Chronology of humane progress, part 1

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2003--

 

 

Chronology of humane progress

(Part 1 of two parts: from Moses to Walt Disney)

by Merritt Clifton

 

 

1300 B.C. -- Hebrew law as proclaimed by

Moses includes provisions for humane slaughter

and care of work animals.

 

740 B.C. -- Rise of Isaiah, the most

prominent of the Hebrew vegetarian prophets, and

the prophet who most emphasized opposition to

animal sacrifice.

 

600-500 B.C. --Buddhism and Jainism rose

in India in opposition to sacrificial cults

within mainstream Hinduism, which otherwise

encourages vegetarianism and requires members of

the highest caste, the Brahmins, to be

vegetarian. Both Mahavir, the last of the 24

great teachers of Jainism, and the Buddha taught

vegetarianism and compassion for all beings.

Said Mahavir, " It is not enough to live and let

live. You must help others live. " This is the

idea embodied in the Jain word ahimsa. Both

Mahavir and the Buddha also taught that humans

have an obligation to shelter and care for their

aged and infirm work animals just as they would

shelter and care for aged human beings. Whether

this inspired the Hindu tradition of sheltering

cattle in gaushalas and pinjarapoles, or simply

revived it, is unclear and is disputed. Either

way, however, it was in this era that

sheltering cattle became the first established

and enduring form of sheltering animals as an act

of charity. Both Jainism and Buddhism may have

evolved from the beliefs and practices of the

Bishnoi, Sindhi, and Thari people. The

renowned Indian conservationist Valmik Thapar,

described the Bishnoi in his 1997 book Land of

the Tiger as " the primary reason that desert

wildlife still exists on the subcontinent. The

women of the community have been known to

breastfeed black buck fawns and save insect

life, " he wrote, " while many of the men have

died in their efforts to counter armed poaching

gangs. Bishnoi is an offshoot of Jainism, "

Thapar asserted, reversing the tradition claimed

by Bishnoi elders, " which teaches that all

nature's creations have a right to life. This

belief reached its apotheosis in 1778 when 294

men and 69 women laid down their lives to protect

the khejri tree. A senior officer of Jodhpur

state arrived to cut down the trees, which were

needed for burning lime. The first to challenge

him was a woman, who hugged one of the trees and

was promptly decapitated. Her three daughters

followed suit and were also axed. Many others

followed. This mass slaughter led to a royal

order that prohibited the cutting of any tree in

a Bishnoi village. " To this day, Bishnoi

villages are wooded oases in the otherwise harsh

Rajasthan desert, where wildlife congregates in

proximity to the people. The Thar region of

Pakistan is adjacent to the Rajasthan desert of

India. Although the Thari people are now mostly

Islamic, their traditional teachings about the

sanctity of life somewhat resemble those of the

Bishnoi. The Sindh desert is farther west in

Pakistan. The Sindhi people, related to the

Thari, have similar beliefs, but are now

culturally divided: Sindhis who practice

Hinduism long ago migrated into the Mumbai region

of India, while those who practice Islam remain

in Pakistan.

 

580 B.C. -- Birth of Pythagoras, Greek

scientist and philosopher, who taught

vegetarianism and the equality of women as part

of a theory of reincarnation.

 

250 B.C. -- (India) Introducing the first

animal protection laws in the Indian civil code,

the Buddhist emperor Asoka practiced a form of

Buddhism which like Hinduism and Jainism holds

that animals should not be eaten, and that an

aged or disabled cow or work animal should be

retired and well-treated. Asoka sent

missionaries to Thailand and Sri Lanka to teach

Buddhism, including his son Arahat Mahinda.

Interupting a hunt upon arrival in Sri Lanka in

247 B.C., " Arahat Mahinda stopped King

Devanampiyatissa from killing the deer and told

the king that every living creature has an equal

right to live, " according to Sri Lankan elephant

conservationist Jawantha Jayewardene. Persuaded,

the king became a Buddhist and " decreed that no

one should kill or harm any living being, "

Jayewardene continues. " He set apart a large

area around his palace as a sanctuary that gave

protection to all fauna and flora. This was

called Mahamevuna Uyana, and is believed to be

the first sanctuary in the world. " Arahat

Mahinda and the other Asokan emissaries also

introduced animal sheltering as a central

function of monasteries wherever they went.

Buddhist monasteries in Thailand and Sri Lanka to

this day often double as animal shelters, though

at some the custom was long ago distorted into

keeping just a lone chained temple elephant.

