as otters were removed during the hunting years

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 Hunting Otters with firearms was once common in the early twentieth century, but many preferred to trap them. In these terms, this exceptional incident was absorbed into the broader campaign against blood sports. Joseph Collinson, The Hunted Otter (1911), p. 19. Bell argued that it offered an insightful glimpse into the mind of the sporting man,Footnote Vivisection, the slaughter of animals for food, the fur and feather fashion trade, and blood sports were all targeted.Footnote 2. The belief that any sentient being deserved protection from ill-treatment generated a comprehensive list of animal related activities marked for legislative change. 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. A part of this pamphlet, which included this quotation, was reprinted in Cruel Sports magazine in 1929. With no utilitarian reason for killing, the hunted otter was simply something killed for fun. He focussed on several key themes including the hunting of pregnant otters and the demoralising effects of participating in the hunt. for torturing cats to death, should show the public the lengths to which cowards will go when once they begin to gratify blood-lust.Footnote 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. 30 UKWOT has 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. Instead, it focussed on one man, Mr Sidney Varndell. 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. Bates begins by considering the main excuse for killing otters, the supposed need to reduce predation on fish. 14. Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 1906 Annual Report (1906), p. 127. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler: Or the Contemplative Man's Recreation (1653), Chapter 2. 9, In this paper we consider the ways campaigns against otter hunting were carried out in the period 1900 to 1939. He had been influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and was a keen member of the Vegetarian Society and the Humanitarian League and after 1893 devoted much time and money to administration and fund-raising for three main reform causes: vegetarianism, humanitarianism, and animal welfare. In 1923 he diverted his attention to blood sports. 61. Google Scholar. George Greenwood made a similar observation in the 1914 publication, Killing for Sport: Men and, good heavens! . Although in the book he admits this was partly due to the animal's nocturnal behaviour, in the shortened leaflet the omission of the introductory paragraph made otter hunting the prime reason for his misfortune. In 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 anti-hunting societies. 2. 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. What can look more ridiculous than a middle-aged woman, hurrying along, mile after mile, through wet grass and muddy pools, climbing fences and walls, her clothes sticking to her body and her hair half down her back?Footnote Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. 51. As otters were removed during the hunting years, there was a large decrease in the catches of fish species from the eelgrass habitats. The idea of the fairer sex taking part in manly or savage amusements was regularly invoked to shock the public.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 The large bold title above the image read, Women being blooded at an otter-hunt.Footnote George Greenwood, Chapter 1: The Cruelty of Sport, in Henry Salt, ed., Killing for Sport (1914), p. 6. 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. 41 71. But in the early 2000s, their numbers exploded: From 2002 to 2011, the sea-otter population more . Although Collinson made a point of exposing these figures, he did not comment on them in any way. 41. These public demonstrations shed light on the respectability of the animal welfare movement. In the latter, the fox has some chance of escape but in the former the otter's chances of escape are clearly much less. Figure 3. 89. Spearing was no longer permitted in the popular modern form. . . This in a sense gave the League the moral high ground. For Bell, the only difference between an otter and a cat was their legal status. 14 10 80 Holding an extreme and uncompromising policy, it developed more dynamic methods in an attempt to gain both publicity and prohibition. The League established a special department to deal with Sports in 1895. The otter is as good an excuse as the next one; and, after all, the beast usually escapes.Footnote The Picture Post styles otter hunting as just another peculiar pastime the notoriously crazy English enjoy in the countryside. 12 Downing, Graham, The Hounds of Spring. 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 We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. After some lively verbal exchanges between the Huntsman and League members, the Branch Secretary Mrs Chapman attempted to address the crowd by standing on a chair. He uses heavy irony to get his point across: Fun is a curious word. . Feature Flags: { He reported that around 450 otters were killed every year which meant that in my short life of thirty years. Ernest Bell, Cat Worrying, pp. Moreover, otters are not hunted by fishermen, but by people whose notions of fun are to go out and kill something.Footnote 26 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. 43. 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. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote By setting this against contemporary instances he insinuates the unchanging attitudes of otter hunters over the centuries. Google Scholar. 72 In just a few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town. WebFrom 1941 till 1957, an interim agreement between the U.S. and Canada regulated the harvesting of sea otters. CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 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. At night, in company with her other cub, she came to the yard and tried to liberate the little captive, but without success. That year, some conservation measures were established, but unregulated killing resumed in 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska. 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. The driving force was Henry Amos, who had worked as a government official and been secretary of the Vegetarian Society from 1913. It is amazing to us that men and women can find pleasure in hunting living creatures for hours, putting them to considerable distress and pain, and then watching their exhausted bodies being torn to pieces by hounds. 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. 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is not to say that those within the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports subscribed to this notion. Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. 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. The Master of the Crowhurst Otter Hounds surveys a line of Country. Perhaps surprisingly, despite four decades of campaigns against the sport, the article does not describe otter hunting as something controversial. for this article. 72. Raymond, Graham They were joined by English and American hunters in the latter part of the century, and uncontrolled hunting continued until 1799. . One of the first men of influence to join the Humanitarian League was Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (18411911). In these terms the iconic image of Varndell could be seen as positively publicising the face of otter hunting. The Guardian, 9th May 2010. . In advance of a major test in 1968, the U.S. Atomic Ene The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, Annual Report (London, 1931), 34. 61 Captain T. W. Sheppard, Decadence of Otter Hunting, The Field, 20th October 1906, 658. It also shows that people other than animal welfarists and sportsmen were concerned with the hunted otter. Promoting the humane principles. Afterwards everyone who took part in the orgy was probably ashamed of himself. The History of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds (Powys, 1988), p. 24.Google Scholar. 29. . 75. Correspondence. 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. Google Scholar. Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 61. 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. This approval generated considerable adverse reactions and increased press coverage. 88 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 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. 71. . WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea 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 A high proportion of the League were women. 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. The following month the four-page leaflet, Otters and Men, was issued at the price of 1d. 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 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 Figure 4. Big game hunter Sir Henry Seton-Karr and otter hunter Mr David Davies, Member of Parliament, were among its sixty-one ordinary members.Footnote His letter writing campaign against rabbit-coursing on Sundays in Surrey led to its prohibition in 1924. . Large numbers of sea cows occurred in the Commander Islands at the time of their discovery by Europeans in 1741. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sport, Annual Report (London, 1926). Salt, Henry, Humanitarianism (London, 1891), p. 3 70 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 The Monarch of the Glen: Landseer in the Highlands (Edinburgh, 2005)Google Scholar. shot but they felt that many otters were preserved for hunting, a shameful blot on our civilisation. young and thoughtful. 84. 62 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. The aesthetic quality of animals was also important to him. 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 . . 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 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. Demonstration at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds, Cruel Sports, June 1931. 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 12. 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 To reinforce this point Bates goes on to outline the enjoyable aspects of the sport. There were several large sources of South American otter skins. Coleridge, Bell and others argued in articles in Animals Friend magazine and The Humanitarian that this reversal was unconstitutional and illogical.Footnote Leeds Women Protest at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, August 1935. 58. 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. 62. 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. Sport and the Otter, Cruel Sports, June 1929, 812; this had first appeared in The Western Mail, 1st June 1929. . 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 In the same year Amos organised the Leeds Rodeo Protest Committee which successfully scotched several attempts to import and establish rodeo in England. Justice for the Animals, Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, October 1929, 128. 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. Spurious Sports Sport with an Otter, The Humanitarian, October 1906, 75. Donald, Diana, Picturing Animals in Britain 17501850 (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. She is about to be afforded the pleasure, the privilege, of being harried and hunted and having her living guts ripped out by forty human beings, twenty or thirty hounds and some terriers.Footnote It appears to be more about human behaviour than animal suffering. Consequently everyone can watch, and most do watch, the end and people collect from far and near and watch in cold blood for minutes together the frantic death-agony of the brave little animal who has never done injury to anyone assembled. Here we explore the plausibility of this mechanism, using information on sea otters, kelp forests, and the recent extinction of Steller's sea cows from the Commander Islands. After retiring from the army he devoted much of his time to lecturing in schools across the country about the fair treatment of animals. L. C. R. Cameron, Otters and Otter-Hunting (1908), cited in Collinson, The Hunted Otter, p. 6. 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 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. 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. Hunting is a good excuse for a hard day's exercise. He denounced otter hunting as the lowest-down pastime that has survived into the twentieth century. 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). At least 23 million Amazonian animals, including the otters, were hunted for their hides from 1904 to 1969. . Williamson's book was based on considerable personal research and knowledge. 6. 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. 87. Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. F. Pamphlet Series. Considering Johnston's establishment position and his enthusiasm for hunting in the Empire, this was a powerful request. The following year, the Fur Seal Treaty was signed and although the 1847Google Scholar; Ibid., p. 20. 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. Otter reintroductions were common during this time. Hostname: page-component-75b8448494-knlg2 23 2956Google Scholar; It was the only organisation that called for the legal protection of otters at the beginning of the twentieth century.Footnote This was the month when the Barnstaple cat-worrying case was in the public eye. to gratify the anglers craze.Footnote This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. Brutality of Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, June 1928, 74. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports also publicised isolated malpractices to strengthen their argument. Newcastle Daily Journal, 29th May 1914, cited at http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. Varndell became huntsman in 1904. Second, he felt that as he had bought the cats they were his own property and third, he argued that it was less cruel to use a cat than a badger as worrying the latter badly injured the dogs.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. When urchin populations spiked in response, the reefs held their ground. 46 On occasions deer-hunters hunted and killed hinds-in-calf. 16, Otter hunting was compared unfavourable to other types of hunting. Observing sea otters and kelp beds on Amchitka both onshore and during scuba dives led Estes to question the links between them. Hastings (190982) became a leading war reporter for Picture Post. By 2016, over 4,000 river otters had been translocated to 23 states. 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). . 86. The scientist built a tube that was divided by an. 3.84. 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 At this time the main justification for killing otters was the damage they did to fish stocks. 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. 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 27 during the fur hunting period in the 18th and 19th centuries. 74 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. The exposure was made all the more effective by the contradictory responses from the otter hunters involved. 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. A selection of letters was then published under the title, Should Otters Be Hunted? The first letter, by Reverend Joseph Stratton, argued that men were judged in relation to their treatment of animals. . 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. What humbugs we are!Footnote 11. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals 19 89 The latter is probably more in keeping with the prosaic style of the pamphlet. The RSPCA and its Objects, The Animal World, July 1906, 154. When, however, other members of the Hunt were moved to action by the scandal,Footnote Rather than defend its sentient or sporting qualities, he was much more concerned with its aesthetic role in the landscape. 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 Hopkinson, T., ed., Picture Post 193850 (London, 1970), p. 8 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 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 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 Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. 75 This weekly magazine, first published on 1st October 1938, was a pioneering outlet for British photojournalism. 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. 68 In women and children it induced behaviour that was not in keeping with certain ideas about gender and youth. Salt, Henry, Seventy Years Among Savages (London, 1921) p. 141 The national profile of otter hunting was raised in July 1905 when the press reported an incident that became known as the Barnstaple cat-worrying case. Another aspect of otter hunting that attracted critical attention was the type of people involved and the behaviour it induced. 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. Figure 1. Ormond, Richard, Sir Edwin Landseer (London, 1981), pp.
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