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 Glorying over being blooded at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, 1928 p. 85. 1823. The Picture Post styles otter hunting as just another peculiar pastime the notoriously crazy English enjoy in the countryside. 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. WebFrom 1941 till 1957, an interim agreement between the U.S. and Canada regulated the harvesting of sea otters. Google Scholar. are not infrequently killed, even in the summer months, and then, of course, the whole litter is destroyed. 5 Kean, Hilda, Animal Rights (London, 1998)Google Scholar; 48 This may have been because the facts were incomplete or because the figures seemed to speak for themselves. Once all of them are out, plug up the hole and it is as simple as that. 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 The painting is currently in store at the Laing Gallery, Newcastle http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/laing-art-gallery/collections.html. Donald, Diana, Picturing Animals in Britain 17501850 (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. To help do this he compares otter hunting with fox hunting. 42. Alongside this broad criticism, the incident was also used to expose the behaviour of sportsmen in general. Rogers, W. H., Records of the Cheriton Otter Hounds (Taunton, 1925), p. 225 Sport and the Otter, Cruel Sports, June 1929, 812; this had first appeared in The Western Mail, 1st June 1929. In order to share these principles with the public, the League adopted a strategy that involved open meetings, lobbying of influential individuals, letter writing campaigns to newspapers and magazines and the production of pamphlets, monthly journals and other scholarly publications.Footnote On 4th April 1928, for instance, several daily newspapers reported that an otter had been stoned to death by fifty working men in Workington. 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 52. Each image is accompanied with a caption and a paragraph explaining the scene. . Here we explore the plausibility of this mechanism, using information on sea otters, kelp forests, and the recent extinction of Steller's sea cows from the Commander Islands. 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. 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 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. Wright, Catherine Feature Flags: { 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. WebThe feeding habits of otters vary greatly depending on species, location, and time of year or season. 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. 67 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. This official regulatory association was set up to standardise conduct in the field, eliminate internal squabbles over hunting countries and promote the otterhound breed. This increase in reintroduction effort would come to be known as one of the most ambitious and extensive carnivore restoration efforts in history. Perhaps surprisingly, despite four decades of campaigns against the sport, the article does not describe otter hunting as something controversial. The fact that otter hunting was singled out suggests that Coleridge felt this particular activity was vulnerable enough to be prohibited. . . Having been allowed bail, the pair's charges were later revised on appeal to a five pound fine, on the understanding that Bell gave a donation of one hundred pounds to the North Devon Infirmary. 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. Indeed, Coulson, Collinson and other campaigners believed that the kill had ill effects on the mental well-being of every person involved. To reinforce this point Bates goes on to outline the enjoyable aspects of the sport. He stressed that he was not a sportsman and had never shot a bird nor hooked a fish in my life but became involuntarily the witness of an otter hunt while sketching beside a pool. 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. WebNo hunting (except waterfowl) during removed only by the user. Sea otters were hunted to near extinction during the maritime fur trade of the 1700s and 1800s. When urchin populations spiked in response, the reefs held their ground. "During the fur trade, Clathromorphum persisted through centuries where urchins presumably abounded," Rasher said. "However, the situation has drastically changed this time around. 18. 35 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 Instead, it focussed on one man, Mr Sidney Varndell. 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 View all Google Scholar citations Now, what nonsense this is!Footnote Figure 2. 25. In the minds of campaigners it not only looked ridiculous, it was unacceptable. George Greenwood made a similar observation in the 1914 publication, Killing for Sport: Men and, good heavens! He focussed on several key themes including the hunting of pregnant otters and the demoralising effects of participating in the hunt. WebThe otters were then protected by the international fur seal treaty, which banned sea otter hunting. WebSea otters were hunted to near extinction during the maritime fur trade of the 1700s and 1800s. The idea of introducing a slaughter limit helps to explain why his case for protecting the otter did not play a part in the rhetoric of the Humanitarian League or the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports. A true man would kill fierce animals with as little pain as possible, while those he destroys for food, or raiment, he will destroy mercifully. In February 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave all women over the age of thirty the right to vote. After introducing her pack, the Crowhurst Otter Hounds, the article listed the women who actively enjoyed the sport: Of the invariably large and influential following we may mention Mrs Mantell, Mrs Killogg-Jenkins, and Miss Woodruffe, Mrs Trimmer and Miss and Mrs J. Awbrey.Footnote A part of this pamphlet, which included this quotation, was reprinted in Cruel Sports magazine in 1929. 