 

34 B.C. -- Approximate date of the birth

of Jesus of Nazereth. In accurate historical

context, Jesus appears to have been the most

militant leader of his time of Jewish opposition

to animal sacrifice, which was then still

practiced--in very high volume--at the Jerusalem

temple. Jesus built directly upon the teachings

of the vegetarian prophet Isaiah, and his direct

predecessor in advocacy, the vegetarian John the

Baptist. The Jerusalem Christian church,

founded by Jesus' brother James, taught and

practiced vegetarianism, and historian Keith

Akers argues in The Lost Religion of Jesus (2001)

that after about 200 years of recorded existence,

the congregation became the forebears of the Sufi

sect within Islam. " The Sufis express an

extraordinary interest in Jesus and have sayings

of Jesus and stories about Jesus found nowhere in

Christianity, " according to Akers. " Especially

interesting and significant is the treatment of

Jesus by al-Ghazali, an 11th century Islamic

mystic who is widely credited with making Sufism

respectable within Islam. " The Jesus described

by al-Ghazali " lives in extreme poverty,

disdains violence, loves animals, and is

vegetarian, " Akers summarizes. " It is clear

that al-Ghazali is drawing on a tradition rather

than creating a tradition because some of the

same stories that al-Ghazali relates are related

by others both before and after him, and also

because al-Ghazali himself is not a vegetarian

and clearly has no axe to grind. Thus, these

stories came from a pre-existing tradition that

describes Jesus as a vegetarian. "

 

46-120 -- Life of Plutarch, Roman

biographer and historian whose works were part of

a standard classical education for 1,700 years

before his lesser-known essays " On the Eating of

Animal Flesh " and about animal intelligence found

a fully receptive audience. Plutarch especially

influenced the 19th century vegetarianism (and

attempted vegetarianism) of American

Transcendentalist and Abolitionist leaders

including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott

(and his daughter Louisa May Alcott), and Henry

David Thoreau. Following the example of Plutarch,

who founded a successful vegetarian community at

Chaeronea, the Alcotts founded a vegetarian

commune called Fruitlands in 1843, which ran

afoul of an ill-timed dalliance by Bronson Alcott

with a female member who was not his wife.

Plutarch also persuaded the conversion to

vegetarianism in 1811-1812 of the British

Romantic poet Percy Shelley and of his second

wife Mary, whose 1818 novel Frankenstein was the

first prominent literary expression of anxiety

about human scientific meddling in the life

process. Other prominent vegetarians who

attributed their beliefs in part to Plutarch

included French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau

and Russian novelist and advocate of

vegetarianism Leo Tolstoy.

 

341 -- Sri Lankan King Buddhad-stra found

a higher calling as a veterinarian.

 

497 -- Formation of the Shaolin Temple in

Henan, China, by Ba Tuo, a vegetarian Buddhist

evangelist from India. Although Shaolin from 527

on was also influential in spreading the

non-vegetarian branch of Buddhism throughout

China, strict followers of Ba Tuo have remained

vegetarian despite centuries of oppression from

foes including dog-eater sects, Genghis Khan,

tyrannical Chinese warlords and emperors, and

the Communists under Mao tse Tung. Rather than

bear arms against other living beings, the monks

of Shaolin gradually invented, developed, and

popularized the practices of judo, ju-jitsu,

and karate.

 

622-570 -- Muhammed built Islam on

existing regional religious beliefs, apparently

including the teachings of the remnants of the

Jerusalem branch of Christianity, which may have

become the Sufi branch of Islam. These included

pro-animal teachings. According to Islamic

scholar Jasmi Bin Abdul, " The care and love of

wild animals has been emphasized both in the

Qur'an as well as in Sunna, the traditions of

the Prophet. In verse 54:28, there is a

reference to Allah insisting that the people of

Tamud share the water with their camels. In the

Sunna of Prophet Muhammad, we see many instances

to show that He advocated kindness toward

animals. According to one tradition, Allah

punished a woman because she imprisoned a cat

until the cat died of hunger. The Prophet also

tells us that a prostitute's sins were forgiven

because she gave water to a thirsty dog, " a

story which if better known would suggest that

women subject to the Islamic fundamentalist law

of Sharia should be spared stoning for alleged

adultery if they have been kind to the street

dogs who are much feared and despised in many

Islamic nations. [ANIMAL PEOPLE has verified the

authenticity of the story by finding three other

scholarly references to it.]

 

1150 -- Sri Lankan King Nissanka Malla

carved into a stone a decree stating that, " It

is ordered, by beat of the drum, that no

animals should be killed within a radius of seven

gau from the city " of Anuradhapura, his capitol.

The decree combined consideration for animal

welfare with concerns about public health and

sanitation, and about the emotional effect on

children of witnessing slaughter.

 

1150-1250 -- Rise and persecution of the

Cathari, a vegan sect in southern France who

were eventually exterminated by the Albigensian

Crusade and the institution of the Inquisition in

1233.

 

1182-1226 -- Life of St. Francis, the

most prominent of a long line of Catholic saints

who rescued animals, intervened to prevent the

killing of wild predators, and practiced

vegetarianism. Although such practices seem to

have been honored as holy much more often than

not, there never seems to have been a strong

belief within mainstream Catholicism that they

should be adopted by ordinary people. Francis in

almost all of his teachings except his acceptance

of the Catholic hierarchy headed by Rome closely

paralleled the Cathari, and the Church was

during his own time and afterward often vexed to

the point of rewriting history by the difficulty

of distinguishing Franciscanism from Catharism.

