There is another admirable establishment worth referring to. It is known as the Brown Institution, from having been founded by the bequest in 1851 of a large sum of money by Mr Thomas Brown. Its design was the advancement of knowledge concerning the diseases of animals, the best mode of treating them for the purpose of cure, and the encouragement of humane conduct towards animals generally. The Institution combines the quality of an infirmary and a dispensary for animals belonging to persons who are not well able to pay for ordinary medical attendance, and therefore does not trench on veterinary establishments. Several thousands of animals are treated annually. The Institution, which is under the direction of the Senate of the University of London, is situated in Wandsworth Road, near Vauxhall Railway Station. As an hospital and dispensary for poor horses, dogs, and other animals, the Brown Institution is unique of its kind. As far as we know, there is nothing like it in the world. What a prodigious step in advance is the Home for Dogs, and the Institution now described, from the condition of things at the beginning of the nineteenth century!
In speaking of the improved treatment of defenceless creatures within recent times, a prominent place is due to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, located in Jermyn Street, London. Standing at the head of all organisations of the kind in the United Kingdom, this Society may be considered the watchful guardian of the rights of animals, and without whose agency the laws we have enumerated would, as regards England, stand a poor chance of being enforced. The business of this Society is conducted mainly by the employment of persons all over the country to find out cases of cruelty, and to bring the offenders to justice. The Society diffuses hand-bills and placards in places where they may come prominently under the notice of persons likely to infringe the law. It further has issued various publications calculated to stir up the feelings in behalf of animals.
The hand-bills and placards deserve special notice. Sheep salesmen are reminded that convictions have been obtained against persons for ill-treating sheep by cutting and lacerating their ears, as a means of identifying them from sheep belonging to other consigners. Shepherds are warned, by a cited example, to abstain from a specified mode of treating sheep for certain maladies; because pain is inflicted, which a veterinary surgeon knows how to avoid, but which an ignorant though well-meaning shepherd may not. Farmers are reminded that it is a punishable offence to crowd too many sheep together on going to market; instances being cited in which eleven sheep were crammed into a small cart, with their legs tied tightly together. Captains of freight steamers are informed that penalties have been enforced against a captain for so overcrowding his vessel, on a voyage from Holland to the Thames, as to cause the sheep much pain and suffering; carriers and cattle-barge owners are under the same legal obligations.
In regard to cows, one placard cautions persons sending them to market with the udder greatly distended with milk, and from which the poor animals evidently suffer much pain. Cattle rearers are told that penalties have been enforced against one of their body for sawing off the horns of fourteen heifers so close to the head as to cause blood to flow in considerable quantity, and to make the animals stamp and moan; the object of such a mode of cutting being to increase the market value of the horns. Butchers are reminded that it is a punishable offence to bleed calves to death merely for the sake of giving additional whiteness to veal. Consigners and carriers are alike reminded that the Act of 1849 imposes fines or imprisonment as a punishment for conveying animals in such way as to subject them to unnecessary pain or suffering; the neglect to give proper food and water to the animals, whether coming to market, at market, or in removal from market, is announced in another hand-bill to be an infringement of the same statute.
Drovers, by another hand-bill or placard, are cautioned against urging on cattle which by lameness are unfitted to travel along the roads and streets; and against striking animals on the legs so violently as to lame them: both are practices to which drovers are too prone, and both are punishable. Farmers, graziers, and salesmen are alike warned that the season of the year should be taken into account in the transport of shorn sheep. 'It is hardly conceivable that respectable farmers and graziers, merely for the sake of profit, can in the months of December, January, February, March, or April, cruelly strip a dumb animal of that warm woollen coat which the goodness of God has provided more abundantly in winter to protect it from the cold weather; or that any English salesman will lay himself open to a criminal charge of aiding or continuing the offence by exposing shorn animals for sale at such inclement seasons.'
Horses and donkeys find a place in the safeguards which the Society endeavours to provide, by disseminating placards and hand-bills pointing out the penalties for cruelty or neglect. It is an offence against the laws to work a horse in an omnibus, cab, or other vehicle when in an infirm or worn-out state. It is an offence to beat a horse in a stable with a degree of severity amounting to cruelty, merely to make it obedient, or still worse, through an impulse of angry passion. It is an offence to set a horse to drag a cart or wagon loaded with a weight beyond his strength; many coal-merchants and their carmen have been prosecuted and fined for this unfeeling conduct. It is an offence to cruelly beat and over-ride poor donkeys; useful animals which seem fated to be the victims of very hard treatment in the world. It is a significant fact that one placard is addressed to 'excursionists and others:' those who have witnessed the treatment of donkeys by their drivers, at Hampstead Heath, Blackheath, and the humbler grades of sea-side places where holiday people assemble, will know what this means. The Society aid the inspectors of mines, or are aided by them, in bringing to justice truck-drivers and others for working horses and ponies in an unfit state in coal-pits.
It was not likely that dogs would be left out of sight by the Society; the maltreating of such animals is the subject of some of the cautionary placards, especially in localities where rough persons, prone to dog-tormenting, are known to be numerous. Cats are the subjects concerning which other warnings are given, in regard to torturing or cruelly worrying. Fishmongers are reminded that it is a punishable offence which many persons commit of 'putting living lobsters and crabs into cold water, and then placing them on a fire until the water is heated to boiling temperature, thereby causing them to endure horrible and prolonged suffering.'
That the feathered tribes should share the protection which the issuing of these placards is intended to subserve, is natural enough; seeing that the Sea-bird, Wild-bird, and Wild-fowl Acts were due in great measure to the Society. One placard states that it is a punishable offence to kill or wound any such birds (including the young in nests) within the prohibited period; and that those who sell such killed birds are also punishable. Another placard administers a similar warning in regard to wild-fowl, enumerating thirty-six species, all of which are to be safe from the gun, the snare, and the net from the 15th of February to the 10th of July, under penalties which are prescribed in the Act of 1876. Bird-fanciers are reminded that one of their fraternity was imprisoned for fourteen days for depriving a chaffinch of its sight as a means of improving its singing. Poultry-dealers are, in another hand-bill, cautioned against plucking live poultry, a cruel practice which, if proved, subjects the offender to three months' imprisonment. Carrying live fowls to market by their legs, with their heads hanging downwards; and exposing fowls to hot sunshine with their legs tied together – have brought the offenders into trouble. In another placard the patrons of pigeon-matches are warned that occasional cruelties practised by them or their servants come within the scope of the law. In one of the Society's