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. 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. Yet although Johnston was not directly involved, his argument brought into prominence the campaign for the otter. 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. 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. 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. (Cheers.) Even if she is prevented from doing so, she will hang about the place where they are, and perhaps be killed wet when the cubs, too, will perish.Footnote But model men would find pleasure neither in torturing, nor annihilating any of them.Footnote 56. 1 Google Scholar. The hypocrisy of clergy preaching high moral standards and Christian virtues yet killing for fun was regularly exploited by members of the Humanitarian League. 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 sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals . 86. Bates wrote a regular column, Country Life, in The Spectator, and two volumes of nature essays, Through the Woods (1936) and Down the River (1937). 57. . The main institutional differences were in their ideals and methods. 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. Hale, Matthew was fully aware of the power of publicity and as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did not oppose blood sports, this proposal was a radical move. In these terms, this exceptional incident was absorbed into the broader campaign against blood sports. 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 shot but they felt that many otters were preserved for hunting, a shameful blot on our civilisation. One of the first men of influence to join the Humanitarian League was Colonel William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (18411911). He declared that Coleridge was entirely out of order in discussing this matter now, adding that he was not speaking of the merits of the subject, but only say it is out of order now. Coleridge replied that: If at your Annual meeting such a motion as that is out of order, then I say this great Society will stultify itself if it does not hear me. 10 of the hunting fraternity. In 1931 Ernest Bell, co-founder of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports, resigned in protest at Henry Amos's continual criticism of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 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. A high proportion of the League were women. At night, in company with her other cub, she came to the yard and tried to liberate the little captive, but without success. Which of the following observations would provide the strongest By the mid-1960s, Amchitka Island was being used a site for nuclear testing, which eventually killed many sea otters in the area. The League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sport, Annual Report (London, 1926). The otter is impaled on a barbed hunting spear and is about to be flung down for the hounds. This reversal shows that the campaigning did have an impact, albeit a small one, on the public perception of the activity. British Sporting Art, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. What humbugs we are!Footnote After retiring from the army he devoted much of his time to lecturing in schools across the country about the fair treatment of animals. . Members of the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports were also outraged by this murderous behaviour and equally critical of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but they had a slightly different response to the event. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings. Mackenzie, John M., The Empire of Nature (Manchester, 1988), p. 33 I do not find this in the least hard to believe.Footnote 15, Although this document only had a small readership it proved to be the earliest written condemnation of the sport from an organisation. By Zulma Cary. George Greenwood, Chapter 1: The Cruelty of Sport, in Henry Salt, ed., Killing for Sport (1914), p. 6. 39. 87. In these terms the iconic image of Varndell could be seen as positively publicising the face of otter hunting. 3.84. 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. 32 Vivisection, the slaughter of animals for food, the fur and feather fashion trade, and blood sports were all targeted.Footnote 63 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 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? 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 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. Mr Rose of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds described the proposed Bill as most unfair and ridiculous and argued that otter hunting was grossly misrepresented: Long spiked poles are never used for the purposes suggested, but for assisting followers across ditches, rivers and fences. Has data issue: false [23] Reverend H. C. G. Matthew, Coleridge, Stephen William Buchanan (18541936), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Coulson thought hare hunting was crueller than otter hunting because the hare was timid defenceless and nervous, whereas the otter was a gallant little animal which died after a long hard-fought battle.Footnote A selection of letters was then published under the title, Should Otters Be Hunted? The first letter, by Reverend Joseph Stratton, argued that men were judged in relation to their treatment of animals. 