 

1197-1253 -- Life of Richard of Wyche,

Bishop of Chichester, an early British critic of

the morality of slaughter.

 

1334-1354 -- Bubonic plague killed up to

75% of the human population of Europe and Asia.

Brought to Europe from Constantinople by

returning crusaders, and the flea-infested black

rats who stowed away on their vessels, it

attacked most virulently after terrified cities

blamed it on " witchcraft " and purged from their

midst both the majority of people who had

medicinal skill (mostly older women) and their

" familiars, " mostly the cats who had provided

rat control.

 

1452-1519 -- Life of Leonardo da Vinci,

scientist and painter, who prominently

practiced and taught vegetarianism, and wrote

that, " The time will come when humans look on

the slaughter of beasts as they now look on the

murder of men. "

1480-1540 -- Life of Bartholomew

Chassenee of France, a distinguished jurist

whose first case was an impressive defense of

rats before the ecclesiastical court of Autuns,

making him the first " animal rights attorney " on

record. His last case, in defense of a doomed

" heretical " sect called the Waldenses, used the

same arguments and tactics, and might have saved

the Waldenses, in the opinion of observers, had

he not died before the trial was over.

 

1516 -- Sir Thomas More of Eng-land

included mention of kindness toward animals and

the abolition of animal sacrifice and sport

hunting as signs of the moral advancement of the

citizens of his fictitious Utopia.

 

1533-1592 -- Life of Michel de Montaigne,

a French attorney whose 1588 essay Of Cruelties

denounced abuse of animals as " the extremist of

all vices. "

 

1567 -- Pope Pius V issued a papal bull

condemning bullfighting and other forms of animal

fighting for entertainment as " cruel and base

spectacles of the devil, " whose promoters are

subject to excommunication. Pope Pius IX

reiterated the 1567 bull in 1846, and Pope Pius

XII cited it in 1940 in refusing to meet with a

delegation of bullfighters. The 1567 papal bull

eventualy brought prohibitions against

bullfighting throughout Italy, plus a 1928 ban

on bullfighting to the death in Portugal,

amended in 2000.

 

16th century -- " The Mogul emperor Akbar

the Great established zoos in various Indian

cities which far surpassed in quality and size

anything in Europe. Unlike the cramped European

menageries, Akbar's zoos provided spacious

enclosures and cages, built in large reserves.

Each had a resident doctor, and Akbar encouraged

careful study of animals. His zoos were open to

the public. At the entrance to each he posted a

message: 'Meet your brothers. Take them to your

hearts, and respect them.' " [David Hancocks, A

Different Nature.] This appears to be the first

clear differentiation between exhibition of

animals for entertainment and exhibition as

attempted humane education.

 

1596-1650 -- Life of Rene Des-cartes, of

France and Holland, among the most prominent of

the early vivisectors whose work sparked an

antivivisection movement in Europe even before

there were organized humane societies. (Covered

extensively by Richard Ryder in Animal

Revolution, 2001 edition.) Descartes was

memorably satirized more than a generation after

his death by the French philosopher Voltaire,

who also attacked " the barbarous custom of

supporting ourselves upon the flesh and blood of

beings like ourselves, " but continued to eat

meat.

 

1634-1703 -- Life of Thomas Tryon, a

vegetarian shepherd from Glouces-tershire,

England, who crusaded against slavery and

advocated the " natural rights " of animals. He

appears to have been instrumental in persuading

many leading Puritans that animals have souls.

The repression of animal-baiting by the Puritan

regime of Oliver Cromwell included killing the

animals, however, as well as punishing the

human perpetrators.

 

1641 -- The Massachusetts Bay Colony

adopted as their Liberty 92 (of 100 " liberties "

which were in fact the laws of the colony) the

statement that " No man shall exercise any Tirrany

or Crueltie towards any bruite Creature which are

usually kept for man's use. " This is the first

humane law adopted by any western nation.

 

1665 -- The Great Plague of Lon-don

followed a wave of persecution of " witches " and

cats.

 

1684 -- A man is pilloried in Sagan,

Germany, for cruelty to a horse. Other early

German convictions for cruelty to animals were

recorded in 1765 and 1766.

 

1721-1728 --Spanish medical historian

Juan Gomez-Alonso, M.D. has identified a rabies

epidemic which swept eastern Europe during these

years as the historical origin of the vampire

legends, later grafted by the Victorian era

British novelist Bram Stoker to the much earlier

legends of Vlad the Impaler, the original Count

Dracula, and Elizabeth Bathory, the Hungarian

" blood countess " who bathed in the blood of

virgins.

