Instead as Collinson argued, the hunting and worrying of otters while caring for their offspring proclaimed only the insensate cowardice of the men and women concerned.Footnote Hunting is a good excuse for a hard day's exercise. It was not until July 1928 that the age was lowered to twenty-one. with exception of the three spurious sports of carted-stag hunting, rabbit coursing and shooting pigeons from traps.Footnote See 74 42. Otter hunters were of course proud of this fact; it was one of the many peculiarities that set it apart from other field sports. Johnston's opinion of the otter and motivation for its protection were also quite unusual. 11:59 Exit Sea otters are native to the western coast 21 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 Hale, Matthew Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 601. 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 67. As otters were removed during the hunting years, there was a large decrease in the catches of fish species from the eelgrass habitats. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. 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 58. Large hunting efforts were under way with the help of a massive ship in the water. 03 March 2016. The cruelty was not disputed and Bell's defence to the charge showed little remorse. They were killed mostly for their fur, which was desirable The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports publicised its views in much the same way as the Humanitarian League and from January 1927 they started producing a monthly journal Cruel Sports.Footnote 44 48 WebAll the otters that are in there might leave to get away from the smell. 28. 73 First, he insisted that cats had been used, as he could not always get hold of a badger. Leeds Women Protest at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, August 1935, 59. 20. He met his future wife Ida Hibbert at an otter hunt, and proposed to her at a hunt ball. . 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. . 24 How to Get Rid of Otters in a Pond - Wildlife Animal Control 19 88 6. In The Times on 13th June 1928 Williamson was described as the finest and most intimate living interpreter of the drama of wildlife. This fun was one of the reasons why it is so difficult for me, and for that matter anybody else, to get a sight of an otter.Footnote Johnston condemned otter hunting and urged the government to give the mammal legal protection in his 1903 publication British Mammals. 86. A key criticism was of the voyeurism of watching the otter die. River otters love fish, frogs, crayfishes, crabs, and other aquatic invertebrate The Master of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds surveys a line of Country. Indeed, Coulson, Collinson and other campaigners believed that the kill had ill effects on the mental well-being of every person involved. 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 When urchin populations spiked in response, the reefs held their ground. 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 In February 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave all women over the age of thirty the right to vote. This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. One of the first men of influence to join the Humanitarian League was Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (18411911). 66. 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. men and women,Footnote 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. Although this demonstration was by all accounts quiet and orderly, the encounter did produce a rather interesting spectacle. . Figure 3. Demonstrations at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds, Cruel Sports, June 1931, 51. Unlike other blood sports, the main excitement in otter hunting was seen to derive from the involvement in the visceral spectacle of the kill. (Cheers.) After mobilising factual evidence, graphic descriptions and controversial comparisons, Bates concludes his essay bemoaning the seeming insanity of the legal position of hunted animals. } 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. 83. The RSPCA and its Objects, The Animal World, July 1906, 154. 57 The Cheriton Cruelty Case, The Field, 28th October 1905, 768. He stressed that he was not a sportsman and had never shot a bird nor hooked a fish in my life but became involuntarily the witness of an otter hunt while sketching beside a pool. Observing sea otters and kelp beds on Amchitka both onshore and during scuba dives led Estes to question the links between them. Oliver, Roland, Johnston, Sir Henry Hamilton (18581927), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [online]Google Scholar. 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 Summer hunting across rugged river valleys offered strenuous physical exertion in the sun, whilst facilitating a picnic and a paddle. 77. The chairman eventually agreed to put the resolution to the meeting and it was carried with acclamation. These snaps, which had been taken by otter hunters, were lifted from local newspapers then republished with evocative captions. Men, women and children could all actively participate together in this sport. Joseph Collinson, The Hunted Otter (1911), p. 19. Bates wanted to reclaim the otter from this minority for the British public. 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. 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 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. 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 Cruel Sports magazine readily employed this strategy. 5. 11. The committee concluded that the promotion of legislation and especially of controversial legislation, is not desirable at present and should instead be undertaken as far as possible by individuals.Footnote 34 Each image is accompanied with a caption and a paragraph explaining the scene. L. C. R. Cameron, Otters and Otter-Hunting (1908), cited in Collinson, The Hunted Otter, p. 6. I do not find this in the least hard to believe.Footnote 33. WebOregons sea otters disappeared in flash of destruction, as one small part of an ocean-spanning fur boom driven by demand for their lush pelts. The latter formed a pack of Otter Hounds in Llandinam, Wales, bearing his name in 1906. Colonel W. Lisle B. Coulson, The Otter Worry, in Henry Salt, ed., British Blood Sports: Let us go out and kill something (1901), pp. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote 56. Recognising that such causes may be dismissed as sickly sentimentality, the League made a point of stressing that their underlying principles were not merely a product of the heart. . 32 This pack disbanded in 1919 when he became master of the Hawkstone Otter Hounds. 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. 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. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. 47. But in the early 2000s, their numbers exploded: From 2002 to 2011, the sea-otter population more 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. 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. 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 The hypocrisy of clergy preaching high moral standards and Christian virtues yet killing for fun was regularly exploited by members of the Humanitarian League. Bell was sentenced to one month's imprisonment with hard labour and John Church, the Hunt's Whip, received half that sentence. The small caption reads: OTTER-HUNTING. Render date: 2023-05-01T08:20:46.153Z 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? Swamp Otters When the Otters Vanished, Everything Else Started to In 1931 Ernest Bell, co-founder of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, resigned in protest at Henry Amos's continual criticism of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 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 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. Ibid., p. 20. 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. Google Scholar. It was the only organisation that called for the legal protection of otters at the beginning of the twentieth century.Footnote How a social lifestyle helped drive a river otter species to 27 The Hawkstone Otter Hounds disbanded in 1914, putting down most of their hounds. Otter reintroductions were common during this time. Covering two pages (812), it was retitled Sport and the Otter.. 87. Once all of them are out, plug up the hole and it is as simple as that. 50 16, Otter hunting was compared unfavourable to other types of hunting. Inside there is a six page pictorial feature, Hunting the Otter, written by Douglas Macdonald Hastings. . The word fun is the binding theme in Bates argument. In 1844 Landseer's The Otter Speared polarised opinion about otter hunting which was condemned by many as barbaric. 17 Spearing was no longer permitted in the popular modern form. 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 70. This echoed broader concerns for non-human animals. The commercial trade began in It may be that he saw otter hunting as a useful device for testing both the political elasticity of the Society and the penetrative influence of the Humanitarian League. . Yet although Johnston was not directly involved, his argument brought into prominence the campaign for the otter. 57. Although Collinson made a point of exposing these figures, he did not comment on them in any way. Here he labelled otter hunting as the second cruellest blood sport: With the exception of the hare-hunt men and women possibly never sink so low as they do when they join an Otter-Worry. This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. Douglas Macdonald Hastings, Hunting the Otter, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, 5256, p. 52. 20 Captain T. W. Sheppard, Decadence of Otter Hunting, The Field, 20th October 1906, 658. 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. 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 Hunt Otters 13. Sea otters, in turn, are equally voracious predators of sea urchins. Sea otters were ecologically extirpated from the Northwest Coast of North America by the Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, 1928 p. 85. Justice for the Animals, Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, October 1929, 128. The hunting and killing of female otters during the breeding season was a recurring theme in anti-hunting literature. "useRatesEcommerce": false Now, what nonsense this is!Footnote 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. Hopkinson, T., ed., Picture Post 193850 (London, 1970), p. 8 For this reason, Bates believed that all animals, whether wild or domestic, should have the same legal rights. 12 Demonstration at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds. Bates wrote a regular column, Country Life, in The Spectator, and two volumes of nature essays, Through the Woods (1936) and Down the River (1937). For Johnston the otter was not a special animal, it was one of many beasts, birds, and reptiles which potentially added to the future happiness of the world. The painting, Sir Edwin Landseer's The Otter Speared, Portrait of the Earl of Aberdeen's Otterhounds, or the Otter Hunt had been associated with controversy since it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844 (Figure 1). Call a professional pest removal expert 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 unintended consequences. Posted on September 22, 2019. Destruction: The Maritime Fur Trade - Elakha Alliance Williamson dedicated Tarka the Otter to William Rogers. 1 The Otter Worry, The Humanitarian, September 1907, 164. The first issue in 1939, for instance, sold 1,350,000 copies. Salt edited the two Humanitarian League journals: Humanity, later renamed The Humanitarian (18951919) and The Humane Review (19001910). The incident was widely reported and horrified the public. 