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 Hounds Feather as They Search the River Banks; (10) Followers Take to the Water; (11) This Is the Kill; (12) The Whip Holds Up the Trophy. It depicts Varndell as a solitary figure deep in thought. 28. It is amazing to us that men and women can find pleasure in hunting living creatures for hours, putting them to considerable distress and pain, and then watching their exhausted bodies being torn to pieces by hounds. 82 Douglas Macdonald Hastings, Hunting the Otter, Picture Post, 22nd July 1939, 5256, p. 52. First, he insisted that cats had been used, as he could not always get hold of a badger. By setting this against contemporary instances he insinuates the unchanging attitudes of otter hunters over the centuries. This is not to say that those within the League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports subscribed to this notion. 11. It also shows just how much the mere thought of otter hunting could unsettle an individual. Following its publication, the book received widespread publicity when Williamson was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in June 1928. 22. Large hunting efforts were under way with the help of a massive ship in the water. 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. 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 provides a typical instance from a Monthly Review (June 1906) article by J. C. Tregarthen: An otter's cub was captured and confined in the stableyard of a house near a river where the mother had been hunted during the day. 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. 33 In The Times on 13th June 1928 Williamson was described as the finest and most intimate living interpreter of the drama of wildlife. 75 Salt edited the two Humanitarian League journals: Humanity, later renamed The Humanitarian (18951919) and The Humane Review (19001910). Coulson, Otter Worrying A Protest, The Humanitarian, August 1908, 601. The following year, the Fur Seal Treaty was signed and although the Published online by Cambridge University Press: 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. 23 Covering two pages (812), it was retitled Sport and the Otter.. The Hawkstone Otter Hounds disbanded in 1914, putting down most of their hounds. 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. For almost 40 years, the otters in southeast Alaska scrapped by. Moreover, the intimacy of otter hunting meant that not only are they present at these infamous scenes, but, like the huntsmen, are worked up to the wildest pitch of excitement and moreover join in the final worry and the performance of the obsequies, when the spoils of the chase are distributed.Footnote The opinion of H. E. Bates provides an insight into one person's perception of the immorality of hunting otters to death. 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. Summer hunting across rugged river valleys offered strenuous physical exertion in the sun, whilst facilitating a picnic and a paddle. Spurious Sports Sport with an Otter, The Humanitarian, October 1906, 75. 8 The latter is probably more in keeping with the prosaic style of the pamphlet. 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. Twenty-five years later, Smith and his colleagues conducted two years of monitoring surveys at 1,200 sites across the state to assess how well the population was doing. The commercial trade began in 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 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. . 88 . [22] In 1957 the treaty was finally re-drafted to account for the population changes in the various locations of sea otters. 81. WebWhich of the following critical values should the scientist use for the chi-square analysis of the data? It may be outlawed, yet in 1977 one single New York dealer smuggled, amongst many other furs, the skins of 15,470 neotropical and 271 giant otters into the country (Eltringham 1984). The men then lit some cotton waste, smoked out the otter, and pelted it with stones. and broadly disregarded spearing as one of the blood-thirsty methods used by our forefathers.Footnote 23. Ormond, Richard for this article. something like twelve thousand otters have been killed in England for the purpose of fun. For campaigners, the killing of indefensible cubs and protective mothers was the antithesis of fair play, sportsmanship and manliness. 52. Moore-Colyer, R. J., Feathered Women and Persecuted Birds: The Struggle against the Plumage Trade, c. 18601922, Rural History, 11 (2000), 5773 24 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 Unlike the working men who may have regretted the spontaneous event, sportsmen not only celebrated their own form of killing; they had created organisations that expected it to occur on a regular basis. In the same year Amos organised the Leeds Rodeo Protest Committee which successfully scotched several attempts to import and establish rodeo in England. 90. This weekly magazine, first published on 1st October 1938, was a pioneering outlet for British photojournalism. 