1748-1832 -- Life of Jeremy Bentham,

British attorney whose 1780 book An Introduction

to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

includes a footnote on " Interests of inferior

animals improperly neglected in legislation by

the insensibility of the ancient jurists. " The

footnote concludes, " The question is not, Can

they reason? Nor Can they talk? But, Can they

suffer? " It may be the most quoted footnote

phrase of all time. Bentham was a friend of Lord

Thomas Erskine, 1750-1823, who in 1809 made the

first attempt to pass a British humane law.

 

1789 -- Kaiser Joseph II of Germany banned animal baiting for sport.

 

1790 -- Emergence in Vermont of the

Dorrilites, a short-lived vegan sect which

allegedly practiced " free love, " and may have

inspired both the Millerites, who became the

Seventh Day Adventists, and Joseph Smith,

founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latterday Saints.

 

1794-1851 -- Life of Sylvester Graham,

U.S. Presbyterian minister and temperance

crusader, who invented the Graham cracker as an

alleged cure for lust. Sylvester Graham became

a vegetarian circa 1826 under the influence of

the Rev. William Metcalfe, founder of the first

vegetarian church in Philadelphia. Metcalfe had

been a member of the first vegetarian church in

England, the Bible Christian Church founded by

William Cowherd near Manchester in 1809.

Graham's followers included William Alcott,

M.D., the first prominent vegetarian in the

Alcott family, cousin of Bronson Alcott.;

pioneering newspaper publisher Horace Greeley;

and Seventh Day Adventist Church builders Ellen

and James White. Two others, John Harvey

Kellogg, M.D., 1854-1941, and his brother

W.K. Kellogg, 1860-1951, went on to invent and

popularize peanut butter, corn flakes, granola,

and soy milk.

 

1805-1844 -- Life of Joseph Smith,

founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of

Latterday Saints, better known as the Mormons.

Smith wrote in his History of the Church that he

" exhorted the brethren not to kill a serpent,

bird, or an animal of any kind unless it became

necessary in order to preserve ourselves from

hunger. " A later Mormon church president,

Joseph F. Smith, wrote in Gospel Doctrine that,

" I do not believe any man should kill animals or

birds unless he needs them for food. I think it

is wicked for men to thirst in their souls to

kill almost everything which possesses animal

life. "

 

1809-1882 -- Life of Charles Darwin,

whose 1859 book The Origin of Species both

established the theory of evolution as a

scientific verity and established human kinship

with animals. Darwin himself was an outspoken

opponent of cruelty to animals, especially

trapping, and had strong anti-vivisectionist

leanings, criticizing exercises undertaken " for

mere damnable and detestable curiosity, " but

never fully broke ranks with fellow scientists to

clearly denounce experiments which in his view

had some redeeming purpose and value.

 

1822-1904 -- Life of Frances Cobbe,

founder of the Victoria Street Society (1875),

which became the British National

Anti-Vivisection Society, and later founder of

the British Union for the Abolition of

Vivisection (1898).

 

1822 -- " Humanity Dick " Martin won

passage of the first British humane law. British

prohibition of dogfighting and cockfighting

followed in 1835. Rat-fighting was not banned

until 1911. There is record of cruelty cases

being prosecuted occasionally under other

legislation prior to the Martin Act of 1822,

including a 1749 case in Gloucester in which two

men were convicted of spitefully killing a mare.

One man got the death penalty.

 

1824 -- Formation of the London SPCA,

which began enforcing the 1822 humane law five

years before Sir William Peel formed the first

London police force. About 150 convictions were

won in 1824, the first year for which records

exist. The London SPCA nearly went bankrupt in

1828, but was saved by Lewis Gompertz, inventor

of the expanding chuck which makes changing drill

bits possible. Gompertz was drummed out in 1832,

however, for the alleged offenses of being a

Jew and a vegetarian. He went on to found the

Animals' Friend Society, which he headed until

1848. The London SPCA became the Royal SPCA by

charter granted by Queen Victoria in 1840.

Victoria herself donated money to antivivisection

efforts, but the British Charities Commission

has recently interpreted antivivisection

campaigning to be outside the scope of the

charter.

 

1827-1915 -- Life of Ellen Gould (Harmon)

White. An early convert of Seventh Day Adventist

Church founder William Miller (1782-1849), she

along with the other " Millerites " prepared for

the " Second Coming of Jesus " in 1844. When the

Second Coming did not come, Ellen White and her

husband James White built the remnants of the

sect into a substantial vegetarian religion. The

Adventists have de-emphasized vegetarianism since

her death, and the deaths of those who knew her,

to the point that the majority of Adventists

today are not vegetarian.

 

1828 -- New York passed the first U.S.

state anti-cruelty law, followed by

Massachusetts in 1835 and Connecticut and

Wisconsin in 1838. Every state had an

anti-cruelty law by 1913, including Alaska,

whose first anti-cruelty law actually preceded

statehood by 46 years. Obtaining meaningful

enforcement in any state really only began in

1990, when a Massachusetts man became the first

American known to have actually been jailed for

abusing an individual animal.

