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 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 3. Google Scholar. 1847Google Scholar; Alongside this broad criticism, the incident was also used to expose the behaviour of sportsmen in general. 25. Resting upon his well-notched otter pole and fully clad in hunting attire, he gazes into the distance. To help do this he compares otter hunting with fox hunting. 42. 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 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 League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports based itself on the radical elements of the Humanitarian League. The otter is as good an excuse as the next one; and, after all, the beast usually escapes.Footnote In 1923 he diverted his attention to blood sports. 45 "useRatesEcommerce": false Kean, Hilda, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, History Workshop Journal (1995), 40:1, 1638 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. 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. 50 The group's membership steadily grew from over 300 in 1925, to over 2000 in 1929, and 3000 in 1938. 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 See inside.. Six weeks later, on 9th September, the magazine's editor revealed that many readers had taken umbrage with the article, and invited further correspondence on the subject. 68. Feature Flags: { and the sunshine of May. Moore-Colyer, R. J., Feathered Women and Persecuted Birds: The Struggle against the Plumage Trade, c. 18601922, Rural History, 11 (2000), 5773 31. The driving force was Henry Amos, who had worked as a government official and been secretary of the Vegetarian Society from 1913. 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. The latter is probably more in keeping with the prosaic style of the pamphlet. . The chairman eventually agreed to put the resolution to the meeting and it was carried with acclamation. 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 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 71. Google Scholar. This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. 47 6. Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. 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. 64. Captain T. W. Sheppard, Decadence of Otter Hunting, The Field, 20th October 1906, 658. They might be horrified if you suggested that they wished the otter any harm. The first issue in 1939, for instance, sold 1,350,000 copies. Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. The Hawkstone Otter Hounds disbanded in 1914, putting down most of their hounds. 24 This approval generated considerable adverse reactions and increased press coverage. Which of the following observations would provide the strongest 336, p. 34. 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 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. 2. 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 latter is essentially a personal consideration of riverside life along the Ouse and the Nene. Alongside the overall decrease of otter hunts and otter hunters was the dramatic reduction of advertised meets and reports in the national and regional press. The main institutional differences were in their ideals and methods. with exception of the three spurious sports of carted-stag hunting, rabbit coursing and shooting pigeons from traps.Footnote Summer hunting across rugged river valleys offered strenuous physical exertion in the sun, whilst facilitating a picnic and a paddle. 4. 72 With no utilitarian reason for killing, the hunted otter was simply something killed for fun. 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 . 73 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. In just a few decades, this bustling civilization has withered into a ghost town. The hunting and killing of female otters during the breeding season was a recurring theme in anti-hunting literature. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals It also shows just how much the mere thought of otter hunting could unsettle an individual. . The Picture Post styles otter hunting as just another peculiar pastime the notoriously crazy English enjoy in the countryside. men and women,Footnote 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. 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. The following year Bell and his followers formed the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports. During the 82nd Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on 21st May, Stephen Coleridge tapped into this public feeling, and unexpectedly proposed that the committee should prepare a bill to make otter hunting illegal. See . Joseph Collinson, The Hunted Otter (1911), p. 19. We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. 69 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 WebWhich of the following critical values should the scientist use for the chi-square analysis of the data? In 1928, it showed a cheerful young woman glorying over being blooded at an otter-hunt (Figure 4).Footnote On occasions deer-hunters hunted and killed hinds-in-calf. Google Scholar. Osman, Colin, Man, Felix Hans (18931985), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 By Zulma Cary. 9, In this paper we consider the ways campaigns against otter hunting were carried out in the period 1900 to 1939. 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. . About the Otter, Cruel Sports, June 1928, 73. This reversal shows that the campaigning did have an impact, albeit a small one, on the public perception of the activity. 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. 59. 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 16, Otter hunting was compared unfavourable to other types of hunting. If anyone interpreted this anecdote with a smidgen of sentimentality, as a narrative of a protective mother rewarded for her heroic conduct with the release of her whelp, the harsher realities of such freedom were instantly put into perspective with a quotation from L. C. R. Cameron: Resentment at disturbance of the normal conditions impels her to leave her couch in which she has laid her cubs; the promptings of the maternal instinct compel her to return forthwith to her offspring. This is clearly a splendid time. Spurious Sports Sport with an Otter, The Humanitarian, October 1906, 75. 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. In 1965, sea otters were translocated from Amchitka Island (Aleutian Islands) to the outer coast of southeastern Alaska and by the early 1990's, small numbers of sea otters were documented at the mouth of Glacier Bay. . } Stephen Coleridge was the second son of Lord Chief Justice of England, John Duke Coleridge, and great nephew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. women too seem frenzied with the desire to kill.Footnote 29. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. This weekly magazine, first published on 1st October 1938, was a pioneering outlet for British photojournalism. 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 Finally the author of the original article, J. C. Bristow-Noble, responded resentfully that On behalf of some of these daughters of Eve, I have now to state that it is of their opinion that the quarry, as is frequently the case, should always be allowed to escape. 12. 62. 77. Hunting is a good excuse for a hard day's exercise. WebSea otters were hunted to near extinction during the maritime fur trade of the 1700s and 1800s. 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. 47. 18. The principles of this League echoed those of its predecessor, that it was iniquitous to inflict suffering, either directly or indirectly, upon sentient animals for the purpose of sport.Footnote The exposure was made all the more effective by the contradictory responses from the otter hunters involved. Yet although Johnston was not directly involved, his argument brought into prominence the campaign for the otter. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. 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 regular otter hunter deliberately indulges in cruelty without the saving grace of feeling shame on the contrary, the returning cars and local tap rooms ring with the complacent boastings of the lords and ladies of creation.Footnote 41. Sea urchins are voracious grazers of kelp. WebA scientist designed an experiment to test an. 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. He followed the Cheriton Otter Hounds from 1924 and subscribed to Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds produced by William Rogers, Master, in 1925. 21 Having been allowed bail, the pair's charges were later revised on appeal to a five pound fine, on the understanding that Bell gave a donation of one hundred pounds to the North Devon Infirmary. But in the early 2000s, their numbers exploded: From 2002 to 2011, the sea-otter population more 73. 63. 76, There is a real sense that women should have had the emotional authority to know better.Footnote 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 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 Johnston condemned otter hunting and urged the government to give the mammal legal protection in his 1903 publication British Mammals. Reverend H. C. G. Matthew, Coleridge, Stephen William Buchanan (18541936), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). 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 It also shows that people other than animal welfarists and sportsmen were concerned with the hunted otter. 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. 67 [22] In 1957 the treaty was finally re-drafted to account for the population changes in the various locations of sea otters. 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.

Pennsylvania State Police Incident Reports, Articles A