WebAll the otters that are in there might leave to get away from the smell. By planting a seed of doubt into the minds of readers over the accuracy of hunting reports, it also implied that otter hunters could not be trusted. Smith, Virginia, Bell, Ernest (18511933), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [online]Google Scholar. Ernest Bell, Cat Worrying, pp. Williamson, Henry, Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Brutality of Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, June 1928, 74. The National Anti-Vivisection Society was founded by Frances Power Cobbe in 1875; the Plumage League was established in 1889 and became the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1904. Coulson compared the death of the fox with the death of the otter to emphasise the cruelty of the latter. . 3.84. Douglas Macdonald Hastings, Hunting the Otter, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, 5256, p. 52. During the summer months its pages were sprinkled with photographs of women and girls being blooded at otter hunts. Figure 4. President Stephen Coleridge, his successor Lady Cory and several other members did the same. were extirpated. 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; In women and children it induced behaviour that was not in keeping with certain ideas about gender and youth. 78. Rather than focussing solely on the incident, they redirected their attention to the public's response to it. 61 A fortnight after this event, on 13th May 1931, the second reported demonstration against otter hunting generated a rather more hostile response. 35 They were joined by English and American hunters in the latter part of the century, and uncontrolled hunting continued until 1799. The following month the four-page leaflet, Otters and Men, was issued at the price of 1d. 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. Instead, it tells the reader that the otter is hunted partly because it is tradition to do so; partly because he provides excellent sport, and partly because it is still necessary to regulate his kind.Footnote Hastings (190982) became a leading war reporter for Picture Post. 88. Figure 5. Holding an extreme and uncompromising policy, it developed more dynamic methods in an attempt to gain both publicity and prohibition. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s however verbal disapproval was replaced with more subtle visual rebukes. After retiring from the army he devoted much of his time to lecturing in schools across the country about the fair treatment of animals. 2. 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. 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 second letter from An Old Fashioned Sportsman denounced otter hunting on sporting grounds and used the Barnstaple cat-worrying case to strengthen his argument: I belong to an old family of Tory sportsman who have been brought up to view with disgust such amusements as involve the fiendish cruelty and worrying of one poor little animal for many hours by a motley crowd of men, women and even children, some armed with spears. 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. 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. 79. This was the month when the Barnstaple cat-worrying case was in the public eye. and the sunshine of May. Each image is accompanied with a caption and a paragraph explaining the scene. Ormond, Richard They were then handed leaflets. Daily Mail, 23rd May 1906, cited in Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 601. and 22. 80 79. 69 are not infrequently killed, even in the summer months, and then, of course, the whole litter is destroyed. 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 1 Bates wanted to reclaim the otter from this minority for the British public. 8. 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 48 Coulson later complained that clergy, more generally, did little to criticise otter hunting: Seldom do we hear from the pulpit any protests against acts of cowardice and cruelty that would shame savages. 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. But in the early 2000s, their numbers exploded: From 2002 to 2011, the sea-otter population more Sea otters were ecologically extirpated from the Northwest Coast of North America by the The Guardian, 9th May 2010. 86. 59. . The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals The crucial connection, he discovered, was sea urchins. As to the quickness of the kill, campaigners pointed to the duration of separate hunts as evidence to the contrary. 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. Tarka soon became an iconic literary figure, and otter-hunting was made tangible to a new and wide audience.Footnote Although in the book he admits this was partly due to the animal's nocturnal behaviour, in the shortened leaflet the omission of the introductory paragraph made otter hunting the prime reason for his misfortune. 74. shot but they felt that many otters were preserved for hunting, a shameful blot on our civilisation. 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. The National Society for the Abolition of Cruel Sports, which was formed by an individual who had originally been part of those more radical elements, preferred a gradual approach to abolition and identified educating public opinion as its immediate objective. 23 Inside there is a six page pictorial feature, Hunting the Otter, written by Douglas Macdonald Hastings. . . Johnston condemned otter hunting and urged the government to give the mammal legal protection in his 1903 publication British Mammals. 45 We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Otters 6. sea otters, urchins and starfish make Bell-Irving, David Jardine, Tally-Ho: Fifty Years of Sporting Reminiscences (Dumfries, 1920), p. 120 Instead, it focussed on one man, Mr Sidney Varndell. 10 . The main institutional differences were in their ideals and methods. 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. Joseph Collinson argued that a deplorable feature of this sport is that its followers include all sorts and conditions of people: ministers of religion with their wives, young men and young women, sometimes even boys and girls. What humbugs we are!Footnote This in a sense gave the League the moral high ground. Leeds Women Protest at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, August 1935. 