The welfare of animals has sparked centuries of debate

DESPITE the furore, government plans to ban greyhound racing are not the first attempt to prevent animal races in NSW, although the 1821 horse racing ban was to protect spectators against cruelty and injuries in drunken racecourse brawls.

Tom & Jerry sporting their blunt on the phenomenon monkey, Jacco Macacco, by Pierce Egan, in 1820.

DESPITE the furore, government plans to ban greyhound racing are not the first official attempt to prevent animal races in NSW, although the 1821 horse racing ban was to protect human spectators against cruelty and injuries in drunken racecourse brawls.

The colonial horse racing ban lasted almost as long as Oliver Cromwell’s ban in Britain from 1654 to 1658, again not because of cruelty to horses but in the belief it encouraged “wicked, and secret Plots and Devices”.

But as pressure mounted in NSW for officially sanctioned horse racing, in June 1824 letter-writer “Agricola” noted the “unmercifulness of our cock fighters, horse-racers, and bullock-drivers. The commonness of cockfighting in the Colony is the strongest comment on cruelty ... All the plausible arguments for horse racing might be as easily answered ... but no argument for this cruelty will ever satisfactorily meet consequences that originate on this occasion. Every sound politician in the land will set his face against racing.”

Although animals provided a variety of barbaric entertainments, from Roman damnation to bears, leopards, tigers and black panthers as capital punishment from 200BC to 300AD, through Medieval cock fighting, bear and bull-baiting, concern for animal suffering was seldom considered until the late 18th century.

Francis of Assisi, canonised as patron saint of animals, praised “all these brother and sister creatures” in his 1225 Canticle of the Creatures, while artist and mathematician Leonardo da Vinci was reputedly a vegetarian who bought caged birds, only to release them.

Sermons against animal cruelty by evangelical clergy across England from the 1770s was echoed in tracts and books such as Humphry Primatt’s Sin of Cruelty to Base Animals (1776), and John Oswald’s The Cry of Nature; or an appeal to mercy and justice, on behalf of the persecuted animals (1791).

English philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued in 1781 that “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?”, although women and children had no such protection.

Bentham accepted that animals could be killed for food, or in defence of human life, providing animals were not made to suffer unnecessarily.

Slavery abolitionist William Wilberforce was among supporters of politician William Pulteney’s attempts to outlaw bull-baiting, where bulls tied to a stake were attacked by dogs, left with their entrails trailing. Pulteney’s bills were defeated amid public ridicule in 1800 and 1802.

Anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce in 1794.

English politicians laughed when Galway politician Richard Martin, who had killed a man in a duel and shot a dog in anger, recited an advertisement to support his Cruel Treatment of Cattle Bill in May 1822.

“Jacco Maccacco, the celebrated monkey, will this day fight Tom Crib’s white bitch Puss,” Martin recited, explaining the half-hour battle was “terminated by Puss tearing away the whole of the under jaw of Jacco, who lacerated the windpipe and arteria carotis of Puss. In this state the animals lived for two hours, and then they died.”

After Martin’s bill specifying cruelty against farm animals “ ... and other cattle”, passed in June 1822, he prowled London to threaten horse, donkey and dog owners found ill-treating animals.

An early prosecution against greengrocer Thomas Worster inspired a music hall ditty, “‘If I had a donkey wot wouldn’t go, D’ ye think I’d wollop him? No, no, no! But gentle means I’d try, d’ ye see, Because I hate all cruelty.” Wortser whipped his donkey with an iron buckle on a strap when it panicked and upset his vegetable cart, then took the donkey to court to prove it was uninjured.

Dubbed “Humanity Dick” by King George IV, Martin was a founding member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in June 1824, when clergyman Arthur Broome organised a meeting at the Old Slaughter’s Coffee Shop.

Bullock driver Jacob Weekes was prosecuted under Martin’s Law in Sydney in May 1829, convicted of striking a bullock with the butt end of a whip in “an unmerciful manner”. Unable to pay a fine, Weekes was sentenced to two months jail.

Despite limited financial resources, in London SPCA volunteers reported animal cruelty for prosecution, winning financial backing from the Duchess of Kent in 1835, with Princess Victoria as Lady Patronesses. As Queen Victoria, in 1840 she gave the society royal patronage. The founding of New York SPCA in 1866, headed by Henry Bergh, spearheaded the formation of organisations to protect children after reports of cruelty to a child in 1874.

The first Australian SPCA branch started in Victoria in 1871. A NSW branch opened in 1873.

Originally published as The welfare of animals has sparked centuries of debate