| Main Performers | Colonel The Hon. The Lord Lamborne (Chair),
Sir Arthur L Lever,
Miss A M F Cole,
Sir E Wild, KC,
Sir Ernest Wild MP,
Sir Edward Marshall Hall, KC,
Mr Horatio Bottomley Esq. MP,
R B Cunninghame Graham Esq.,
Leslie Scott MP,
Gavin William Ralston - speakers |
| Set List | Speeches,
Principal Resolution (Sir Ernest Wilde),
Seconded (Sir Edward Marshall Hall),
Supported (Horatio Bottomley) |
| Performance Notes | This event, supported by all animal protection charities, protested against traffic in 'worn-out' horses.
English novelist and playwright, John Galsworthy, supported the event and in The Daily Telegraph (19 May 1921) he was appealed on people to attended this meeting writing, "I am sure that the government wants to stop this things, but, so far, their measures, existing or proposed, have not been adequate. Horses, four abreast, can be driven through those measures. The only thing - I am sorry to say it - that protects a horse is its own value. The only way to protect our worn-out orses is to make them more valuable dead than alive. The meeting will propose an export tac or licence of £20 on every British horse. Under that tax those who are really valuable can still be profitably exported to conditions which their own value will guarantee. But the tax, and the tax alone, can save those hwo have a shred of value left."
Miss A M F Cole spoke of her personal experiences of the continental traffic in worn out horses. The poor animals suffered intensely from the voyage, hunger and thirst and the methods of killing them. Some were simply blindfolded and knocked on the head, and those who had heard the screams of the tortured animals in the slaughter-houses would never forget them. Some pit ponies were taken to Antwerp; some were sold for vivisection for the instruction of the students.
"I wish you could see those English horses, Miss Cole continued, stumbling up the gangway, standing in a long line, tied to the railings on the bleak dock road. Of course, they have no covering: often there is a bitter wind, and sometimes snow and sleet. You can see them walking in a dismal procession, tied three or four abreast, four and a half miles through Antwerp. If any cannot walk they are conveyed in a float at the end of the procession. If a horse falls in a float and cannot get up the float is backed against the door of the slaughter house, and the chains used to hoist the carcasses are fastened to the horse's feet, and it is dragged out on the floor, and there killed with a pole-axe. There you can watch the end of these old horses; you can see it any week in Belgium. The horse is led into the yard, a man holds it buy the halter, a butcher drives a knife into the horse's breast, it plunges, falls struggles, staggers on to its feet and falls again. All this time the blood pours out: This goes on for some minutes; at last only his tail moves and he dies. That is how a number of old English horses are killed every week," (The Times, 23 May 1921)
Sir K Wild, KC moved that the British Government should place a tax or licence of not less than £20 on every horse, mule or ass exported from the British Isles. |
| Related Archival Material | Handbill (RAHE/6/1921/22) |