Inside there is a six page pictorial feature, Hunting the Otter, written by Douglas Macdonald Hastings. He was a founder member in 1903 of the Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the Empire and an opponent of big game hunting. By setting this against contemporary instances he insinuates the unchanging attitudes of otter hunters over the centuries. The following year he became joint Master with Mrs Mildred Cheesman who had been celebrated as the first lady master of otter hounds in the Daily Mail in 1905, as discussed earlier in this paper. 39. And since I have never seen an otter, except behind the glass of a painted case, who am I to say that the otter does not enjoy the fun of having its belly bloodily ripped? Downing, Graham, The Hounds of Spring. 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 42. . Has data issue: false By enlisting the opinion of H. E. Bates, the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports hoped this sentiment would not only reach a more popular readership, but also move such people into joining the campaign against otter hunting. 19 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. He thought that the aesthetics of otter hunting could be maintained if public opinion or legislation limited the killing of otters to ten per annum in any one county and then it might be possible to keep up a picturesque sport without unduly lessening the number of otters in our rivers.Footnote Interestingly, the magazine did not choose a classic scene of hounds in a watery landscape. Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. When urchin populations spiked in response, the reefs held their ground. Douglas Macdonald Hastings, Hunting the Otter, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, 5256, p. 52. 29 The letter argued that no reasonable excuse can be found for such conduct, misnamed sport which was morally wrong and barbaric. 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. phospholipid bilayer of a cell. 3 As the otter hunters arrived at the meet, the first thing they saw was a line of demonstrators with banners bearing the words Abolish the Shameful Sport of Otter-hunting and Stand up for the Helpless. artificial Members of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports were also outraged by this murderous behaviour and equally critical of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but they had a slightly different response to the event. It appears to be more about human behaviour than animal suffering. 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 65, The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports was the first organisation to engage directly with otter hunters at otter hunts and the first ever protest against otter hunting appears to have taken place in 1931. Coleridge, Bell and others argued in articles in Animals Friend magazine and The Humanitarian that this reversal was unconstitutional and illogical.Footnote 20 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. 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 In 1928, it showed a cheerful young woman glorying over being blooded at an otter-hunt (Figure 4).Footnote The opinion of H. E. Bates provides an insight into one person's perception of the immorality of hunting otters to death. to gratify the anglers craze.Footnote In this case, which was brought by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Master of the Cheriton Otter Hounds, Mr Walter Lorraine Bell, and three of its members were found guilty of charges relating to cruelty to cats. 33. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote Big game hunter Sir Henry Seton-Karr and otter hunter Mr David Davies, Member of Parliament, were among its sixty-one ordinary members.Footnote In his opinion everyone had a right to enjoy this animal in its natural surroundings, not just otter hunters. 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 Although this demonstration was by all accounts quiet and orderly, the encounter did produce a rather interesting spectacle. When Oregon and the federal government removed families from the area more than 150 years ago, Peter Hatch said, sea otters were still present. 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 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 following year Bell and his followers formed the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports. Offering close proximity and participatory practices of seeing (gazing) and doing (the stickle), any member of an otter hunt could participate in infamous scenes. 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. In August 1938 the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports gained permission to reprint the chapter in leaflet form. Williamson's book was based on considerable personal research and knowledge. 76. 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. Reverend H. C. G. Matthew, Coleridge, Stephen William Buchanan (18541936), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). He did however come to the conclusion that their conduct had been reprehensible.Footnote George Greenwood, Chapter 1: The Cruelty of Sport, in Henry Salt, ed., Killing for Sport (1914), p. 6. Unlike other blood sports, the main excitement in otter hunting was seen to derive from the involvement in the visceral spectacle of the kill. . This is not to say that those within the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports subscribed to this notion. For campaigners, the killing of indefensible cubs and protective mothers was the antithesis of fair play, sportsmanship and manliness. 