In 1822, the United Kingdom (UK) passed what is generally recognized as the first piece of legislation enacted by any nation to criminalize animal cruelty. The Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act was a natural consequence of then evolving public opinion, and a landmark piece of legislation which set the stage for all subsequent animal protection law, both nationally and internationally. It was authored and championed by Richard Martin, Member of Parliament (MP) for Galway, after whom the Act became more fondly known as “Martin’s Act.”
Martin’s Act made it a crime to “wantonly and cruelly beat, abuse, or ill-treat” certain animals, including horses, cattle, mules, and sheep. On conviction, the penalty was a fine of between ten shillings and five pounds, or imprisonment for up to three months.
The History of Martin’s Act
The enactment of Martin’s Act followed a parliamentary battle lasting almost a quarter of a century, and a philosophical debate dating back much further, to pass some form of animal protection legislation. However, public opinion was slowly changing. In 1781, Jeremy Bentham famously said of animals: “the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
In 1800, Sir William Pulteney MP introduced a Bill in the House of Commons that would prohibit bull-baiting, a popular sport at the time which involved the setting of dogs on a restrained bull. However, the Bill was met by powerful opposition in Parliament, with the future prime minister, George Canning MP, declaring that “the amusement inspired courage and produced a nobleness of sentiment and elevation of mind.” In 1802, John Dent MP introduced a similar Bill in the same House. Both were unsuccessful.
It has been suggested that attempts to ban bull-baiting and other forms of animal exploitation had the primary emphasis of attempting to “civilize” the lower classes, rather than placing any intrinsic value on the individual animal. At the time, blood sports had been long standing pastimes and amusements of the British public. However, what was considered popular amusement at the start of the eighteenth century gradually became considered barbaric and uncivilized, as the concept of “honor” developed from “manliness, fearlessness and physical strength” to “self-discipline, civilized and polite manners, compassion and benevolence.” Accordingly, debates on these new laws centered on the concept of honor and the need to “civilize” the working classes as much as they did the proper treatment of animals: “British gentlemen no longer agreed on what made a man honorable and, as one consequence of this, they no longer agreed on how to treat animals.”
There was also growing concern about the treatment of cattle and horses in city streets and markets. Prior to the enactment of Martin’s Act, such cases were brought on the grounds of property damage, often by a master against a servant, and carried potentially serious penalties. For example, in 1801, the Morning Post Gazette reported that “Thomas Wickinson, for injuring a horse belonging to Orby Hunter, Esq. by maliciously driving a nail into his foot, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.”
However, the framing of animal protection as property damage meant that cruelty committed by the legal owner of the animal remained permissible under law. It was this idea that Martin and his collaborators wanted to challenge: harm to an animal was not simply damage to a person’s property, but rather, in the contemporaneous words of Lord Erskine, it was a violation of the animal’s rights which “subservient as they are, ought to be as sacred as our own.”
In 1809, Lord Erskine introduced the Cruelty to Animals Bill in the House of Lords, which attempted to protect cattle and horses from mistreatment. He had the express intention of challenging the perceived right of a legal owner to abuse their own animals:
The validity of this most infamous and stupid defence arises from that defect in the law which I seek to remedy. Animals are considered as property only: to destroy or to abuse them, from malice to the proprietor, or with an intention injurious to his interest in them, is criminal; but the animals themselves are without protection; the law regards them not substantively; they have no rights!
The Bill was met with resistance. One of its loudest opponents was William Windham MP, who was concerned both about the revolutionary nature of the legislation, and that it was founded on “gross partiality and inequality” by criminalizing the acts of the lower classes, “while it left untouched an infinitely larger class, and in which the very members of the legislature themselves were implicated, such as hunting, fowling, horse-racing, [et cetera].” Lord Erskine’s Bill passed through the House of Lords but lost in the Commons.
The next attempt to legislate against animal abuse was 1821, when Martin introduced the Ill-Treatment of Horses Bill in the House of Commons. This Bill was met with further disdain in the Commons, with MPs considering it “wholly unnecessary.” Sir James Scarlett MP stated that “the subject [was] not a fit one for legislation, and that [Mr. Martin] might as well bring in a bill against hunting the hare.” The Bill failed.
Finally, in 1822, Martin introduced the Ill-Treatment of Cattle Bill, which, despite opposition, passed and became the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act.
Enforcement of Martin’s Act
In 1822, victims of crime in England would typically carry out their own prosecutions, with only the most serious offenses prosecuted by the Crown. However, Martin’s Act created a new class of victims who were unable to assert their own rights. Accordingly, the Act allowed any person to commence proceedings on an animal’s behalf. Martin brought many of the early prosecutions under the Act in his personal capacity.