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 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 followed the Cheriton Otter Hounds from 1924 and subscribed to Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds produced by William Rogers, Master, in 1925. He was also a member of the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports and an unwavering opponent of otter hunting. Following its publication, the book received widespread publicity when Williamson was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in June 1928. 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; WebA scientist designed an experiment to test an. Added to this, the physical characteristics of the otter meant that the final worry, much like the preceding pursuit, could be more prolonged and more of a spectacle than in hunts of other animals. At dawn she withdrew to the river, where she was again hunted, but after several hours pursuit managed to escape. He denounced otter hunting as the lowest-down pastime that has survived into the twentieth century. 84. 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 For such people the laceration of an otter's living flesh is an amusing thing. 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. 58. We appeal to the chivalry of English men and women to make these so-called sports impossible.Footnote The candid words of Reverend E. W. L. Davies in his 1886 chapter on The Otter and his Ways helped to reinforce this point: Bitch-otters yielding milk. earlier attempts at concealment were also exposed. artificial In these terms, this exceptional incident was absorbed into the broader campaign against blood sports. 29. They were joined by English and American hunters in the latter part of the century, and uncontrolled hunting continued until 1799. The driving force was Henry Amos, who had worked as a government official and been secretary of the Vegetarian Society from 1913. Loss of sea otters accelerating the effects of climate 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. Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. 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. F. Pamphlet Series. 5 H. E. Bates, Otters and Men (1938), p. 1. Google Scholar. George Greenwood, Chapter 1: The Cruelty of Sport, in Henry Salt, ed., Killing for Sport (1914), p. 6. 85 These kinds of demonstrations continued throughout the 1930s. Kean, Hilda, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, History Workshop Journal (1995), 40:1, 1638 After being chased by the crowd, the female otter took refuge in some brickwork under a bridge. 70 Another aspect of otter hunting that attracted critical attention was the type of people involved and the behaviour it induced. 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. 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 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. He uses heavy irony to get his point across: Fun is a curious word. Varndell had mastered the Crowhurst Otter Hounds since 1905, and had missed only four days hunting in thirty-five years.Footnote 7. This is clearly a splendid time. 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. The chapter entitled Otters and Men is important. 62 Coulson later complained that clergy, more generally, did little to criticise otter hunting: Seldom do we hear from the pulpit any protests against acts of cowardice and cruelty that would shame savages. Google Scholar. Hunting Otters with firearms was once common in the early twentieth century, but many preferred to trap them. . 76. The large bold title above the image read, Women being blooded at an otter-hunt.Footnote 11 A modest proposal for hunting sea otters | Popular Science Demonstration at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds, Cruel Sports, June 1931. Reverend H. C. G. Matthew, Coleridge, Stephen William Buchanan (18541936), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). (Cheers.) 74. The group's membership steadily grew from over 300 in 1925, to over 2000 in 1929, and 3000 in 1938. In advance of a major test in 1968, the U.S. Atomic Ene Throughout the period campaigners repeatedly pointed to this subject as proof of the inconsistency and heartlessnessFootnote AP Bio Final Questions Flashcards | Quizlet 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). Ormond, Richard Afterwards everyone who took part in the orgy was probably ashamed of himself. Moreover, the intimacy of otter hunting meant that not only are they present at these infamous scenes, but, like the huntsmen, are worked up to the wildest pitch of excitement and moreover join in the final worry and the performance of the obsequies, when the spoils of the chase are distributed.Footnote That year, some conservation measures were established, but unregulated killing resumed in 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska. For campaigners, the killing of indefensible cubs and protective mothers was the antithesis of fair play, sportsmanship and manliness. 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 14 Google Scholar. This increase in reintroduction effort would come to be known as one of the most ambitious and extensive carnivore restoration efforts in history. The following year Bell and his followers formed the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports. Rogers, W. H., Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds (Taunton, 1925), p. 225 89. 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. Vivisection, the slaughter of animals for food, the fur and feather fashion trade, and blood sports were all targeted.Footnote This reversal shows that the campaigning did have an impact, albeit a small one, on the public perception of the activity. An incredibly vile sport: Campaigns against Otter Instead, it focussed on one man, Mr Sidney Varndell. 77. In 1928, it showed a cheerful young woman glorying over being blooded at an otter-hunt (Figure 4).Footnote 81. Google Scholar. For Bates, such suffering could not be enjoyable for the sufferer and should not be enjoyable for onlookers. 52. Sir Harry Johnston, British Mammals (1903), p. 140. Hostname: page-component-75b8448494-knlg2
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