 

1830 -- Saxony adopted an anti-cruelty

law, followed by Prussia (1838), Wurttemberg

(1839), and Switzerland (1842). " Pastor Albert

Knapp founded the first German animal welfare

society in 1837 in Stuttgart; Nuremberg and

Dresden followed in 1839, Berlin, Hamburg, and

Frankfurt in 1841, Munich in 1842, and Hanover

in 1844. In Switzerland, animal protection

societies were formed in Berne in 1844, in Balse

in 1849, and in Zurich in 1856, " according to

Richard Ryder in Animal Revolution. Anti-cruelty

societies were also founded in Oslo in 1859,

Gothenberg in 1869, and Strangnas in 1870. The

Lithuanian SPCA, recently revived after a long

suspension during the years of Soviet occupation,

was founded in 1873.

 

1839 -- Formation of the Scottish SPCA.

Circa 1850 the Scottish SPCA produced more than

100 glass photographic plates to teach inspectors

how to investigate cruelty and neglect of horses.

Long forgotten, the plates were recently

rediscovered at the Scottish SPCA headquarters in

Balerno.

 

1844 -- Formation of the New York State

Association for the Preservation of Fish & Game,

a distant ancestor of the National Wildlife

Federation. In 1881 it hosted the massacre of

20,000 passenger pigeons--the last great flock

netted in the wild--at a Coney Island fundraiser.

 

1851-1939 -- Life of Henry Salt,

vegetarian advocate, founder of the anti-hunting

Humanitarian League in 1891, and influential

teacher of both the vegetarian and

antivivisectionist playwright George Bernard

Shaw, and the vegetarian moral philosopher and

politician Mohandas Gandhi, at whose request

Jawaharal Nehru wrote into the Indian

constitution the statement that it is every

citizen's duty to prevent animal suffering.

Although others including Abraham Lincoln

apparently used the phrase " animal rights " in

various contexts, Salt is believed to have been

the first person to advocate an animal rights

movement.

 

1860 -- Mary Tealby, 59, a Lon-don

divorcee who was already dying of cancer,

founded Dogs Home Battersea near the Holloway

debtors prison, as " The Temporary Home for Lost

and Starving Dogs, " to care for the animals of

the inmates. Charles Dickens saved it from

fiscal failure with an article called " Two Dog

Shows, " comparing and contrasting the plight of

Tealby's rescued dogs with the luxury enjoyed by

Crufts Dog Show contestants. Tealby died in

1865. The shelter moved to the present location

in 1871.

 

1862 -- Formation in Sri Lanka of the

Animals Non-Violence Society and passage of the

first wildlife protection law adopted under

British rule. The first Sri Lankan anti-cruelty

law was not passed until 1907.

 

1866 -- Henry Bergh founded the American

SPCA Other early U.S. humane societies include

the Massachusetts SPCA, founded by George Angell

in 1868; the San Francisco SPCA, founded in

1868; the Pennsylvania SPCA, founded in 1869;

and the Women's Humane Society of Philadelphia,

founded by Caroline Earle White in 1870, after

women were excluded from the board of the

Pennsylvania SPCA. Bergh, Angell, and White had

all been anti-slavery activists before the Civil

War, and viewed animal advocacy as an extension

of their work on behalf of human rights. Both

Bergh and White were also instrumental in fouding

societies to protect children from neglect and

abuse, while Angell was regarded as " The father

of humane education. "

 

1872 -- The Women's Humane Society of

Philadelphia became the first humane society to

take an animal control contract, followed in

1895 by the American SPCA and the San Francisco

SPCA. Humane societies did not commonly do

animal control until the onset of the Great

Depression in 1929-1930 encouraged many humane

organizations to take on the job as a way of

stabilizing their income. Typically, however,

animal control was (and is) done at a net loss

over time, and tends to become the only major

activity of the humane societies that do it.

 

1874 -- Formation of the Bombay SPCA,

the longest continuously operating western-style

humane society in India.

 

1876 -- The American Humane Association

is formed as an intended umbrella for the humane

movement. Resolutions passed at the founding

convention called for protecting the North

American bison, beaver, and bald eagle from

extinction, and for protecting livestock from

suffering and abuse in transportation and

slaughter. In 1878 the AHA separates into

separate divisions for child protection and

animal protection. The child protection division

operates the orphanage system for the state of

New York, 1895-1950.

 

1877 -- Publication of Black Beauty, by

Anna Sewell. Sewell's mother wrote many books

for children, but Black Beauty was the only

published work by Sewell herself, who died less

than a year after the first edition appeared. A

British Quaker, born in 1820, Sewell suffered a

knee injury at age 14 which left her even more

dependent upon horses for transportation than

most people of her era. She became an expert

horse handler, using only a loose rein and no

whip. " Anna and her mother protested " when they

saw horses being beaten, according to Joan

Gilbert in the Oxford Companion to Children's

Literature. " Some drivers threatened to beat

them too. " Use of the bearing rein was

ubiquitous, and Sewell hoped to abolish it.