[Martin] was constantly on the prowl in the streets of London, remonstrating with wrongdoers, initiating unprecedented criminal proceedings, often as a principal, and almost single-handedly changing the climate of public opinion. These escapades not only involved him in occasionally violent altercations, but also brought him into frequent conflict with magistrates, who only with difficulty managed to keep him under control in court, and opened him to widespread popular ridicule.
In 1824, Martin and other animal protection activists formed the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which organized the investigation and prosecution of animal abuse. In 1840, the Society was granted royal patronage by Queen Victoria and become the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), which still exists today. Throughout the 1830s, the Society brought 1,357 prosecutions, rising to an extraordinary 71,657 prosecutions in the 1890s.
The RSPCA’s vigor in privately prosecuting animal abuse cases was remarkable, but the basis on which it did so was not unusual. For example, the Society for the Reformation of Manners, the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and the Proclamation Society each employed agents to investigate and prosecute offenses relating to gaming law, disorderly houses, and obscene books, among other things. Other societies were formed of tradesmen, shopkeepers, and pawnbrokers to prosecute theft and trafficking of stolen goods.
Many of these English societies disbanded as professional police forces were established (in London in 1829 and in the rest of the country in 1839) and took over the enforcement of the criminal law, using public funds. However, even today, the enforcement of offences against nonhuman victims remains largely the responsibility of private individuals and organizations – the largest of these being the RSPCA. A 2020 report found that the RSPCA is responsible for eighty-five percent of the enforcement of the current animal welfare legislation.
The RSPCA also inspired the formation of its American counterpart in 1866, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), after the ASPCA’s founder, Henry Bergh, had spent time in England and learned about its work.
Development of Animal Protection Laws Since 1822
In 1833, Parliament expanded legal protections for animals by prohibiting bear-baiting and badger- and cock-fighting. In 1835, protections were further expanded to cover bull-baiting and dog-fighting and to impose requirements on all keepers of animals to provide them with adequate nourishment. The 1835 Act also gave additional powers to concerned third parties, permitting “any Person or Persons whomsoever” to enter premises and supply animals with food if they had been confined without adequate nourishment, and recover double the value of the food from the owner.
Over the coming decades, further protections were introduced, including the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, the Wild Animals in Captivity Protection Act 1900, and the Protection of Animals Act 1911, which regulated the use of animals in research, criminalized the abuse of captive wild animals, and consolidated earlier legislation, respectively. Today, the main piece of legislation that protects animals in the UK is the Animal Welfare Act 2006 (AWA), under which offenses include causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal (section 4) and failing to provide for the needs of an animal for whom a person is responsible (section 9). In other words, it prohibits abuse, but it also imposes duties on keepers of animals to provide for the animal’s needs. Additional primary and secondary legislation supplement the AWA, and create various offenses relating to the transportation, welfare, and slaughter of farmed animals, the use of animals in experiments, and the commercial trade in companion animals.
More recently, the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 1921 amended the AWA to increase the maximum custodial sentence for offenses under the AWA to five years, and the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 (the Sentience Act) formally recognized animals as sentient and established an Animal Sentience Committee, one of the purposes of which is to ensure that animal sentience is considered in policy decisions. The Sentience Act also applies to certain invertebrates, who are not protected under the AWA. At this time, it is too early to comment on the effectiveness of the Sentience Committee, and while the Sentience Act has been celebrated by many, others urge us not to become complacent: “[if] the time and effort devoted to achieving legal sentience recognition comes at the cost of more significant legal reform for animals, then it will constitute a net loss.”
Conclusion
Despite the gradual increase in the number and reach of animal protection laws, which both prohibit certain conduct and impose duties on humans to provide for animals’ welfare needs, the status of animals as property remains largely the same today as it was two hundred years ago. While a person can no longer beat their animal simply because they “own” him/her, they may still buy, sell, lease, and dispose of him/her, provided that it is done in accordance with welfare laws. Similarly, considerations about whether suffering is “necessary” are framed according to the needs of the relevant animal-use industry: an animal may suffer but, if that suffering is permissible under law, it will not be considered “unnecessary” and no offense will be committed. For animals in experiments, many are specifically denied protections under the AWA; instead, the relevant legislation is the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which permits “severe suffering” in certain licensed procedures.
Despite huge legislative advancements since 1822, animals remain property under the law. In one case the writer acted on this year, the judge stated that English law, as it stands, considers a much-loved companion animal as legally equivalent to a dishwasher. On this two hundredth anniversary of Martin’s Act, which was, undoubtedly, a pioneering piece of legislation that paved the way for sweeping animal protections in the centuries to come, it is an opportunity to reflect on how far animal protection law has come, but also how far it has left to go.