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. Sea urchins are voracious grazers of kelp. Hopkinson, T., ed., Picture Post 193850 (London, 1970), p. 8 In 1928, it showed a cheerful young woman glorying over being blooded at an otter-hunt (Figure 4).Footnote 78. The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals 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. What can look more ridiculous than a middle-aged woman, hurrying along, mile after mile, through wet grass and muddy pools, climbing fences and walls, her clothes sticking to her body and her hair half down her back?Footnote And even we English whose behaviour in the country is notoriously crazy must have an excuse for wading through rivers in grey bowler hats, blue jackets and white flannel breeches. 70 72. 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. Tarka soon became an iconic literary figure, and otter-hunting was made tangible to a new and wide audience.Footnote Sir Edwin Landseer, The Otter Speared, Portrait of the Earl of Aberdeen's Otterhounds, or the Otter Hunt, 1844; Laing Gallery, Newcastle http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/laing-art-gallery/collections.html. confined to otter hunting, they also tried to divide the hunting fraternity by distinguishing the sporting conduct of otter hunters from fox hunters, stag hunters and hare hunters: If the sporting set consider it unsporting to hunt some animals in the breeding season, why does this not apply to otters?Footnote . His argument in the Hunted Otter was driven by quotations from thirty published sources. It has many meanings and perhaps I misconstrue it? With no utilitarian reason for killing, the hunted otter was simply something killed for fun. 44 Big game hunter Sir Henry Seton-Karr and otter hunter Mr David Davies, Member of Parliament, were among its sixty-one ordinary members.Footnote Downing, Graham, The Hounds of Spring. 4. Bates begins by considering the main excuse for killing otters, the supposed need to reduce predation on fish. . As this practice was almost exclusivelyFootnote 59. Hunting Otters with firearms was once common in the early twentieth century, but many preferred to trap them. Syse, Karen Victoria Lykke, Otters as Symbols in the British Environmental Discourse, Landscape Research, 38 (2013), 54052CrossRefGoogle Scholar. If the mere presence of women was condemned, then the role they played in, and joy they gained from, the death of the otter was shocking. Hostname: page-component-75b8448494-knlg2 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 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. Captain T. W. Sheppard, Decadence of Otter Hunting, The Field, 20th October 1906, 658. The Otter Worry, The Humanitarian, September 1907, 164. It appears to be more about human behaviour than animal suffering. This desire had different implications for different sorts of people. The idea of the fairer sex taking part in manly or savage amusements was regularly invoked to shock the public.Footnote 2956Google Scholar; 46 7 40, As a result of the Humanitarian League's campaigning, by 1906 otter hunting had become an issue of public debate. CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diana Donald argues, however, that the resulting canvas, six and a half feet high, had no precedent in British sporting art in the way it combined archaic pageantry and brutal actuality with the hunter twisting the spear so the otter does not immediately fall to the hounds. From the late 1890s Coulson had also launched a prolific letter writing campaign against otter hunting in local, regional and national newspapers. See inside.. 21 20. This echoed broader concerns for non-human animals. 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 anti-hunting societies. 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 men and women,Footnote 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. Newcastle Daily Journal, 29th May 1914, cited at http://www.henrysalt.co.uk/friends/colonel-coulson. artificial membrane that mimics the. Coulson compared the death of the fox with the death of the otter to emphasise the cruelty of the latter. And as a relatively inexpensive sport, such social changes meant otter hunting had become a less appealing target for them. This pack disbanded in 1919 when he became master of the Hawkstone Otter Hounds. 41 The sea otter population has rebounded to nearly three thousand individuals 46. (Cheers.) Throughout the period campaigners repeatedly pointed to this subject as proof of the inconsistency and heartlessnessFootnote Although this demonstration was by all accounts quiet and orderly, the encounter did produce a rather interesting spectacle. 14. 37, The first malpractice to be exposed in otter hunting itself was an incident that occurred on the River Tweed on 6th July 1907. Leeds Women Protest at an Otter Hunt, Cruel Sports, August 1935. Pring, Geoffrey, Records of the Culmstock Otterhounds, c. 17901957 (Exeter, 1958), p. 35 83. Otter hunting is a practice that dates back to the 1700s. 9, In this paper we consider the ways campaigns against otter hunting were carried out in the period 1900 to 1939. 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. 38 In 1923 he diverted his attention to blood sports. Sydney Barthropp, Master of the Eastern Counties Otter Hounds, died fighting in France in 1914, which led to their disbandment soon after. He agrees that the otter lives on fish, but so also do herons and wild duck and pike and kingfishers and cats and men and women. UKWOT has Otter-Hunting, Cruel Sports, August 1939, 58. These public demonstrations shed light on the respectability of the animal welfare movement.