60. 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. Sea otters were ecologically extirpated from the Northwest Coast of North America by the They might be horrified if you suggested that they wished the otter any harm. 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. 3. 21 6 His argument in the Hunted Otter was driven by quotations from thirty published sources. CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also 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 For Bates, much like Henry Salt, the pain and suffering experienced by animals were indistinguishable from those experienced by humans. 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. Alongside this broad criticism, the incident was also used to expose the behaviour of sportsmen in general. [22] In 1957 the treaty was finally re-drafted to account for the population changes in the various locations of sea otters. The men then lit some cotton waste, smoked out the otter, and pelted it with stones. The League established a special department to deal with Sports in 1895. Kean, Hilda, The Smooth Cool Men of Science: The Feminist and Socialist Response to Vivisection, History Workshop Journal (1995), 40:1, 1638 At night, in company with her other cub, she came to the yard and tried to liberate the little captive, but without success. 47 15. 70. 39 Hastings (190982) became a leading war reporter for Picture Post. With no utilitarian reason for killing, the hunted otter was simply something killed for fun. Smith, Virginia, Bell, Ernest (18511933), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [online]Google Scholar. Google Scholar. 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 This is clearly a splendid time. Once all of them are out, plug up the hole and it is as simple as that. 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. 67 The Otter Worry, The Humanitarian, September 1907, 164. Human involvement is, rather, glorified as an imperative of command over nature, perfectly conveyed in The Otter Hunt.Footnote Ruskin's critique of the painting did little to diminish the popularity of Landseer's art in the nineteenth century and hunts, hunters and otter hunting increased substantially in popularity, reaching a peak in the Edwardian period.Footnote UKWOT has L. C. R. Cameron, Otters and Otter-Hunting (1908), cited in Collinson, The Hunted Otter, p. 6. 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 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. Cruel Sports magazine readily employed this strategy. Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. 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]. 10. 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 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. 74 . In Alaska, 467 sea otters were translo-cated to several locations from 1965 to 1969. Google Scholar. The large bold title above the image read, Women being blooded at an otter-hunt.Footnote We appeal to the chivalry of English men and women to make these so-called sports impossible.Footnote 32. Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. Although in political terms women gained full equality of suffrage in 1928,Footnote Prior to the maritime fur trade which began in the late eighteenth century, sea otters ranged from Japan, north through the Aleutian Islands and down the Pacific coast of North America to Baja California (Barabash-Nikiforov 1947). During the summer months its pages were sprinkled with photographs of women and girls being blooded at otter hunts. Tarka soon became an iconic literary figure, and otter-hunting was made tangible to a new and wide audience.Footnote That year, some conservation measures were established, but unregulated killing resumed in 1867, when the U.S. purchased Alaska. Figure 1. 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. For Bates, such suffering could not be enjoyable for the sufferer and should not be enjoyable for onlookers. An anonymous informant writing in The Humanitarian in August 1908, for instance, questioned the unwomanly conduct of the ladies in the field: The conduct of the women is beyond me to describe. 75. When interviewed by the Oxford Times, Mrs Chapman explained We went to Islip because we thought we ought to make a special protest against otter-hunting. 79. 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 The following year, the Fur Seal Treaty was signed and although the 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 When, however, other members of the Hunt were moved to action by the scandal,Footnote Joseph Collinson, The Hunted Otter (1911), p. 19. 31. are not infrequently killed, even in the summer months, and then, of course, the whole litter is destroyed. 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 87 20. It depicts Varndell as a solitary figure deep in thought. 86 27 44 5 British Sporting Art, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. In the minds of campaigners it not only looked ridiculous, it was unacceptable. When the otter reached temporary sanctuary in a holt twenty men got on to the bank and endeavoured by jumping and other means to force the earth down into the unfortunate animal's hiding place until worn out by fatigue and fright surrounded by men and dogs the otter became as easy prey to its enemies. This allowed broader questions to be raised by the publisher and campaigner Ernest Bell (18511933). 59. 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. 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. 48 64. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sport, Annual Report (London, 1926). Pring, Geoffrey, Records of the Culmstock Otterhounds, c. 17901957 (Exeter, 1958), p. 35 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. 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. 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. . This indiscriminate killing of females and cubs was shown to be by no means isolated. He followed the Cheriton Otter Hounds from 1924 and subscribed to Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds produced by William Rogers, Master, in 1925. Each image is accompanied with a caption and a paragraph explaining the scene. The Spirit of Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 62. 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. artificial membrane that mimics the. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. . There is no danger, no risk, absolutely no excuse for this form of baiting except the insensate one of a lust for blood.Footnote and 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 The Guardian, 9th May 2010. Scientists and tribal leaders say reintroducing otters would restore balance to degraded kelp forests, boost fish species, protect shorelines, generate tourist dollars These snaps, which had been taken by otter hunters, were lifted from local newspapers then republished with evocative captions. The first to second the motion was Ernest Bell who pointed out that otter hunting was just as unsportsmanlike as shooting birds from traps. Now, what nonsense this is!Footnote He focussed on several key themes including the hunting of pregnant otters and the demoralising effects of participating in the hunt. Covering the issues which most concerned. H. E. Bates, Otters and Men (1938), p. 1. 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 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 Sports based itself on the radical elements of the Humanitarian League. 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 50. The Humanitarian League's reaction to this case was interesting. 22. Sea urchins are voracious grazers of kelp. 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. hasContentIssue false, Copyright Cambridge University Press 2016. He presented the case for his unauthorised but friendly amendment at the Egyptian Hall, Mansion House. Wright, Catherine For almost 40 years, the otters in southeast Alaska scrapped by. George Greenwood made a similar observation in the 1914 publication, Killing for Sport: Men and, good heavens! . 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. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. 9, In this paper we consider the ways campaigns against otter hunting were carried out in the period 1900 to 1939. 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 It argued that if it were necessary, otters should be cleanly killed, i.e. Coulson compared the death of the fox with the death of the otter to emphasise the cruelty of the latter. 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 This echoed broader concerns for non-human animals. Which of the following observations would provide the strongest Ormond, Richard, Sir Edwin Landseer (London, 1981), pp. This act of individual defiance was, however, soon silenced by the laughter of the unreceptive audience. young and thoughtful. In recent years, sea otters have expanded into the upper reaches of Glacier Bay including Scidmore Bay, Russell 1. 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. . 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. 13. The word fun is the binding theme in Bates argument. The Cheriton Cruelty Case, The Field, 28th October 1905, 768. The aesthetic quality of animals was also important to him. One of the first men of influence to join the Humanitarian League was Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (18411911). Kean, Hilda, Animal Rights (London, 1998)Google Scholar; 2. Following its publication, the book received widespread publicity when Williamson was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in June 1928. But model men would find pleasure neither in torturing, nor annihilating any of them.Footnote the killing of baby cubs must needs go on, though a grief and pain to all concerned in their ultimate destruction.Footnote The social image being constructed is of a group of people who are not just morally right, but are more decent than the hunters, who are by contrast portrayed as disreputable, aggressive and shameful. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals The hunting and killing of female otters during the breeding season was a recurring theme in anti-hunting literature. A key criticism was of the voyeurism of watching the otter die. In the same year Amos organised the Leeds Rodeo Protest Committee which successfully scotched several attempts to import and establish rodeo in England. 62. Yet although Johnston was not directly involved, his argument brought into prominence the campaign for the otter. . He wanted society to step back and reconsider the moral distinction between wild and domestic animals. In women and children it induced behaviour that was not in keeping with certain ideas about gender and youth. 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. 45 Syse, Karen Victoria Lykke, Otters as Symbols in the British Environmental Discourse, Landscape Research, 38 (2013), 54052CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 30 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;
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