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 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. The word fun is the binding theme in Bates argument. WebThe feeding habits of otters vary greatly depending on species, location, and time of year or season. Figure 2. In 1929, there was a picture of a middle-aged woman and a teenage girl being blooded by the Joint Masters of the Wye Valley Otter Hounds in front of a crowd of smiling spectators. 49 The passage not only stresses the moral inconsistency of the public, it also underlines the hypocrisy of sportsmen. In the same year Amos organised the Leeds Rodeo Protest Committee which successfully scotched several attempts to import and establish rodeo in England. 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. 18. They were killed mostly for their fur, which was desirable The letter argued that no reasonable excuse can be found for such conduct, misnamed sport which was morally wrong and barbaric. 13. otter rescue plan that worked too 3 71. My object is only to insure that this Institution shall fulfil the great purpose for which it was founded.Footnote 34 Leeds Women Protest at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, August 1935, 59. 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 Master of Crowhurst Otter Hounds, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, Volume 4, Number 3. 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). 87 The History of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds (Powys, 1988), p. 24.Google Scholar. He had been influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and was a keen member of the Vegetarian Society and the Humanitarian League and after 1893 devoted much time and money to administration and fund-raising for three main reform causes: vegetarianism, humanitarianism, and animal welfare. On occasions deer-hunters hunted and killed hinds-in-calf. Ormond, Richard, Sir Edwin Landseer (London, 1981), pp. . There were several large sources of South American otter skins. 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. Wright, Catherine Which of the following Exploitation of otters The painting, Sir Edwin Landseer's The Otter Speared, Portrait of the Earl of Aberdeen's Otterhounds, or the Otter Hunt had been associated with controversy since it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844 (Figure 1). She argued that Otter-hunting is an incredibly vile sport, because it is deliberately carried on in the breeding season and was amazed that a larger number of influential people do not feel it their duty to make active protests against these things. F. Pamphlet Series. The otter hunters involved had been using cats in a specially constructed wooden tunnel to train their young terriers to bolt otters. In addition to this justification, any suggestion of cruelty is light-heartedly dismissed: It is improbable that most of the people who go otter hunting worry much about the humanities or the natural law of the thing. On 4th April 1928, for instance, several daily newspapers reported that an otter had been stoned to death by fifty working men in Workington. 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 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. British Sporting Art, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. 75 . Large hunting efforts were under way with the help of a massive ship in the water. He proposed that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should take its courage in both hands and accept his amendment: That it be an instruction from this General Meeting of Subscribers of the RSPCA to the Committee, forthwith to secure its presentation to Parliament, the object of which shall be to make otter hunting illegal..Footnote Alongside the overall decrease of otter hunts and otter hunters was the dramatic reduction of advertised meets and reports in the national and regional press. . Rather than defend its sentient or sporting qualities, he was much more concerned with its aesthetic role in the landscape. WebIn 1741, Russians began hunting sea otters. and provided further evidence of the barbarous spirit engendered by indulgence in blood sports.Footnote Google Scholar. We appeal to the chivalry of English men and women to make these so-called sports impossible.Footnote Salt edited the two Humanitarian League journals: Humanity, later renamed The Humanitarian (18951919) and The Humane Review (19001910). 66. WebOregons sea otters disappeared in flash of destruction, as one small part of an ocean-spanning fur boom driven by demand for their lush pelts. . Separating fact from fiction: otters and anglers | Discover 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 39 . 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. In these terms the iconic image of Varndell could be seen as positively publicising the face of otter hunting. This approval generated considerable adverse reactions and increased press coverage. 42. In 2010 a painting normally considered too upsetting for modern tastes which while impressive was also undeniably gruesome was displayed at an exhibition of British sporting art at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. 71. 60. In the latter, the fox has some chance of escape but in the former the otter's chances of escape are clearly much less. AP Bio Practice Exam 1 Flashcards | Quizlet 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. George Greenwood, Chapter 1: The Cruelty of Sport, in Henry Salt, ed., Killing for Sport (1914), p. 6. 10. The last known native sea otter in Washington state, Larson said, was shot in 1910 near Willapa Bay. . In these terms, if fishermen, as the only people with a genuine grievance against otters, did not feel the need to hunt and kill them on the grounds of revenge, then the animal was not a pest. From The Field for 18th June 1910 came a report that: Too many bitches are killed at this time of the year (June), the dog otters making themselves very scarce. 70. 