting and campaigns against the sport, although individual hunts dealt with the hostilities in their own ways. He uses heavy irony to get his point across: Fun is a curious word. For almost 40 years, the otters in southeast Alaska scrapped by. One of the main reasons Bates spoke out against otter hunting was that he felt that a small minority had reduced his chances of seeing the otter. Figure 5. 10. . Ormond, Richard, Sir Edwin Landseer (London, 1981), pp. Observing sea otters and kelp beds on Amchitka both onshore and during scuba dives led Estes to question the links between them. 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. 2. . 1 Rather than defend its sentient or sporting qualities, he was much more concerned with its aesthetic role in the landscape. 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. 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. It also shows that people other than animal welfarists and sportsmen were concerned with the hunted otter. Sea otters, in turn, are equally voracious predators of sea urchins. It has many meanings and perhaps I misconstrue it? Johnston condemned otter hunting and urged the government to give the mammal legal protection in his 1903 publication British Mammals. See The commercial trade began in 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 In a series of vignettes, Bates fondly describes the rivers, the creatures, the trees, the flowers, the buildings and the people that make up the watery landscape. As this practice was almost exclusivelyFootnote The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands (Edinburgh, 2005)Google Scholar. The hypocrisy of clergy preaching high moral standards and Christian virtues yet killing for fun was regularly exploited by members of the Humanitarian League. Resting upon his well-notched otter pole and fully clad in hunting attire, he gazes into the distance. It also shows just how much the mere thought of otter hunting could unsettle an individual. 76, There is a real sense that women should have had the emotional authority to know better.Footnote George Greenwood, Chapter 1: The Cruelty of Sport, in Henry Salt, ed., Killing for Sport (1914), p. 6. It argued that if it were necessary, otters should be cleanly killed, i.e. 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. The driving force was Henry Amos, who had worked as a government official and been secretary of the Vegetarian Society from 1913. 46 88 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
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