Bearing reins, explained Gilbert, held horses'

heads and necks in " an unnatural and painful

arch. It cut off their wind as well, and many

young horses were ruined due to respiratory

problems. " Under the influence of Black Beauty,

Gilbert continued, " The bearing rein went out of

styleŠIronically, during Sewell's funeral

procession, her mother noticed that all the

horses wore bearing reins. She went from

carriage to carriage, requesting that they be

removed, which they were. " Massachusetts SPCA

founder George Angell distributed a private

printing of 100,000 copies to U.S. horse

handlers. " In the span of about 100 years, over

30 million copies have been printed, an all-time

record for fiction, " Gilbert concluded. " Black

Beauty has been made into at least eight movies.

Three British sisters, Christine, Diana and

Josephine Pullein-Thompson, wrote two sequels to

Black Beauty --Black Beauty's Kin and Black

Beauty's Family.. " In addition, Black Beauty

inspired Fund for Animals founder Cleveland Amory

to name the first and largest of the Fund

sanctuaries The Black Beauty Ranch, and the name

has been used in connection with many other

humane projects.

 

1881 -- Circus magnate P.T. Barnum and

friends founded the Connecticut Humane Society,

partly to forestall humane criticism of circuses.

Like many other early humane societies,

Connecticut Humane was active in child

protection, and continued to provide various

child protection services by contract with the

state until the early 1970s.

 

1881 -- Unsuccessful attempt of the

Victoria Street Society to prosecute British

monkey vivisector David Ferrier causes

vivisectors to organize the Association for the

Advancement of Medicine by Research the following

year. This is the first known anti-animal

welfare organization.

 

1882 -- Formation of the Swedish Anti-Vivisection League.

 

1882 -- Caroline Earle White founded the

American Anti-Vivisection Society. The New

England Anti-Vivisection Society was formed in

1895, and the U.S. National Anti-Vivisection

Society was established in 1929. The early

anti-vivisection societies fought against cruel

experiments on humans, including illiterates,

prisoners, and the mentally handicapped, and

were prominent opponents of eugenics, the notion

of " improving the race " by prohibiting

reproduction of " inferior " races and classes of

humans --an idea which in the early 20th century

was favored by both the political right and the

left.

 

1888 -- The Ryerss Infirmary for Dumb

Animals was among the first U.S. humane societies

begun specifically to protect horses and other

farm animals.

 

1889 -- Formation of the Royal Society

for the Protection of Birds, in response to the

prolific killing of birds by " sportsmen. "

Ironically, the RSPB itself now engages in the

prolific killing of birds if they are judged to

be alien threats to native species.

 

1889 -- George Angell formally

incorporated the American Humane Educa-tion

Society as a subsidiary to the Massa-chusetts

SPCA. Actually begun in 1882, it focused for

about 30 years on forming schoolroom humane

education clubs called the Bands of Mercy. More

than 265,000 Bands of Mercy were chartered by

Angell's death in 1909. His successor, the Rev.

Francis Rowley, organized a Band of Mercy

convention in Kansas City circa 1912 that drew

25,000 children plus 15,000 parents and teachers.

Rowley also started the Jack London Clubs to seek

the abolition of animal use in entertainment,

inspired by the London book Michael, Brother of

Jerry. The Jack London Clubs claimed 750,000

members at peak. However, Rowley incurred

enormous debt in building Angell Memorial Animal

Hospital, opened in 1915, dominating the MSPCA

program ever since. Financially hobbled for more

than a decade even before the Great Depression,

the MSPCA allowed the Bands of Mercy to disappear

and the Jack London Clubs to fade, though they

still existed at least on paper as late as 1963.

Jack London was a self-proclaimed Red, at a time

when the term still had the original meaning of

" radical " rather than the narrower later meaning

of " Communist. " The early Soviet Communists

nonetheless regarded him as a " fellow traveler, "

and for that reason, Jack London Clubs formed in

eastern Europe as the White Fang Societies were

virtually the only pre-Communist humane

institutions in that part of the world to survive

the Communist era.

 

1891 -- Formation of the National Canine

Defence League. Initially focused on

vivisection, within 20 years NCDL evolved to

emphasize improving the care of pet dogs. For

much of the 20th century it focused on providing

veterinary services, but since 1980 it has

become the British leader in promoting dog

adoption, and since 1996 has cosponsored the

International Companion Animal Welfare

Conference, with the North Shore Animal League

International, to assist eastern European humane

societies.

 

1891 -- Formation of the Animal Humane

Society of Hennepin County, Minnesota, the only

humane society ever known to issue a public

statement in favor of lynching, which the board

felt was an appropriate punishment for child

molesters. The statement was not influential:

Minnesota and North Dakota are the only two U.S.

states which have never had any lynchings.

