The most important organisation calling for the protection of otters in the Edwardian period was the Humanitarian League, founded in 1891 by Henry Salt, who published his pamphlet Humanitarianism in the same year. Rogers, W. H., Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds (Taunton, 1925), p. 225 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). We appeal to the chivalry of English men and women to make these so-called sports impossible.Footnote It also shows just how much the mere thought of otter hunting could unsettle an individual. 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. 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). Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, 1928 p. 85. When, however, other members of the Hunt were moved to action by the scandal,Footnote These kinds of demonstrations continued throughout the 1930s. shot but they felt that many otters were preserved for hunting, a shameful blot on our civilisation. 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. To stress his dissatisfaction, he targets two features specific to the sport, the prolonged duration of the pursuit and spring and summer hunting: To make it pleasant for otters as well as man, otters are hunted not only for a long time, for seven or eight or ten or eleven hours at a stretch, but in spring. 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. The aesthetic quality of animals was also important to him. 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 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s however verbal disapproval was replaced with more subtle visual rebukes. 87 He reported that in certain otter hunting regions such as Wales, Devonshire, and Sussex, the otter was being rapidly extinguished by the actions of unreflecting, red-faced, well-meaning, church going, rate-paying persons on the plea that it eats salmon or trout. The RSPCA and its Objects, The Animal World, July 1906, 154. WebA scientist designed an experiment to test an. 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. The opinion of H. E. Bates provides an insight into one person's perception of the immorality of hunting otters to death. 2956Google Scholar; The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, Annual Report (London, 1931), 34. 2017. Figure 4. At its centre an exhausted hunter holds an otter aloft over a pack of baying otterhounds. In Alaska, 467 sea otters were translo-cated to several locations from 1965 to 1969. The following month the four-page leaflet, Otters and Men, was issued at the price of 1d. The main institutional differences were in their ideals and methods. CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also 30 52. In the case of an organised hunt, the followers deliberately engage in a series of barbaric acts, skilfully camouflaged by all the trappings of an elaborate ritual. 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. 13. 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. Hunting Otters with firearms was once common in the early twentieth century, but many preferred to trap them. Large numbers of sea cows occurred in the Commander Islands at the time of their discovery by Europeans in 1741. and 46 The fact that otter hunting was singled out suggests that Coleridge felt this particular activity was vulnerable enough to be prohibited. 5. H. E. Bates, Otters and Men (1938), p. 1. There were several large sources of South American otter skins. Why Otters Are Endangered? Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. 15. Where Have All the Sea Otters Gone Afterwards everyone who took part in the orgy was probably ashamed of himself. 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 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. 62 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. the quarry itself is quite a secondary consideration.Footnote Johnston condemned otter hunting and urged the government to give the mammal legal protection in his 1903 publication British Mammals. 80. . The men then lit some cotton waste, smoked out the otter, and pelted it with stones. When the Otters Vanished, Everything Else Started to Opponents, on the other hand, were offended by this inclusivity. And as to the women, they evidently have no sense of shame, or pity, for the torture these poor little creatures undergo.Footnote The word fun is the binding theme in Bates argument. 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 This increase in reintroduction effort would come to be known as one of the most ambitious and extensive carnivore restoration efforts in history. Ormond, Richard After retiring from the army he devoted much of his time to lecturing in schools across the country about the fair treatment of animals. But Bristow-Noble emphasised that we should. 14364Google Scholar; This approval generated considerable adverse reactions and increased press coverage. The otter is as good an excuse as the next one; and, after all, the beast usually escapes.Footnote 50 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 57. 34 52. Has data issue: false The Masters of Otterhounds Association was formed on 9th February 1910. By setting this against contemporary instances he insinuates the unchanging attitudes of otter hunters over the centuries. The 1911 pamphlet attempted to shed light on the overall death roll of otter hunting. This indiscriminate killing of females and cubs was shown to be by no means isolated. 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 The Humanitarian League's reaction to this case was interesting. 60. 36, The third, by Lady Florence Dixie, took the opportunity to publicise the Humanitarian League's work on blood sports. For many, the behaviour of these dynamic and somewhat bedraggled women, clad in sodden attire, was far from ladylike. 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. . By Zulma Cary. The Picture Post styles otter hunting as just another peculiar pastime the notoriously crazy English enjoy in the countryside. and the sunshine of May. The following year, the Fur Seal Treaty was signed and although the . 