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. The war had a dramatic effect on otter hunting and campaigns against the sport, although individual hunts dealt with the hostilities in their own ways. Google Scholar. otters If anyone interpreted this anecdote with a smidgen of sentimentality, as a narrative of a protective mother rewarded for her heroic conduct with the release of her whelp, the harsher realities of such freedom were instantly put into perspective with a quotation from L. C. R. Cameron: Resentment at disturbance of the normal conditions impels her to leave her couch in which she has laid her cubs; the promptings of the maternal instinct compel her to return forthwith to her offspring. The incident was widely reported and horrified the public. 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 It was not until July 1928 that the age was lowered to twenty-one. Figure 1. Google Scholar. feel thankful that the Masters of the various packs of otter hounds do not share this opinion.Footnote AP Bio Final Questions Flashcards | Quizlet The underlying motivation for these very specific criticisms is a much broader belief that all living beings feel pain and suffer. . 14 14. Cruel Sports illustrated this incident with a photograph headed Burning the Truth! According to the League's Report for 1931, the demonstration at Colchester resulted in a local ban being placed on the hounds.Footnote The Cheriton Cruelty Case, The Field, 28th October 1905, 768. It appears to be more about human behaviour than animal suffering. For Bates, much like Henry Salt, the pain and suffering experienced by animals were indistinguishable from those experienced by humans. In recent years, sea otters have expanded into the upper reaches of Glacier Bay including Scidmore Bay, Russell And as a relatively inexpensive sport, such social changes meant otter hunting had become a less appealing target for them. Observing sea otters and kelp beds on Amchitka both onshore and during scuba dives led Estes to question the links between them. Now, Dr. Estes said, more than 90 percent of those otters are gone. 2. As otters were removed during the hunting years, there was a large decrease in the catches of fish species from the eelgrass habitats. 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. Alongside this broad criticism, the incident was also used to expose the behaviour of sportsmen in general. The fifteen hunts in existence in 1880 had grown to twenty-two by 1910.Footnote Published online by Cambridge University Press: 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 Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 58. Demonstration at a Meet of the Bucks Otter Hounds. The sea otter rescue plan that worked too well - BBC Future In his opinion everyone had a right to enjoy this animal in its natural surroundings, not just otter hunters. A subsection in the Hunted Otter (1911) entitled Hunted for Seven Hours described the lengthy pursuit of a female otter by the Culmstock Otter Hounds in 1910. 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 He is astonished that the law of this country still allows this rotten and most bloody exhibition of behaviour and that such repugnant bloodiness survives in a so-called civilised age and country.Footnote 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. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, Annual Report (London, 1931), 34. 15, Although this document only had a small readership it proved to be the earliest written condemnation of the sport from an organisation. As with the Barnstaple cat-worrying case of 1905, attention was redirected from the actual killing to the animal in question. of the hunting fraternity. Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, 1928 p. 85. When the Otters Vanished, Everything Else Started to 31. Allen, Daniel, Otter (London, 2010)Google Scholar; Interestingly, the magazine did not choose a classic scene of hounds in a watery landscape. Hunting Otters with firearms was once common in the early twentieth century, but many preferred to trap them. This allowed broader questions to be raised by the publisher and campaigner Ernest Bell (18511933). The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals In 1923 he diverted his attention to blood sports. 8 The first to second the motion was Ernest Bell who pointed out that otter hunting was just as unsportsmanlike as shooting birds from traps. This reversal shows that the campaigning did have an impact, albeit a small one, on the public perception of the activity. By setting this against contemporary instances he insinuates the unchanging attitudes of otter hunters over the centuries. 33 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]. Call a professional pest removal expert 32 Scientists and tribal leaders say reintroducing otters would restore balance to degraded kelp forests, boost fish species, protect shorelines, generate tourist dollars Bobcats and otters or their pelts must be delivered to an agent of the Conservation Department for registration or tagging before selling, transferring, tanning or mounting by April 10. during the fur hunting period in the 18th and 19th centuries. 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. Throughout the period campaigners repeatedly pointed to this subject as proof of the inconsistency and heartlessnessFootnote In other words, if the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did not introduce a bill, then the Humanitarian League would do so. 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. Otter reintroductions were common during this time. Covering two pages (812), it was retitled Sport and the Otter.. . 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. 82 The fact that otter hunting was singled out suggests that Coleridge felt this particular activity was vulnerable enough to be prohibited. Captain T. W. Sheppard, Decadence of Otter Hunting, The Field, 20th October 1906, 658. 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. 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 31 He sat on the governing bodies of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Canine Defence League, the Cat's Protection League, the Pit-Ponies Protection Society, and the Animals Friend Society.Footnote Google Scholar. Google Scholar. Big game hunter Sir Henry Seton-Karr and otter hunter Mr David Davies, Member of Parliament, were among its sixty-one ordinary members.Footnote