 

1895 -- The American SPCA and American

Humane Association abandon active lobbying to

protect wildlife and wildlife habitat, in a

still shadowy political division of roles

associated with the ASPCA obtaining the New York

City pound contract while the AHA obtained the

New York state contract to operate orphanages.

Legislative efforts to ban hunting--which had

nearly succeeded at one point--were dropped,

while the lead role on wildlife issues was ceded

to the organization which had been the N.Y. State

Association for the Preservation of Game, merged

with the New York Sportsmen's Club at some point,

and eventually metamorphized through further

mergers and alliances into the New York

Conservation Council, the original New York

affiliate of NWF. Under the ASPCA, the former

practice of drowning stray dogs in the Hudson

River was replaced by gassing them. The number

of homeless animals killed by the ASPCA soared

over 100,000 per year in 1908, and averaged more

than 250,000 per year from 1966 through 1968,

when Lloyd Tait, DVM, started the first ASPCA

discount dog and cat sterilization program. The

ASPCA killed only 40,000 animals in 1994, then

turned animal control duties over to the newly

formed Center for Animal Care & Control. Under

the CACC, the toll dropped to 35,000 in fiscal

2002.

 

1902-1910 -- The Brown Dog Riots broke

out annually in the vicinity of University

College, London, at demonstrations held in

memory of dogs vivisected at the College.

British National Anti-Vivisection Society

president Stephen Coleridge is convicted of libel

for his description of the death of a small brown

terrier at a 1903 public meeting. The verdict is

perceived by the public as unjust, and escalates

the protests.

 

1903 -- Formation of the Hong Kong SPCA,

which began animal sheltering in 1921,

eradicated dog-eating and cat-eating in Hong Kong

and the New Territories by the early 1980s, and

since 2001 has worked to make Hong Kong a no-kill

city, following the San Francisco model. The

Hong Kong SPCA is the chief organizer of the Asia

for Animals conference series. The Hong Kong

SPCA works closely with the Kadoorie Farm &

Botanic Garden, begun in 1951 by electricity

tycoons Horace and Lawrence Kadoorie to teach

animal husbandry. Initially the Kadoories helped

refugees to feed themselves. Later the Kadoories

recognized that protecting the habitat that the

farm occupied mattered more than producing meat.

Abandoning animal agriculture except for

beekeeping, they converted most of the former

pig barns and hen houses into wildlife

rehabilitation facilities for injured raptors,

primates, turtles, snakes, and non-native

wildlife confiscated by law enforcement.

Kadoorie Farm also runs captive breeding programs

for several endangered native species, and still

propagates some rare varieties of native

livestock. Since 1995, however, the main work

of Kadoorie Farm has been teaching thousands of

visitors per year, including official

delegations from the mainland, about the

importance of protecting animals and habitat.

 

1905 -- Fifty-four years after bird

painter and hunter John James Audubon died, 18

years after cofounding the Boone & Crocket Club

with Theodore Roosevelt to regulate competitive

trophy hunting, George Bird Grinnell in 1905

started the National Audubon Society to do the

same for competitive birding. Birding, until

Roger Tory Peterson popularized nonlethal

verification of sightings with a camera during

the 1930s, was done mainly with shotguns.

Audubon was honored in the title of the

organization as the shotgunner with the longest

and best-verified " life list " of birds killed.

The evolution of the National Audubon Society

into an group with an authentic interest in bird

conservation was a slow and apparently still

incomplete process, owing to a continuing close

alliance with other pro-hunting groups.

 

1905 -- Jack London publishes White Fang,

attacking pet theft and dogfighting, and uses

the popularity of the book to support George

Angell in a successful effort to drive

dogfighting off the sports pages of respectable

newspapers.

 

1914 -- Formation of the Perform-ing

Animals Defence League leads Britain to pass the

Performing Animals Act in 1925 and the

Cinematograph Films Act in 1937, the first laws

protecting animals used in otherwise legal

entertainment.

 

1923 -- The American Veterinary Medical

Association formally approved the now standard

surgical techniques for sterilizing dogs and cats.

 

1924 -- The League Against Cruel Sports

formed from a split within the Royal SPCA.

Anxious hunters responded in 1930 by forming the

British Field Sports Society.

 

1930 -- Massachusetts approved a ballot

initiative to abolish leghold trapping, advanced

by the Massachusetts SPCA. The state Department

of Wildlife did not enforce it.

 

1933-1942 -- Nazi Germany adopted 32

" animal protection laws " in only 10 years.