88. . These public demonstrations shed light on the respectability of the animal welfare movement. Allen, Daniel, A Delightful Sport with peculiar claims: The Specificities of Otterhunting, 18501939, in Hoyle, R. W., ed., Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England after 1850 (Lancaster, 2007), pp. 69 As with the Barnstaple cat-worrying case of 1905, attention was redirected from the actual killing to the animal in question. The image in question fronted the issue released on 22nd July 1939. This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. Exploitation of otters 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. It was not until July 1928 that the age was lowered to twenty-one. young and thoughtful. Humanitarian, April 1918, 100, cited by In 1923 he diverted his attention to blood sports. 1 Watkins, Charles, Matless, David and Merchant, Paul, Science, Sport and the Otter, 19451978, in Hoyle, R. W., ed., Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England after 1850 (Lancaster, 2007), pp. 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. . How to Get Rid of Otters in a Pond - Wildlife Animal Control 56. 33 77. Mackenzie, John M., The Empire of Nature (Manchester, 1988), p. 33 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 F. Pamphlet Series. Posted on September 22, 2019. 81. 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. Coulson compared the death of the fox with the death of the otter to emphasise the cruelty of the latter. Some inhuman wretch: Animal Maiming and the Ambivalent Relationship between Rural Workers and Animals, Rural History, 25 (2014), 13360CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Osman, Colin, Man, Felix Hans (18931985), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 68. 14. 82 In the same year Amos organised the Leeds Rodeo Protest Committee which successfully scotched several attempts to import and establish rodeo in England. 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 Sea otter conservation began in the early 20th century, when the sea otter was nearly extinct due to large-scale commercial hunting. The sea otter was once abundant in a wide arc across the North Pacific ocean, from northern Japan to Alaska to Mexico. Bell-Irving, David Jardine, Tally-Ho: Fifty Years of Sporting Reminiscences (Dumfries, 1920), p. 120 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals Rivers are then lovely with kingcup and ladysmock, meadows are starred and belled with daisy and cowslip, and, above all, the female otter is in cub. (Cheers.) 38 Moreover, otters are not hunted by fishermen, but by people whose notions of fun are to go out and kill something.Footnote He denounced otter hunting as the lowest-down pastime that has survived into the twentieth century. What humbugs we are!Footnote 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. 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. 34. The Humanitarian League's strategy was that whenever an article mentioning otter hunting appeared in a newspaper or magazine, League members would bombard that publication with letters of protest. Although this unusual interlude was tolerated with good humour at first, one follower of the hunt retaliated by burning a number of leaflets. 80 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 21 Moore-Colyer, R. J., Feathered Women and Persecuted Birds: The Struggle against the Plumage Trade, c. 18601922, Rural History, 11 (2000), 5773 WebWhich of the following critical values should the scientist use for the chi-square analysis of the data? Hale, Matthew for this article. In fact, this member felt that the latter was worse than the former: In the one case a crowd of men became infected with a sudden attack of blood lust, and were carried away by the excitement of the moment to the temporary exclusion of all feelings of humanity. . Which of the following observations would provide the strongest According to Coulson those who engaged in the kill became virtually maddened by it.Footnote men and women,Footnote The chapter entitled Otters and Men is important. The painting was commissioned as a commemorative portrait of his pack of otter hounds by Lord Aberdeen (17841860), then foreign secretary and later to become prime minister. This is likely to be a ban by local landowners. Hastings (190982) became a leading war reporter for Picture Post. These Cuties Could Help Save Oregons Kelp Forests 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. For almost 40 years, the otters in southeast Alaska scrapped by. Douglas Macdonald Hastings, Hunting the Otter, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, 5256, p. 52. AP Bio Practice Exam 1 Flashcards | Quizlet 4 Varndell became huntsman in 1904. Williamson, Henry, Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Bell was sentenced to one month's imprisonment with hard labour and John Church, the Hunt's Whip, received half that sentence. Spurious Sports Sport with an Otter, The Humanitarian, October 1906, 75. 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. WebThe feeding habits of otters vary greatly depending on species, location, and time of year or season. Nearly 280 river otters were captured in the Adirondacks and Catskills and relocated to 15 sites in central and western New York during a three-year period in the 1990s. The National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports sought to enlist the support of well-known individuals, including the journalist and author H. E. Bates (19051974) who became a mainstream country writer. Inside there is a six page pictorial feature, Hunting the Otter, written by Douglas Macdonald Hastings. 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 This carry on as normal sentiment was initially broadly endorsed, but could not be sustained by all. It also shows that people other than animal welfarists and sportsmen were concerned with the hunted otter. . In the Daily Sketch, Mr Harding Matthews, an individual with no declared interest, wrote: Are we to believe that Workington breeds people so utterly spineless as to allow, in public and in broad daylight, the brutal murder of an inoffensive, wild creature? and broadly disregarded spearing as one of the blood-thirsty methods used by our forefathers.Footnote During 1970-71, 93 sea otters were released in Oregon. During peak hunting years, during the mid-1800s, according to harvest records that Larson presented, between 1804 and 1807 nearly 15,000 sea otters were killed. The last known native sea otter in Washington state, Larson said, was shot in 1910 near Willapa Bay. For Bates, such suffering could not be enjoyable for the sufferer and should not be enjoyable for onlookers. 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 49 The Trust recently secured the first ongoing class licence to capture and transport live Eurasian otters trapped in well-fenced fisheries in England. 61. Demonstration at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds. Addressing the issue in Cruel Sports, a member with the pseudonym Wansfell could not see how it was fair to hold the Workington roughs up to obloquy without doing the same to devotees of organised otter hunting. Offering close proximity and participatory practices of seeing (gazing) and doing (the stickle), any member of an otter hunt could participate in infamous scenes. 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. the magazine had a massive readership. Species, the Sea Otter, Colonizes Glacier Bay 63 Each image is accompanied with a caption and a paragraph explaining the scene. 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. 78. Yet although Johnston was not directly involved, his argument brought into prominence the campaign for the otter. Cruel Sports magazine readily employed this strategy. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler: Or the Contemplative Man's Recreation (1653), Chapter 2. 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. 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 49. Considering Johnston's establishment position and his enthusiasm for hunting in the Empire, this was a powerful request. 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 League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sport, Annual Report (London, 1926). The first to second the motion was Ernest Bell who pointed out that otter hunting was just as unsportsmanlike as shooting birds from traps. He also pointed out that Geoffrey Hill of Hawkstone had killed 544 otters between 1870 and 1884, and that William Collier of Culmstock had also accounted for 144 between 1879 and 1884. A part of this pamphlet, which included this quotation, was reprinted in Cruel Sports magazine in 1929. Another aspect of otter hunting that attracted critical attention was the type of people involved and the behaviour it induced. The photograph was taken by Felix Man, who had been an active photojournalist since 1929, had emigrated from Germany to London in 1934 and was chief photographer for Picture Post from 1938 to 1945.Footnote Griffin, Carl J. 39. Render date: 2023-05-01T08:20:46.153Z In 1844 Landseer's The Otter Speared polarised opinion about otter hunting which was condemned by many as barbaric. Tarka soon became an iconic literary figure, and otter-hunting was made tangible to a new and wide audience.Footnote 87. 28. 11:59 Exit Sea otters are native to the western coast phospholipid bilayer of a cell. 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 But model men would find pleasure neither in torturing, nor annihilating any of them.Footnote In the Aleutian Islands, a massive and unexpected disappearance of sea otters has occurred since the 1980s. The cause of the decline is not known, although the observed pattern of disappearances is consistent with a rise in orca predation. Sea otters give live birth. 48. the killing of baby cubs must needs go on, though a grief and pain to all concerned in their ultimate destruction.Footnote The underlying motivation for these very specific criticisms is a much broader belief that all living beings feel pain and suffer. In his view, otters were more visible than fish and therefore their lives were more valuable: the time has come when active steps should be taken to promote the preservation of the otter, a creature far more beautiful, wonderful and obvious than any fish.Footnote The League established a special department to deal with Sports in 1895. 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. In February 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave all women over the age of thirty the right to vote. Sport and the Otter, Cruel Sports, June 1929, 812; this had first appeared in The Western Mail, 1st June 1929. The latter is essentially a personal consideration of riverside life along the Ouse and the Nene. In August 1938 the National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports gained permission to reprint the chapter in leaflet form. 48 His letter writing campaign against rabbit-coursing on Sundays in Surrey led to its prohibition in 1924. 10 The fifteen hunts in existence in 1880 had grown to twenty-two by 1910.Footnote Colonel W. Lisle B. Coulson, The Otter Worry, in Henry Salt, ed., British Blood Sports: Let us go out and kill something (1901), pp. 73 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 Figure 2. 42. Although Collinson made a point of exposing these figures, he did not comment on them in any way. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals 11 85 The Spirit of Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 62. Otters today are faced with habitat loss and food scarcity, apart from killing due to 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 About Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, July 1928, 85. 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. . 75. . 16, Otter hunting was compared unfavourable to other types of hunting. Large hunting efforts were under way with the help of a massive ship in the water. By 2016, over 4,000 river otters had been translocated to 23 states. This opposition to the Bill was surprisingly effective. Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 61. The chairman eventually agreed to put the resolution to the meeting and it was carried with acclamation. 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. Unlike other blood sports, the main excitement in otter hunting was seen to derive from the involvement in the visceral spectacle of the kill. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. The seasonality, setting and pedestrianism of otter hunting appealed to Edwardian sporting and leisure sensibilities. After being chased by the crowd, the female otter took refuge in some brickwork under a bridge. 3. 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. We can gain an insight into the exact message they were trying to make from the letter which was handed to the master, Sir Maurice Bromley-Wilson, and followers: The Leeds branch of the League for Prohibition of Cruel Sports has organised this protest against otter-hunting to indicate that there is a growing public feeling against this and other so-called sports.

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