Adolph Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were more

sympathetic toward animals than toward much of

humanity, and at times practiced vegetarianism,

but vegetarian historian Rynn Berry reports that

in Hitler's case it was only when his personal

physician ordered him to avoid meat to relieve

constipation, and that Hitler never kept to a

meatless diet for more than a few days. Hitler's

cook recalled in her memoirs that his favorite

meal was roast squab. Certainly the Nazi s never

encouraged vegetarianism for the masses. The

Nazi agricultural policies emphasized increasing

the meat supply through the introduction of

factory farming (also pushed by the Soviet

dictator Joseph Stalin), and the Nazi regime

eventually liquidated all independent vegetarian

societies as part of a consolidation of power

after the outbreak of World War II. Further,

many of the Nazi " animal protection laws " were

actually thinly disguised cover for oppression of

Jews, gypsies, and other minorities. The first

two banned kosher slaughter; the last one barred

Jews from keeping pets. The strongest Nazi

influence on animal advocacy may have been on

Jewish activists who endured the Holocaust and

saw in it a parallel to the slaughter of animals

for human consumption. Yiddish author Isaac

Bashevis Singer may have been the first to invoke

Holocaust imagery on behalf of animals. The

comparison was later made by Coalition for

Nonviolent Food founder Henry Spira, who

survived Krystalnacht before escaping from Nazi

Germany, and Farm Animal Reform Movement founder

Alex Hershaft, who states that he knows what a

veal calf feels like, living in tight

confinement in the dark, constantly in terror,

because he spent much of his childhood living in

a closet to hide from the Nazis. The Holocaust

metaphor is also used by Animal Liberation author

Peter Singer (born in 1946), whose entire family

except for his mother and father were killed by

the Nazis.

 

1936 -- Hunting writer Jay " Ding " Darling

founded the National Wildlife Federation as

national umbrella for 48 state hunting clubs,

organized to institute the funding of wildlife

conservation through the sale of hunting

licences. This was meant to shield hunting from

abolition by an increasingly disgusted public.

 

1940 -- The American Humane Association

begins supervising U.S. film productions, by

contract with the Screen Actors Guild, amid

public outrage over the deliberate driving of a

horse over a cliff during the making of the 1939

film Jesse James.

 

1940 -- Walt Disney produces the classic

anti-hunting film Bambi, followed by Dumbo

(1941), the first influential screen expose of

circus elephant training; Lady & The Tramp

(1955), offering a starkly desolate depiction of

dogs on death row at the pound; 101 Dalmatians

(1959), blamed by furriers for flattening fur

sales and for making Jacqueline Kennedy's ocelot

coat a 1960 presidential campaign issue; Mary

Poppins (1964), including the earliest film

depiction of fox hunt sabotage; and three

pro-coyote documentaries and cartoon features

released during the 1960s, when official U.S.

government policy was to try to eradicate the

species. Wrote ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim

Bartlett in 2001, " I am not the only animal

activist who grew up watching Disney movies. I

would go so far as to say that the late Walt

Disney and the company he founded have done more

humane education than all of the animal groups

put together, and the effect goes on and on

because the Disney movies are never obsolete.

Want to see Disney's portrayal of a

hunter/trapper? Check out The Fox & The Hound

(1981), or Beauty And The Beast (1993), or The

Rescuers Down Under (1990). Pocahontas II (1999)

vividly depicts bear-baiting, the favorite sport

of Queen Elizabeth I, still practiced in

Pakistan. See the first Pocahontas (1995) for the

strongest attack ever on " sustainable use " as

cover for wildlife exploitation. Disney heroines

are always gentle, kind, and helpful to

animals: Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora,

Ariel, Belle, Pocahontas, and of course the

Dalmatian heroines. With the scattered

exceptions of Davy Crockett and a few other

quasi-historical American heroes, the male

heroes of Disney films rarely exploit animals--or

when they do, the exploitation tends to be mixed

with redeeming values. For example, a 1950s-era

Disney film favorably depicted a mink farmer,

because he allowed his son to keep an orphaned

otter as a pet and later return the otter to the

wild, despite the havoc the otter was wrongly

accused of wreaking at a neighbor's henhouse.

Authentic Disney villains, on the other hand,

are always mean to animals. Decades before any

talk about 'The Link' appeared in other mass

media, you could identify the bad guys in the

opening scene of one episode of the 1958-1959

Disney TV series Zorro because they were the ones

who had enjoyed a bull-and-bear fight. Even

before Babe, now regarded as the landmark

pro-pig film, Disney Productions gave us Gordy

(1995), with terrifying scenes of a

slaughterhouseŠWatch 102 Dalmatians and laugh as

exploited immigrant laborers triumph over La Pelt

in his sweatshop factory outside Paris, while

the puppies bake the fur fiend Cruella DeVil into

a cake in the patisserie next door. Good

triumphs when the Second Chance animal shelter is

awarded Cruella's entire fortune of eight million

pounds sterling. "

 

(To be continued, 1945-1998, in May.)

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent

newspaper providing original investigative

coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded

in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes

the decision-makers at more than 9,000 animal

protection organizations. We have no alignment

or affiliation with any other entity.]

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent

newspaper providing original investigative

coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded

in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes

the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal

protection organizations. We have no alignment

or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

for free sample, send address.]

--

--Merritt Clifton, editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE.